Truckstop Girl

photograph by Jana Birchum

Road metaphors are to singer-songwriters what pancakes and eggs are to truckstops: stock tools of the trade, or staple menu items, if you will, that are comfortably and universally enjoyed by travelers of all sorts. So well-employed is the road metaphor that it borders on cliché. How many songs about Roads to Nowhere, Roads to Somewhere, or Roads That Lie Between will be warbled before the idea is exhausted of its potential? As long as there are singer-songwriters searching, wandering, exploring... hell, there's always someone looking for good road food, right?

Ana Egge took Route 180 out of Silver City, New Mexico and headed to Austin, Texas on I-10. In 1994, local bass queen-songwriter Sarah Brown coaxed her friend Egge to town with the idea of recording a demo for the then-17-year-old. What resulted was a remarkable debut cassette project through which friendships were forged with Asleep at the Wheel's Dave Sanger and dobro-man Steve James (whose luscious "Talco Girl" Egge covers). The cassette accompanied Egge at her live shows and sold like hotcakes -- enough to get her to Europe for a tour and to facilitate her move from New Mexico to Austin. There was even enough money to begin a CD project, Egge's remarkable debut, River Under the Road.

Yet Egge's migration east was no escape, no starry-eyed pursuit of a teenager's dream. Her love for home and family shines through every note she sings and plays. The recurring themes of roads back home, leaving home, being left, coming home to see that things have changed, have accompanied her every step of the way.

Home for the young songwriter was both New Mexico and North Dakota, as her family traveled back and forth between the two places until she was 12. Her first recollections are of North Dakota. "My great-grandfather homesteaded the land and my grandparents did, too," says Egge, "but my parents were total hippies from California. They were like, `Let's move back [to North Dakota] and farm...' My dad loves farming."

Travel a little further north and you'll stumble across Egge's actual birthplace: Canada. Born just across the U.S. border in Estevan, Saskatchewan, she grew up in a teeny burg in the northwest tip of North Dakota called Ambrose. "My parents were hippies in an old-fashioned way," she reiterates. "They just wanted to be homesteaders. They had a '69 Dodge van that they painted John Deere green, which it still is; it's been painted three times with a roller by my father -- with big ol' Grateful Dead stickers on the side by the doors. I mean that's pretty damn hippie. We were the hippies."

Like most hippies (even hippies in the Eighties), the Egges spent time living in a commune in New Mexico. "Then we went back to North Dakota... then back to New Mexico! There, my parents rented an adobe house for $100 a month. Then we went back again to North Dakota, then finally we moved all of our stuff to New Mexico." After much back-and-forthing, her parents finally settled on Silver City where they continue today, running a private school. Their minstrel daughter however, had other plans.

photograph by Jana Birchum

In her scant 20 years, Egge has picked up a lot along the way. For a songwriter who attests to write from what she knows, Egge seems a bit young to have been through enough life to generate the rich depth expressed in her songs. This is deceptive, though, for in these mere 20 years, not only has Egge packed in a lot of livin', she's also been very careful to savor and treasure the ride. Good examples of this are delivered by her warm, Bonnie Raitt-like blanket of a voice in just about every one of her songs. Ask her the story behind one sweet, insightful line, and she'll paint an entire character portrait of someone very dear to her -- or tell a story of her childhood, which seems uncomplicated, yet is laced with intricate memories that trigger other ones.

Take, for example, the song "Fairest of Them All." The story seems quite innocent: When Egge was 6, and her family was headed south to New Mexico, her sister Francie celebrated birthday number 4 on the road. From the van window, she saw a huge billboard for Circus Circus in Las Vegas. She begged and begged her parents to stop. They obliged. Now the lyric says, "Up in Vegas the neon screams loud as the traffic and her nylon seams/She ran away to the Circus-Circus she wears high heels like in her dreams." Even the driving ascendings and churning guitar riffs convey this frenetic Gimme-My-15-Minutes-of-Fame theme. Surely there's a hell of a lot more to the story relating the tale of a sister with stars in her eyes, but the initial cue was a slice of memory cut from her rich childhood.

Ask Egge about "Souls Out Sailing," "Bless Me Mother," "Mind Over Matter," or "Dakota" -- all from River Under the Road -- and similar stories emerge. Complex emotions and intricate feelings are illustrated in songs inspired by simple recollections. Her inspiration is in the nuance, the details of this life. She takes tried-and-true ideas, applies them to stories uniquely her own, and then spins them back out in ways that make them universal. It doesn't really matter what "Bless Me Mother" is about when a line like, "It's not your face, it's your voice I miss" rings true in so many different ways. Her ability to grab hold of the indefinable, fill in the spaces, and push beyond herself, makes her lyrics resonate. Egge could grab the ripples of heat rising off of scorched pavement and turn it into a song, and it's this ability to see beyond what's there that makes her a great songwriter.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore is introducing the last song of his first set at the Cactus and remembers to thank his opener: "How 'bout that Ana Egge?" The crowd roars approval as he grins like a proud papa. Gilmore co-wrote the title cut from Egge's River Under the Road and has just invited the engaging singer to join his East and West Coast tours this summer. Despite becoming accustomed to working with top notch musicians (Sarah Brown, Paul Glasse, Dave Sanger, Steve James, Danny Barnes, to name but a few), Egge is still giggly and giddy when her heroes want to work with her. "I feel so lucky to be working with these amazing musicians who also happen to be great people," Egge gushes. The significance of Gilmore's invitation is not lost on the up-and-comer: "It's so great -- it can't be real, but it is!"

It's difficult to imagine Egge ever getting cocky about her charmed career. The love and support she receives from her partner (and cover artist) Amy Pancake, loved ones, and musical compatriots has brought her this far. Music truly is her life. Locally, she performs in the award-winning Songwriters Trio along with Kim Miller and Linda Lozano. Egge's day job is cutting paua abalone shell and pearl inlay for guitars with luthier Tom Ellis, work for which she's suitably trained, as she built her own guitar with noted luthier Don Musser back in New Mexico. The kid appreciates learning at the feet of masters and feels that working and writing with other people "opens doors and makes things happen in different ways and different styles."

In so many ways, Egge is a rare talent. Her music is not just about her; it's about honoring what has come before her. She brims and beams as she considers the future. Her latest implosion of songwriting has taken the edge off of that fairly common artist malaise: sophomore slump.

"I already know what covers I'm going to start doing..." she bubbles. "`Caleb Meyer' by Gillian Welch," one of Egge's influences, whom she recently met at Doc Watson's Merle Fest in North Carolina, "`Edelweiss,'" which gets a rise out of this writer with a twisted penchant for anything Sound of Music, and, "This song by Lee Barber [a local boy] called `Tinfoil Satellite.'"

She begins to sing the first few lines, "Keep your eyes on the road boys, your hands on the wheel/Drive a little bit slower, remember how it feels..." her voice trails off as she looks up with a shy but knowing crooked smile.

"It's about leaving your hometown."