Linda Chorney has released an audiobook version of her 2022 book, “It Ain’t Over Till the Indie Sings.”
One of the musicians who performed on Linda Chorney’s 2011 double album Emotional Jukebox was singer Lisa Fischer, who was featured in the Oscar-winning 2013 documentary “20 Feet From Stardom.” After mentioning this in the new audiobook version of her 2022 book “It Ain’t Over Till the Indie Sings,” Chorney adds, in her usual wisecracking way, “I look at myself as 20,000 miles from stardom, walking barefoot through the snow.”
Chorney is not the kind of musician who is often found writing a book, or recording an audiobook. She has never recorded for a major label, or gotten anywhere near the top of the Billboard charts. She has played big venues, but only as an opening act, or as one of many performers at a benefit concert. She has performed mostly in bars and nightclubs, and self-financed her albums.
But she has managed to support herself, as a musician, for decades — which is quite an accomplishment, in and of itself. She has traveled the world. She has written books and made movies, in addition to recording her albums.
And she has been nominated for two Grammy Awards — an unheard-of accomplishment for an artist who has put out her albums on her own.
The audiobook format really suits her. She is a natural storyteller, and over nearly 17 hours, she talks about the ups and downs of her life in a casually conversational way, ranging from heart-to-heart sharing to goofy humor. She gives the impression of talking about whatever happens to be on her mind, at that moment; her digressions have digressions.
At one point, she details many of the ways that she — as an artist struggling to make ends meet — has learned to save money. “I’m the one in the grocery store checking out how many beans I get per ounce in the generic versus the name brands, and buys the tissues in the rectangular box versus the square box, because you get twice as many for the same price,” she says.
LINDA CHORNEY
She often interrupts the talking to play recordings of her own music, or songs by other indie artists she likes. This really helps deepen the listener’s understanding of what she is all about.
In the audiobook’s many lighter moments, she utilizes a broad range of comedic voices that would obviously not be available to her in print. And she also frequently talks to a mocking Voice in My Head — as in this exchange, which comes after she praises herself for calling herself the “weakest link” among the impressively credentialed musicians who performed on Emotional Jukebox:
Voice in My Head: Way to act modest, Linda.
Chorney: Why, thank you, Voice in My Head. Ya think they bought it?
Voice in My Head: No, you cocky shit.
Chorney: Yeah, but self-deprecating humor is supposed to display humility. No?
Voice in My Head: No.
This nearly 17-hour audiobook is an epic tale: You could call it the “Moby Dick” of indie-musician memoirs. It covers, basically, Chorney’s entire life, from her childhood in the Boston area to her years playing nightclubs on the Jersey Shore and ski lodges in Colorado; the failed relationships that preceded her successful marriage; the time Bruce Springsteen “opened” for her (he performed directly before her at a Light of Day concert); the time she sang The National Anthem at Fenway Park; the time she performed for nudists; her ventures into filmmaking; and more. She tells of connecting with some listeners, and enraging others; of encounters with iconic musicians such as Paul McCartney and Gregg Allman; of people in the music industry who have generously, selflessly supported her, and others who have turned into huge pains in the ass.
The cover of Linda Chorney’s 2011 double album, “Emotional Jukebox.”
“It Ain’t Over Till the Indie Sings” could have been subtitled “The Life and Times of Linda Chorney,” as it touches on monumental events such as the 9/11 attacks (Chorney wrote a song about it that played a part in the start of her relationship with her husband); Hurricane Sandy (Chorney’s Sea Bright home was flooded and she performed at a concert celebrating the town’s recovery); the Boston Marathon bombing (she wrote a song paying tribute to 8-year-old victim Martin Richard and made a tribute video, with proceeds helping to fund a statue in his honor); and the indignities of the Trump Era.
To continue with the “Moby Dick” analogy, her Great White Whale is a Grammy. She still doesn’t have one, but was nominated in the Americana Album category in 2012, for Emotional Jukebox, and in the American Roots Song category, in 2022, for “Bored” (listen below). She landed the nominations simply by making Grammy voters aware of her music, but the 2012 nomination generated a lot of backlash within the Americana community, as people unfairly accused her of “gaming the system.”
The 2022 nomination was, in some ways, more dramatic, and makes for the most intense part of the audiobook. Still feeling stung by the 2012 backlash (which led to a change in Grammy voting procedure), Chorney desperately wanted another nomination, as a form of vindication. She got it, but with a lot of drama attached. At first, she was not part of the official list of nominees. But then a different list of nominees appeared in certain media outlets, and she was on it. It turned out that she was on the initial list, but that her name was taken off, for reasons that remain mysterious.
Eventually, her nomination was officially reinstated — which proved, among other things, that the 2012 nomination wasn’t a fluke.
LINDA CHORNEY
The audiobook basically ends with the 2022 Grammy ceremony, at which Jon Batiste won in the American Roots Song category. Chorney quotes from his speech, in which he said, in part, that “The creative arts are subjective, and they reach people at a point in their lives when they need it most. It’s like a song or an album is made, and it almost has a radar to find the person when they need it the most.”
She adds that his words “hit the bull’s-eye in my heart” and “sum up my career, my journey as an artist, my life. I hope my story finds its way to people who need it the most. I know I needed to write it. And I know I needed to write my songs. And how they magically found their way to the ears that needed them most is overwhelmingly emotional for me. My heart is full because of all of these precious people who have changed my life for the better.” She then acknowledges many of the people who had played a significant part in her career, or been a part of her life.
She had, earlier in the book, fantasized about what her 2012 Grammy acceptance speech would have been, if she had won. She imagined dedicating the award to “the 99 percent of us sitting in a corner of a bar, wondering if anybody’s listening. Just don’t stop believing in yourself.”
She also imagined concluding by saying (like the inveterate indie artist she is): “I’ll be selling my CDs and T-shirts in the back of the room after the show. What do you guys drop, like, a grand, to go to the Grammys? What’s another 20 bucks for my CD? Such a deal! Thank you!”
For more on Chorney, and her audiobook, visit lindachorney.com.
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