Sarah had moved to Vancouver in 1987 to record her first album Touch at age 19. She went solo in Vancouver after being in a band for three years in Halifax. Though painfully shy then, i still can hear her voice boom down the hall from our college newsroom. It was the most piercing voice of the year.

There were very few women headlining shows before 1988, or being represented by the music industry. I estimate less than 5% of all acts, maybe even less than 1%. That year, many women would sing led by Sarah - to change an industry. Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, Edie Brickell, 10,000 Maniacs, Suzanna Vega, Paula Cole, Sinead O'Connor, and Michelle Shocked, among them.

Sarah would then launch Lilith Fair and the Women & Songs album series to prove women could headline, to show the music industry - rules could be different. Her indie music label Nettwerk started using the internet. The label's new media manager, a radio station manager i knew at my college, would move on to spearhead iTunes Canada.

It's hard to believe the music industry once didn't believe as a rule that women could be in a double billing for a concert. This is after Madonna, Fleetwood Mac, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline, Blondie, Ella Fitzgerald, Joan Baez, Pat Benetar, Cindi Lauper, the Go Gos, the Bangles, Carole King, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, and others. Likewise, until Michael Jackson, the music industry outside of Motown didn't believe someone who was not white could headline. This is after Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross and Robert Johnson. Someone has to always prove the industry wrong - with financial success - before it changes. Someone like Steve Jobs.

By 2000, you could barely find a male vocalist headlining. VH1 showcased old and new Divas who dominated the industry. Women like Mariah Carey, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Shakira, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, Pat Benatar, Ashanti, Blondie, Beyoncé, Carole King, Sheryl Crow, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige, Jewel, Destiny's Child, The Pussycat Dolls, Gloria Estefan, Donna Summer, Faith Hill, Nelly Furtado, Cyndi Lauper, Melissa Etheridge, Jill Scott, India Arie, Queen Latifah, The Dixie Chicks, Gladys Knight, Stevie Nicks, Adele, and Joss Stone appeared. Women like Britney Spears, JLo, Kylie Minogue, Barbara Streisand, and Christina Aguilera were invited to Divas. For good measure, Stevie Wonder, and Elton John appeared. Spice Girls were notably missing. This show lasted six years.

That year, VH1, attempted showcase a "Men Strike Back" show. It featured Sting, Tom Jones, Enrique Iglesias and Backstreet Boys...back catalogue. Christina Aguilera was the highlight. This show was canceled. Today i think most music fans are female. Male rock vocalists are struggling more i have noticed. At Giants Stadium, in 2007, for Live Earth, I saw Sting who could barely get people to sing SOS for Message In A Bottle. At Beacon Theater, last Saturday, i saw Brandi Carlile get an audience to sing in three part harmony.

I never saw Sarah face to face again for nearly two decades, randomly bumping into her at a Toronto airport, no longer shy. She had kids, and writer's block.

Had i known this, i think i would have asked different questions of an Artist just starting out.

Note: Lilith Fair is relaunching again in 2010. Sarah originally launched it for women in music after being frustrated by concert promoters and radio stations who refused to promote a billing of two women in a row. It raised $10 million for charity. In 1997, it grossed $16 million, more than any other festival including Lollapalooza. I was at the last show in 1999 with my daughter who was one year old. She will be 12 at the next Lilith Fair. She is addicted to the iPod iTouch which only recently existed. Cassette tapes were still around at the last Lilith Fair.

* * *

Lately I've been privy to Joni Mitchell. She once sang in the Village in New York. As she leaves music, i wonder if there will be another one.

Inspired by Joni, Herbie Hancock won a Grammy Award for best album in 2008 (only the second jazz album to do so), called River: The Joni Letters.

Today Joni is a painter, photographer and ballet composer.

A friend of mine once managed her music royalties, she clearly is relevant today to many. Her open guitar tunings and soprano vocals from the Blue in 1971 still resonate. A winner of 16 Grammy Awards, spanning the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 00s, Joni is a folk legend and even recorded in the 1970s with jazz greats Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, and Charles Mingus. She wrote Woodstock, the anthem of an event she didn't even attend. Led Zeppelin wrote a song about their infatuation with her called Going to California. Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever." In England, Kate Bush is the only woman listed among Top 20 songwriters of all time by the London Telegraph. In North America, few women come near Joni.

