Besides a Long Time Chef, Who Am I? Part 1: My Lifelong Side Hustle: Musician.

Someone thought my 58 years on this Earth was an intriguing and unique story, so they suggested I share with everyone...so here goes.

A tiny 4 year old me. Phila Pa 1969

I have been a lifelong musician. Since the age of four, when I first started taking over the piano my Mom had bought for my sister, I have played and written music. I begged for a guitar at the age of 11, wanted to become a rockstar at age 12 after seeing my first big concert (Aerosmith, 1977) and learned how to play “Smoke On The Water”and CSN’s “4 + 20” at 13. I sang in choir from 1st grade through 11th grade, played every talent show from 6th grade onward and wrote my own songs beginning at 12, my opus being a concept piece called “Guinea Pigs” about how the planet was totally messed up and how climate, pollution and drugs would crush us all in the end. You know, fun kid stuff.

a 13 year old me. Phila, PA 1978

In my senior year of high school I received a scholarship for both music and art. (My life in Art will be Part 2 of this series.) I took that small sum and ended up moving to Madrid, Spain exactly one week after graduation to be with my then Spanish boyfriend. I would live a life like all the Joni Mitchell songs I learned and loved, sitting in a park in Paris, France or feeling the wind come in from Africa with beach tar on my feet.

me (on left) with my best friend/singing partner Sharon Dillon- Phila Pa. 1983

After 10 months and a failed relationship I headed back to Northeast Philadelphia, tail between my legs and at a loss for what I would do next. The only thing clear was that I did NOT want to stay in the little town I grew up in. And I wanted to play music with other people, to start a band and see the world while making music. My family was lower middle class, my parents had only gone to the 8th grade. My brothers both high school drop outs. My sister and I were the only highschool graduates and certainly NO ONE in the Hale clan had gone to college. My parents hadn’t even planned for us kids to want to go to college. But I wanted to go and the college I wanted to go to was WAY out of their financial means. I applied for financial aid but was shot down because it was thought that my parents meager earnings would be sufficient. Man, were they wrong. College looked hopeless, but then two people whom I have called my “Bonus Parents” since I was 16 stepped in to help me get into Berklee College of Music. (I will be writing a book next about them, their son Joel, and how out of deep, unimaginable loss we became forever bound together.)

me (on left) with my parents in Boston at my group house. - 1988

At Berklee, located in Boston, Massachusetts, I met all sorts of musicians and made lifelong connections to some of my best friends and musical collaborators. I began Berklee as a Joni Mitchell wanna-be that also loved Jazz Fusion (Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius). I played in the subway busking for over a year with my then dorm roommate, Mary Lou Lord. We sang cover after cover almost every day, me playing guitar along with our friend Debbie, singing three part harmony.

Me (on left), Debbie Kleis and Mary Lou Lord singing at my senior recital at Berklee- 1988

Then, a boy at school who’s name now evades me, made me a mixtape that led me to finding my new favorite band called XTC, as well as hearing Minor Threat, Hüsker Dü and Dead Can Dance for the first time. I joined a friend’s band, singing and playing percussion, that played Ethno-Afro Funk Punk. We were called The Bohemian Angels and our only real claim to fame was that in 1987 we got the owner of the Middle East Cafe, a man named Moodi, to let our band play in their main “All-You-Can-Eat” buffet room that had a stage with belly dancers and smelled of curry, kebabs and basmati rice. He charged $7 at the door to get in to see our band but which included the buffet as well! No lie!

The Bohemian Angels: Steve Berson, Debbie Kleis, Cliff Thompson, me, Matt Ernst, Ann Hairston - Boston 1987

That band then relocated to Baltimore, Maryland in 1989 and that’s when we hit our stride playing live shows constantly. We changed the band name to False Face Society and played Washington D.C., Philly and New York consistently opening for acts like Fugazi as well as Eek-A-Mouse and Alice Donut to only name a few. We became a staple of the Funk Punk scene there. It was there I learned to become a front person and how to belt out vocals.

False Face Society: Sheryl Bailey, me, Ann Hairston, Rob White, Steve Berson, Warren Boes - Baltimore 1990

Then in 1991, as FFS began to crumble, I started Baltimore’s first Riot Grrrl band (before there was such a thing as Riot Grrrl) called Womyn Of Destruction. We were three women who didn’t know how to play the instrument we were assigned. Andrianna Pateris on vocals (Estrojet, Cicada), Spoon Popkin on accordion (Estrojet, Cicada), too many to name drummers and one guy named Rob Girardi (Estrojet, Cicada, RJVJ and Producer for Beach House and Future Islands), who DID in fact know how to play guitar. We were an instant success somehow, opening for Fugazi, Hole and later Bikini Kill. We would pack CBGB’s each time we played there as well as Brownies and always got some great press in the Village Voice. It was in this band that I learned to play bass. WOD, as we became known, played for 4 years until I quit to start another band with then boyfriend/now husband, David Koslowski of Liquor Bike.

Womyn of Destruction: Spoon Popkin, me, Andrianna Pateris, Rob Girardi - Baltimore 1993

Gerty! was a three piece Indie-Rock band I started with good friend and drummer, Miyuki Furtado (Roger Sisters, Divining Rod) along with David. We wrote hook driven indie rock with a huge emphasis on melody and harmony. Gerty became known for our tIght, well written progressions and sing-along melodies. Lyrics were a mix of tongue in cheek cleverness ala XTC as well as a bit of dark melancholy sung over bright pop melodies. Again, this band was an instant hit wowing over anyone who heard us. It was in this band that I learned songcraft.

