I spent the whole autumn driving all over Virginia looking at horses — I think I rode 22. And then my trainer had been up in Canada and he mentioned, “I saw a horse up there you might want to have a look at.” And I thought “Oy, Canada?” Y’know, by this time it was January and it was really cold.
I was working six days a week, rehearsing all day and singing at night. Pretty much the hardest I have worked in my career was around that time. But I had this three-day weekend, which I never usually had, and I thought, “What the hell! I’m going to fly up to Canada and look at this horse and fly back down.”
So I’m like, “Where is Uxbridge?” I went to Airbnb and found Barb’s place. It was the closest bed and breakfast to the stable. I flew to Toronto and rented a big SUV which was all they had and I was having the worst time trying to figure out how to drive that thing. It was probably about 10 degrees which for me is really cold. I had seen a million horses already and I’m driving to Uxbridge thinking, “This is the most insane thing.”
I was constantly afraid I was going to lose my GPS signal and I was starting to get a little uncomfortable. When I arrived, I was probably very nervous. Barb was professional and she showed me my room. Out the back window, it looked like the prairie. I mean, it looked so wide open, barren and cold. I thought, “I am out of my mind.” And that was before anything bad happened.
So I went and looked at this horse. He was crazy gorgeous and big and really intimidating. I remember when they brought him out, I thought, “He’s a lot of horse!” But I was kind of excited. I rode him and jumped him around. We were inside and he was a little spooky, but he jumped really well. I thought: “He’s too much for me, he’s beyond my level.” So I had a lot of nerves about that.
I went back to Barb’s and we started to talk about it a little bit and I thought it out. And I remember she had this really big dog, Mo, and I’m afraid of dogs. But Mo turned out to be a really nice guy and I didn’t have to worry that he was going to kill me, y’know, walking around the house. But I had a lot of tension in my body already.
Then, I was following the news and I heard that all flights back to New York were cancelled. This incredible snowstorm was expected and the mayor decided to shut the town down, which never happens. A few nights later, I was supposed to sing some small solos in the Tales of Hoffman, one of the operas that we were doing. These solos are very few and far between and you don’t not show up because you’ll probably never get another one. And I wasn’t on such great terms with my boss at that time.
So I was really freaking out that I wasn’t going to get back. And I’m pretty obvious about those kinds of things. When I’m having a hard time, I let the world know. Barb saw me on the phone trying to get flights and Amtrack tickets. I was just flipping. She just sort of dropped the professional guise. I don’t drink alcohol so she couldn’t get me drunk to make me relax, but I remember she gave me something to drink. And she would freeze grapes because they made, like, elegant ice. So she dropped some frozen grapes into my drink and she said, “I’m going to make some calls.”
She returned and said, “Since you’re stuck here, why don’t we go and look at some horses?” So we went back to ride the one I’d looked at again. Normally I have a trainer advising me on these things and I needed some guidance. Then she set me up to meet this hot young trainer. He’s like a movie star living out there in the middle of Uxbridge or Port Perry. He was building a beautiful stable and he brought out this spectacular horse that hadn’t been ridden for two years. That was really fun.
I wasn’t a client, y’know? I wasn’t going to bring him any money. But Barb arranged for this guy, who had a history with her, to come and look at this horse with me. And he gave me very good advice. He told me, “If it’s just you, you shouldn’t buy this horse. But if you have a trainer at home to work with you then you can probably manage it.” I did have a trainer, so I decided to make an offer and I bought the horse. And he was right: He did turn out to be off-the-wall crazy for the first year I had him.
While I was there, Barb told me a story about getting her first pony and about growing up on the Love Ranch. She said she wanted a pony or a horse and her father said, “Ok we will go and look at a pony.” I don’t know how far away it was, maybe 10 miles from the Love Ranch, and I don’t know how old she was, but y’know, not that old. And he told her, “Well if you can ride it home, you can keep it.” And that’s what she did.
So I wound up with this horse, but I still couldn’t get home. Barb said, “You can stay here and I’m not charging you.” So I stayed the extra days and we had a really nice time. And I remember thinking, “Wow, this woman is giving me everything. She’s calming me down, she’s giving me this place to stay, she’s providing people so I’m not alone.” It turned into a big social thing. And I’m not the most generous person on earth, but I thought, “If I can do anything for this lady, I’ll do it.”
