The following is an excerpt from Bari’s upcoming book Confessions of an Indiegirl. Confessions tells the story of Lucy Bonner, a talented, well meaning, neurotic rock star in training and her 5,000 step program towards success. While duking it out in the downtown music scene of New York City, Lucy witnesses her young protégé, Vanessa Anderson achieve enormous success. Determined to stick to her own path of upward mobility Lucy starts to wonder “what is success” and how do we know when we are successful? Always looking for love, and always in the wrong places, Lucy finally realizes that her soul mate might very well be within herself.

THE BIG APPLE

I had made it to my third month of touring.

Talk about a niche. While cities like New York, Atlanta and Chicago were considered major markets, smaller cities like Charleston were considered secondary markets. I, on the other hand, was playing towns so small, that they were probably considered the ninth markets. These were places so off the beaten path that they were starved for entertainment. Luckily, that often meant energetic and enthusiastic crowds.
All I had to do was role into a tiny town like Parsons, Kansas and the newspapers would say "Lucy Bonner all the way from New York City" and people came out in droves. You'd think John Denver was coming to town or something.

All this was well and good, but I realized the road was LONELY. I spent so much time by myself. Every day it was me, and me again, driving, showering, sleeping, eating. I was starting to split myself off into two people. Sometimes we got along, sometimes we didn't. Sometimes I got so pissed off at me that I announced we were off speaking terms, and then I would ignore myself.

And I felt sad. Would I ever find love? How can someone catch you if you're always moving?

I took out a pad and paper over a grand slam breakfast at Denny's. I was somewhere in farm country in Missouri.

Baby come take my hand
Let's run to the edge of the sand
See the moon stretch far out to sea
Well I want to know how far you can dream

I was performing later that afternoon at a state fair on a camp ground on the outskirts of a town known for producing eggs. If that weren't bad enough, someone had the stupid idea to hold the event outside in November, and it was freezing.

They set up a huge stage. The atmosphere was a complete carnival, with cotton candy and rib vendors hawking their wares. The area I was playing in probably held about 1,000 seats. Unfortunately there weren't 1,000 people at my show. Oh No. There was more like 10. 10 people scattered throughout 100 rows of bleachers.

It was pretty dismal.

The "celebrity" in attendance, Marty from Marty's Carpet Cleaners was set to introduce me.

"Hey now. How you all doing out there?"

Blank stares.

"Great! Well, we got a great girl here to entertain you. All the way from NYC. Ladies, Gentleman and slaughtered cows, let's give it up for LUCY BOPPER!"

I walked hesitantly up to the microphone. "Um, hi. My name is Lucy Bonner, actually, not Lucy Bopper. But it's good to be here anyway," I said, unconvinced.

Blank stares.

I started to play. It was difficult. The sound on stage was awful. It sounded like I was singing underwater. I kept motioning to the sound guy to get his attention, but he was reading a magazine. I was also wrapped up in a Parka that went up to my cheeks and made it very constricting to move around. It felt like I was singing in a neck brace.

Is this ever going to get better? I thought to myself, while singing the first song on my new record.

I was miserable. And I was freezing, under appreciated, and playing to about 10 people with terrible sound. Now, I noticed, that there was also unfortunately a dancing tomato bouncing around the aisles trying to get people "in the mood". I deeply resented this tomato.

What was this tomato doing at my gig?

I started to obsess about it, and found it very distracting.

I knew for certain that no tomatoes would dare dance at one of Vanessa's gigs. How I hated her at the moment. She would have an entire posse that would have chased the tomato away.

Where was my posse? I wanted a posse. I didn't even have a cup holder.

The tomato came downstage and started dancing right in from of me. Was he really enjoying the music, or was he just mocking me? I couldn't tell. How could I know what a dancing tomato was really thinking?

I started calling attention to it, picking on it and cracking jokes. I wondered aloud where his relatives were. "Why, where's the dancing carrot? I asked. "Is he next?" Has anyone seen the onion or did you eat it Mr. Tomato? DID YOU EAT IT?!?"

I played my entire set to the tomato, starting intensely into his stem. I launched into a risqué Lucinda Williams song.

Baby, sweet baby, whisper my name
Shoot your love, into my veins
Baby, sweet baby, kiss me hard
Make me wonder, who's in charge.

"Oh gee, Mr. tomato. that song didn't make you blush did it? Why, you're beet red!"

No one thought it was funny. How could no one think that was funny? Tough crowd.

Afterwards, the promoter came up to me, apologizing for the attendance. "I still think you did a good job Lucy despite the climate. Sorry it was so cold and that we didn't have more people here. These things are just so hit or miss."

It was a total miss.

Handing me my check the promoter had one final thought. "And, actually um, that was an apple."