Joni was also known for her protests of the music business. She never liked how the music industry unlike the movie industry treated Artists as one year businesses (not believing success would happen again) - love 'em and leave 'em. I hear many stories of her from where she hangs out. They motivate me to keep the music alive. To change things.

http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg

Clouds got in my way. She's looked at them from both sides now. I really don't know clouds at all..

Last August, i received a call to go meet Joni. It required a car and boat and i had already booked a meeting. I didn't go but i know what i would have said.

So many things have changed in music. Even writing about what makes music inspiring is becoming endangered. One thing still remains the same, music is a time capsule. Sounds represent a time. A soundtrack of life - of one year, one day, one moment.

I wanted to create a time capsule today about music which i should have done 20 years ago.

This week I went back to New York and returned to the last surviving music cafe in the Village, where people will give $35 in the tip jar on a good night. Here on 32 Jones Street, Woody Allen shot two films. On the street, Bob Dylan was photographed for his breakthrough album Freewheelin Dylan.

I chronicle inspirational stories on music because I do believe these stories are going extinct online or in print. Going dead on air.

This cafe hit hard times and was saved last August by a fundraiser to get back on its feet--a bailout by believers. 3000 acts try to book a night here each month. There's no cover, only donations for Artists. It's doing well again, nursed back to health. In 2007, the owner once told me of his dream of opening another music cafe in San Francisco. This year he tells me he's changed his mind and would like to open another one in the Upper West Side where Lincoln Center and Julliard have fans. This week a cellist who played with Yo Yo Ma was in the house. I tell the owner...rent is better between 9th and 10th Avenues, around 34th. Build it and they will come.

* * *

I have a strange knack for meeting someone famous or special. I don't know who gave it to me. On this Monday, Open Mike night in the Village, i see a singer who reminds me of Joni Mitchell. She invites me to see a full set the next night.

When i arrive Tuesday, i see a familiar face who asks me to sit next to him. I met him 2007. He once donated a telecaster to an Artist who mattered to us. He has been recording in mono. He has been studying Folkways music, now bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institute. Coincidentally, so is Sarah McLachlan. He likes a song sung tonight called The Fifth. It's about not being able to pay rent on that date. This man just lost his job, but found his soul.

http://www.myspace.com/val..erieeskridgemusic

Tonight, the singer songwriter, plays with a cajón and bass. It's hard to assemble bands these days. The aim is uncertain, the people are hard to assemble. The Beatles once said, "To the top." Today there is no top. MySpace is for the solo artist. I've heard of bands fight over $20.

There used to be only one band - one marriage - as a cardinal rule.

Today every musician needs a singer (or more than one like lottery tickets). Every singer needs instrumentalists (or more than one to perform better). This is the first time my friend, the Folkways fan, said he's seeing her with a band. Her music uses jazzy guitar chords, her lyrics folksy and rhythmic. She used to teach ESL students in the Netherlands using words that rhymed.

While in Brooklyn's Verb cafe, I decide i want to interview her. I want to capture a slice of an Artist in New York starting out today and see what happens in 20 years. She is 26 today. We meet at the Grey Dog cafe in the Village.

This is one of the first places she frequented arriving in New York City just over a year ago in July. She lives in Washington Heights (top of Manhattan) after a move from the Upper West Side...places she found on Craig's List. This week a musician told me the people who answer Craig's List first get the best rent deals - Artist affordable. She sees the moon over the Hudson every night. When you get caught between the moon and New York City ~ Arthur's Theme..

Like Sarah McLachlan, she trained in opera, receiving a scholarship at a music school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was raised by her father, and has one brother. They built houses for a living. She used some of that money to get to New York City.

She dealt poker in the card rooms of the City. She played a hand once and used her winnings to buy an iPhone. She's typed copy for composers. She's also been a clown named Petunia. Walked dogs. And babysat. I once wrote, "music is the hardest job in the world." Mandatory late nights, mandatory day jobs, mandatory poverty, mandatory luggage that sometimes doesnt fit in a car. The harp fits only in a 1970s station wagon of some kind. All to make someone's life beautiful, with music.