So I went back to New York and everything was fine. I missed my solos, I didn’t get into trouble, and the snowstorm didn’t even hit the city. Barb and I stayed in touch and I had said, “Any time you want to come to New York, my place is your place.” So she was like “Alright!” and that following spring she made plans to come.
She arrived when I was rehearsing all day, so I couldn’t meet her. I had made arrangements for my doormen to give her the key. But somehow she showed up with the wrong address — at a building over on West 72nd Street, at least four big blocks from my place. And this is a very built-up area with a million buildings and most of them have doormen. And they don’t mess with you: You either have business there or you don’t.
I didn’t hear anything from her, but I got a text from my doorman saying this woman had shown up at the wrong building. He had heard from the doorman over on West 72nd Street and she had at least three of them trying to figure out where I lived. I don’t know how they did it, but my doorman texted saying, “She is rolling her luggage over now.” And that included a paper mache horse she had made to give me as a gift: She had been marching around the city hauling this huge horse sculpture with her.
It turns out that one of the doormen on West 72nd Street walked her over to my building. So by the time I got home she was already installed in my apartment, as we planned. But the idea that she’d had the wrong address and these city doormen were running around figuring out where she needed to go is pretty amazing.
I took her to the West Village. I think it’s a nice place to show people because it’s really old. It’s where all the writers and artists lived and it’s my favourite part of the city. The West Village is right next to Meatpacking. Meatpacking used to be really rough, I mean it was one meatpacking plant after the next and the carcasses would be outside hanging to be processed. It was on the Hudson where these big old trailer trucks used to park and all the prostitutes solicited the drivers.
I actually lived there in the nineties when it was still used for meatpacking. But there were also a lot of underground clubs and it was a very gay, interesting and eclectic neighbourhood. But now it’s all high-end and incredibly expensive. I don’t know how it happened but Meatpacking is now a brand and it has nothing to do with meatpacking.
So Barb and I were walking all over the West Village where she bought this really snazzy hat — she loved hats — from this swell, upscale little place. We had a really nice lunch at the Empire Diner and we wound up walking through Meatpacking. It’s all glamorous, fashionista places, but there was one friggin’ hold-out meatpacking plant that’s gone now. And, of course, Barb marches right into the yard where one guy — I guess one of the butchers — is out there smoking a cigarette. You could tell he wasn’t a talker, but she got into this tremendous conversation with him about the history of Meatpacking and how the neighbourhood has changed. I mean, she should have been a journalist. It was fascinating for me because I knew that neighbourhood, y’know? I lived there but I had never talked to any of the meatpackers or any of those people. Ever.
While she was staying with me, Barb really wanted to see some art so we went to the Frick Museum, we checked out the new Whitney which was not open yet and we went to the Guggenheim. We got back to my apartment and I was dead on my feet. I sat down in my chair and I said, “I need to take a nap!” and she was like, “That’s fine. But I’m going to the Met.” She had already been to the Metropolitan, however, she wanted to go back because there was so much to look at. You know she probably walked over there, across the park and up like seven blocks. Then she marched around the Met Museum while I slept. She had this amazing energy.
I think about Barb a lot these days and about what she would tell me. And who knows what she would really say, but she’s kind of becoming an oracle that basically says, “Listen: Life is short. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t even sweat the medium stuff. It’s not a permanent condition that you’re in.”
I’m not somebody who says “Yes” to a lot of things. I used to be too busy with my job, but I have been saying a lot of “Yes” lately and I think she would like that. Somebody I know asked me to sing in her front lawn in a couple of weeks. She is literally wheeling a piano onto the natural amphitheatre of her farm. And that isn’t something I would normally do, but I was like “Absolutely. Sure!” And I’m going to talk in a nursing home about working at the Met and I’ll play the guitar for them a little. And that’s, y’know, because somebody said: “Do you want to do this?” And for now, I’m a Yes Man. For now, I say, “Yes”.
As told to Alex Laws.