Gerty! (Mach I): me, Miyuki Furtado, David Koslowski - Baltimore 1995

After touring the country numerous times and playing the South quite a bit, David and I realized that Baltimore was getting too dangerous for us to enjoy living there any longer so we decided to move the band down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This was 1998. At the same time Miyuki, our drummer, had recently been besmitten with a woman who would become his life partner and mother of his child, and she had landed a job in New York City. So, David and I moved to Chapel Hill, into an 1880’s log cabin deep in the woods of Chatham County, on the outskirts of Chapel Hill. We then asked our good friend Laura King, who still lived in Baltimore, if she wanted to come join us. She said yes, but had one stipulation, and that was that her then boyfriend had to play bass. We accepted her demand and I moved from playing bass to playing a beautiful hollow body electric Epiphone guitar as well as a synth. This was new territory for me, as well as changing the way I eventually wrote music. In this band I learned the beauty of compromise and my husband and I also grew as songwriters.

Gerty! (Mach II): me, Laura King, David Koslowski - Chapel Hill , NC 1998

Then, after a month long US tour the inevitable happened and Gerty! broke up. We were no ABBA and having two couples in this band wasn’t working. As I sadly sang in a song I wrote called “Charade”, “When you file away the tears, and you file away the beers, there is nothing to believe, so I’ll walk away in tears.” David and I then rebirthed ourselves into a duo, playing along with pre-recorded tracks we had recorded and played through a portable CD player. We dubbed that band Air Guitar for a hot minute, but returned to Gerty! and had friends Rafi Goldberg and Maria Albani help us play the our new songs live.

Gerty! David, me and Rafi - 2002 Durham, NC

We then took back the name Gerty! for a short moment before being joined by drummer Melissa York (Team Dresch, The Butchies) to form Ex-Members. Ex-Members wrote dark electro-pop and were favorites among the queer crowds of the south, but that band lasted only a few years. In this band I learned boundaries and afterwards how to say no.

Ex-Members -David Koslowski, Melissa York, me - Durham NC 2005

After this David and I wrote a song that would become the anthem for our next project. The song was called “Hawks” and unknowingly at the time, sounded as if My Bloody Valentine had slept with Sonic Youth. A dream of a song that would lead us to playing in our favorite band, Free Electric State. FES was born one afternoon in a Durham North Carolina bar called The Pinhook while owner/barkeep Nick Williams and David met for the first time. They were nerding out about Krautrock and then David asked Nick if he played anything. Nick was a closet guitarist as well as a pianist. We then got together shortly after that and found drummer Tony Stiglitz. FES was probably my all-time favorite band I ever played in. Soaring orchestrated anthems, similar to Radiohead, with motorik beats. In this band I learned the pure joy of just playing. There was nothing like it I had ever experienced before. Again, this band was wildly successful locally producing two wonderful full length records.

Free Electric State: Nick Williams, David Koslowski, me, Tony Stiglitz - Durham NC 2009

In 2012 David and I needed to leave North Carolina to move back to Baltimore to be near David’s Dad, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness. We tried to keep FES going long distance but found it too difficult to make it work.

Small Apartments: David Koslowski, Greg Dohler, me - Baltimore 2014

We then started our last band, Small Apartments, but found it hard to get a footing in the now oversaturated scene in Baltimore, having been away for 14 years. We released an EP and moved on.

Vivid Low Sky: Laura King, Thomas Moore, Miyuki Furtado, David Koslowski, me - Baltimore 1999

Over the years David had been sporadically writing instrumental works under the moniker Vivid Low Sky, a play on his name. (DaVID kosLOW SKi) David, along with our old drummers, Miyuki, Laura King, myself on bass and our good friend and guitar virtuoso Tom Moore had released a record on CD back in 2000 called Music For Movies Unmade. Then in 2016 we released another record on vinyl called II. In this band I learned how to make my bass interpret what I might sing vocally.

Which brings me to current time.

At 58 years old I decided to release one more record, and actually, my first solo record. It’s called The Silver Garden and I began writing the songs for this record over the last 6 years, mainly reflections on growing older and owning this space. It’s an ode to experiencing the passage of time while trying to find a way to speak to those finding love or keeping it alive at an older age, feelings of lust and beauty in graying locks and wrinkles, finding regret in unrequited love and touching on loss, as well as existential thoughts about the here-after. This record touches on my own personal experiences both musically and personally.

Recorded & produced in Baltimore by Rob Girardi (Beach House, Future Islands, Celebration, Double Dagger) along with my husband David Koslowski & myself, The Silver Garden was mastered in New York by Heba Kandry (Bjork, Beach House, Slowdive, Cate Le Bon, Animal Collective).

A collection of 12 songs about the experience of aging as seen through the eyes of a lifelong musician, I was able to cultivate my own “silver garden” by pulling together the talents of various friends to help conceive the record. They came together from North Carolina, New York, and Baltimore to lend their musical brilliance to various songs. Producer / guitarist Rob Girardi, guitarist & co-producer David Koslowski (Free Electric State, Vivid Low Sky, Liquor Bike, Gerty), guitarist J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines, Government Issue), guitarist/synthist Nick Williams (Free Electric State), guitarist Dave Heumann (Arbouretum), drummers Laura King (Superchunk, R. Ring, Kelly Deal, Bat Fangs), David Bergander (Celebration, Arbouretum), and Miyuki Furtado (Rogers Sisters, Divining Rod), and keyboardist Veronica Clay (RJVJ).

The first two singles have been released, with videos below, and the full record will be released this October 2023. You can download them here:

A link to pre-order the full record is here.

Thanks for reading this part of my life’s journey and may we continue to find the grays, the wrinkles and the imperfections simply perfect. xoxo

Shirlé