When she arrived in New York City, she Googled "Open Mikes" in New York City and this is how she found 32 Jones Street. Half the listings on that page were among venues that had closed. Somehow 32 Jones still survives - even with its leftover sound system and interior, weathered by many a sound.

Q: Fast Forward 20 years. What do you see yourself doing? What have you done?

She hopes to have a house in a pastoral setting with trees and water. She hopes to be fostering music (maybe having already won two Grammy Awards - if they are still around). She wants to be a positive influence on women. When she grew up in a male house, television and magazines were her only images of women. "They weren't real," she says. Today she says, she doesnt want to be known only as a "profile picture." Social networks have reduced people to a web page with a photo, a name, a comment, and a status report. She anticipates online imaging will be further accelerated. This has accelerated the falsification of what is real. Having said this, she references Cher, "I am victim and a perpetrator." Inspired by female musicians, she hopes to show what confidence, character and inner strength can do. To that end, she participated in Brooklyn's Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. A group of singer songwriters gathered together to collectively form a song and sing it.

As a teenager, she used Ani DiFranco songs as a platform.

Q: What was the first song you learned?
She learned to play piano at four years old. She learned guitar at 19, self taught in the Netherlands. Her heroine is Lynn Mayo, her choir teacher from grade school to high school. Her first song was Amazing Grace. Strangely, i had referenced her in blogs i wrote about my return to New York called Amazing Grace..

Q: What is your favourite venue?
Her father's living room.

Mine was an old swimming pool in Brooklyn where i saw Feist and Broken Social Scene in August, 2007. A songwriter for them named Ryan brought us backstage - to the life guard station.

Q: Where did you first perform in public?
De Gloppe (it means Guppie) in the Netherlands. She was 19. The drinking age is 18. Pot is legal.

The first public music show i ever saw was at Pine Knob - an outdoor hill in Michigan - where Peter Gabriel sang Red Rain, fighting mechanical cranes.

Q: What are some of firsts for you in New York City.
She ate a fresh fig and participated in professional jams - more than "four chords." Everyone notes the accelerated caliber of indie music in New York. She has sung at The Village's Caffe Vivaldi (her favourite) and Kenny's Castaways and Brooklyn's Bar 4. One challenge she notes, the quantity of high caliber indie music shows makes it hard to bring people to your own show. Likewise, if a friend's show is not stellar, she won't go. The quality available in New York is too plentiful.

Q: What's been the biggest surprise?
The fact that she's on this path. Support in life is a big surprise. There are people who believe. "It's very much a career where you just fling yourself out there and i've gotten unexpected assistance." She is a long way from Hectorville, Oklahoma. Population 3569. I wonder if i can find this place on the map. She is the first person i know from this state.

Q: She asks me a question. Do you have any advice?
A lot of singers don't know how to tell stories (they need to be funny to be good). Bruce Springsteen is good, Bob Dylan is bad. The flow of a show sometimes is improved with storytelling. It loosens the audience up. In fact, every minute, every second, can be improved. Remember that show that floored you. That minute, that second, an Artist had a good idea.

If you were Canadian, i would have said, move to New York. Find rent on Craig's list (<$600). You can stay six months without a visa. But you need to show you have money in the bank for six months in a bank statement. Hint: This can be done.

Q: If you were to ask yourself a question what would it be?

What's the plan?

Q: What did you expect in New York City?
She expected people to be more cut throat in the music scene, backstabbing. Instead she found a more nurturing scene. So far she's only had one confrontation with a woman who commented on her beauty. The woman said, "You better play your ass off...beauty is a car wreck away from ugly." I often wonder how beautiful a woman needs to be to be supported by a music scene. I notice, as a fan, many female vocalists are striking in their looks. There's that profile photo comment again. What is the fan's crush? The music, the story or the woman. I wondered as i watched fans fawn over Brandi Carlile one night later.

Q: Tomorrow she is seeing Brandi Carlile with Katie Werzig opening. How did you discover Brandi Carlile?

