lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: subway

2022-11-07: amy ray teaches us a little something about counting our blessings, queer forty:

another song that really stood out is the song "subway." a lot of the references resonated with me 'cause i live in new york city, you know? but i wasn't sure what inspired the song or who it was about.

amy: i'll tell you. do you know that station wfuv, out of fordham? there was a dj and music director there named rita houston.

oh, sure! i remember her.

amy: she passed away a couple of years ago. i really wrote that song inspired by her. and also inspired by my time as a young, queer, first-come-into-new york and how free it made me feel. during the pandemic, the only city i missed was new york city. i just have a really special relationship with new york. as a southerner who loves the woods, new york is kinda similar to me in that way. i feel really free there and autonomous, and i can just be in my body. and [that's] the way i feel when i'm hiking in the woods here. it's like a wilderness to me, you know?

while rita was passing on to the next world - kind of hospicing and slowly moving on - i talked a lot to [a mutual] friend. we talked about rita's experiences early on. going to see, like, five bands a night and how crazy she was. when the indigo girls were coming up in the '90s, she totally heard us and saw us for what we were. she saw us as queer women but it wasn't why she played the songs. you know what i mean? it was like, you always knew that she saw your complete personhood. she was a queer woman working in an industry that was super hard at the time. and yet she dominated it. [she] was so warm yet so professional. she saw everyone for their worth, whether you were queer or not. but as a queer person, you never felt less around her. and you also didn't feel more because you were queer! you just felt like a person - and i love that.

and she kept it like that up until the end. so it's about her and new york... you know, you love new york too. for me, it's like new york, berlin and georgia (laughter).

the holy trinity.

amy: the holy trinity!

and brandi [carlile] sang on it. brandi was friends with rita too and [she] was one of rita's favorites. you know, brandi and mavis staples were the two biggies. that's why i asked brandi to sing on it. i thought it would be special to her memory.

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2022-11-15: ten year town: amy ray, holler:

'subway' is my favourite song on the album. what was it was like working on it with brandi carlile?

i've worked with brandi for years; she's sung on the majority of my solo records. i sent this off to her because it was a song i wrote as a tribute to a dj called rita houston here in the states.

we both loved her, so i just sent it and said, "do whatever you want!" she sent me back a choir of brandis; basically 10 vocal tracks. we transferred it to the tape we had of the song and it was amazing, it just popped right up and was brilliant. it's one of the best vocals she's ever done for me.

she's a huge star and all that, but what people need to realise is that she is one of the best harmony singers ever. she can sing harmony to anything - she can find a part that no one else can and has this incredible instinct about them. it's rare.

live, she doesn't miss a note. she's not a robot, but she is always in tune. natalie hemby is too; control and harmony is her wheelhouse. i was lucky to have those two on this record.

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2022-12-01: amy ray of the indigo girls on her latest solo album - watermark

i wrote "subway," in part, in tribute to [the late dj] rita houston, who had been so crucial. she and brandi carlile were super close. she really helped develop brandi's career in being such an indicator station, getting other people on board. so, i was thinking about brandi and the chorus vocals that would be there because i was writing kind of an ambitious chorus for me [laughs]. i'm like, "i'm gonna have to have brandi in here!"

...

you mentioned the late, queer wfuv dj rita houston. what do you think the loss of houston means for new artists?

it's a huge hole in the universe of people that would take a new artist and sort of help develop them, take chances at radio and give people that space. she also was a mentor to artists. she wasn't ever judging your art by whether you were gay or not, or what color your skin was. if the song wasn't a fit for the station, she would tell you why. it wouldn't have anything to do with whether you're this or that. if it was a fit, it also didn't have anything to do with this or that.

she was a mentor in shared musicality. being able to trust her and understanding how that taught you about the terrain that you're in and who you can and can't trust in that way. the people that one day build you up and the next day cut you down because of your politics or who your audience is; those are not the people to look to for advice. someone like rita, who you can trust, was a very important barometer for the other kind of people you should be looking for. all of a sudden you find this human and you're like, "oh, that's the way it's supposed to be. i'm going to make sure that when i'm moving through this musical ecosystem, the people that i try to be around and get to know and trust and look up to are like rita houston."

without that the younger musicians have one less person in that arena who was a huge influence on so many people in the radio and journalism worlds. you can't fill her shoes. you have to hope that there's enough other people out there that were influenced by her, that came up through the ranks that can do what she did and share that mantle.

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2023-02-23 live in the volume studio - lightning 100 - nashville, tennessee (amy ray)

amy ray: subway, i wrote in honor of a woman named rita houston that was a dj up in new york at wfuv, another noncom station community radio, which i really firmly believe in. and um she helped a lot of musicians in the nineties kind of find their, their footing in the world, you know, especially musicians that were gay and queer and just couldn't really figure out how to hold themselves, you know, in that era, because it was very, could be very oppressive. but she was kind of like a music first leaning person. you know, she was all about the music and she never really judged anything else. so her tastes were vast and wide ranging and she was just a, i remember hearing stories where she would try to go to five shows in one night, you know, things like that and, and i just really, i loved her a lot and i'm, and it was a big loss for a lot of people. i mean, everybody really loved her in, in the music world, in the radio world, the non com world especially. so i just, she lives, she lived in new york and i just, it was during covid and i basically was like, writing her a letter in this song about, you know, missing her and thinking about her and what she had done and kind of our lives, both of us as we grew up sort of through the, through the scene and all that.

dj: i know. i'm, i'm really sad to have not met her. i've heard a lot about her and i know a lot of people who work here at lightning 100 with me have met her working with her at, um at bonaroo at the like...

amy ray: yes

dj: ...radio tent there...

amy ray: yes

dj: ...and i've heard only amazing things about her. so, um i think it's beautiful that you wrote this tribute for her. and, uh we would love to hear it.

amy ray: yeah we'll play it. and, yeah, and brandi did sing on this. um, she did a choir of brandi's which jeff is gonna...

jeff fielder: uh yeah...

amy ray: ...jeff is gonna do...

dj: are you gonna, you're gonna be our choir of brandi's this morning?

amy ray: well jeff is from seattle, so he's got some brandi in him...

dj: yeah, that makes sense, yeah that's that's close enough.

amy ray: yeah. all right. you want to count me in?"