She was meeting a divorce lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who knew a director of New York's WFUV.

WFUV is a public radio station, known as a “leader in contemporary music radio.” Playlists include rock, singer-songwriters, blues, world, and, last December, it launched a new station with “a blend of established and emerging NYC-based indie rock, electronica, world, dance and other musical hybrids.” It supports the local scene. Thank you Rockefeller.

http://www.wfuv.org/

WFUV was playing Brandi Carlile. The radio station's director gave the lawyer Brandi's CD The Story. The lawyer then gave it to this singer-songwriter and said she must see this WFUV director and listen to this CD.

Coincidentally, i had also discovered Brandi Carlile, randomly.

I was possibly seeing Sheryl Crow in Los Angeles, in 2009, someone I hadn’t seen since Lilith Fair in 1999. I went on YouTube to catch up on her music.

On February 25, 2009, I found Brandi Carlile singing with Sheryl Crow on YouTube, while I was in Vancouver and shared this link with a friend. The vocals grabbed me so much I looked up her “story.” Her video called "The Story" was trippy. I swear I was seeing twins. And I was.

http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=Y72jRaoRvHs

With the twins, Brandi had played Seattle's Crocodile, Tractor Tavern, and Parago in the Bell Street area I had photographed once. During the Sasquatch! Music Festival...Dave Matthews noticed her in 2003. She was 22.

With only inspired home recordings, Columbia Records signed Brandi Carlile late in 2004 and she released her first masters in 2005. Rolling Stone called her top 10 to watch out for in 2005. Sheryl Crow, Indigo Girls, Tori Amos and Chris Issak were among artists who featured her as opening act.

She recorded her breakthrough The Story album in Warehouse Studios (Bryan Adams place on Powell Street, Vancouver) in 2007. I hadn’t been there since Bryan Adams stepmother, a harp student, showed us this music studio when it first opened. A beautiful experience for musicians, replete with antique microphones.The Tragically Hip were recording. It was the in the worst part of town…but because it was owned by Bryan – the government decided to hike up the property tax by several million dollars. Bryan wasn’t amused. He lives in London, England, now.

At 16, Brandi was a back up singer for an Elvis impersonator...i like the 1950s country feel to her stuff – kind of like Patsy Cline. I love Patsy.

* * *
On Friday, before seeing Brandi Carlile the next night, we went to the National Underground on the Lower East Side where Kate Sland, from Ohio, sang a version of Essence by Lucinda Williams, from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=6Kd3Y-anRlM

Kate was celebrating her 4th anniversary in New York.

I once saw Chrissy Hynde of the Pretenders in Detroit at Cobo Hall in 1986-87. Iggy Pop opened for her (people threw bottles and spit at him as part of the show). Iggy was my introduction to live punk. Chrissy was from Ohio. A rocker whose eyes couldn't be seen. I once asked Kate if she knew the Pretenders. She didn't.

After Kate, a guitarist whose website i can't find named Jeff Young (The Jeff Young Band) made his guitar weep, playing like John Mayall. I want to see him again.

* * *
What would be your wishlist of opportunities?
Record deal (her CD is still in progress). TV or film licensing deal. International tour.
She notes before she answers, she has to hear it before she answers.

If you were to ask me a question, what would it be?
Are you getting back into music?

Answer: I was inspired by the music cafe at 32 Jones to create an online tip jar. I was once involved in a download store in partnership with Universal Music and found it frustrating that you could only sell a song for an Artist and for only 99 cents. Radiohead's pay what you want online for In Rainbows gave me a lightbulb. I think people Artists inspire are willing to prepay for Art yet to be released. Pay more than 99 cents and become honored as an Artist patron - possibly with first dibs on concert tickets. This is the old model of Arts Patronage - or Obama model of public financing. A member of the public can actually commission Art online.

The online tip jar is called Givernation (coming soon), still under construction in Halifax.

The next night Katie Werzig at Beacon Theater offered a download. You could pay what you want or enter 5 email address of fans you recommend, to get it. http://www.katiewerzig.com.

In 20 years, some things here might not matter.