(Just Like) Starting Over: Sandé Lollis Heads East

For Sandé Lollis, moving to Memphis isn’t exactly starting over. She’s performed there for years. She knows musicians there. She has scheduled gigs months in advance and has already begun establishing relationships in the Memphis music community with previous visits.

But after spending the last 12 years building a musical life in San Diego, moving to Tennessee is a huge life and music change.

“I’ve spent time building a career here,” Lollis says. “But out there it’s not ground zero, but close to it.” Perhaps it’s not a full reboot but a move, in more ways than one.

And she’s doing it with the knowledge that she’s reinvented herself before.

Lollis started making music when she was young, including a stint with the band Enter the Blue Sky. Then she and her husband decided to have a child.

“Having a baby changed me,” she says. “It’s not the kind of change you deny.” With the major life changes, music went away for a while.

Lollis didn’t want her young daughter growing up around the drinking and drug culture she associated with the music life she’d known. What might have been a temporary break turned into something much longer. She stayed away from music for 22 years.

Once her daughter was grown, Lollis found her way back to music—or music found its way back to her. Her sound rides mostly in an Americana, country, and roots lane, with strong singer-songwriter vibes and an emphasis on storytelling rather than genre purity.

What followed her post-motherhood comeback was not simply a return to her old music life. It was the beginning of a new phase that eventually led to solo work, collaborations, touring, songwriting, writing for the San Diego Troubadour and a growing reputation in the local music community.

Now she’s about to see how that fits in elsewhere. Lollis and her husband are moving to Oakland, Tennessee, about an hour from downtown Memphis. The move was prompted by inheriting her mother’s house. It’s not exactly a starter home. The property sits on 11 acres, most of it pasture, with a barn, a pond, and about three acres of lawn.

There is a riding mower. There will be plenty of mowing. “In the summer the lawn takes two or three hours to mow and two or three times a week,” Lollis says.

There is also a well, which means no water bill, and the property taxes for the year are only about $1,500, a staggeringly low number for California taxpayers. Lollis will be able to continue her current online job from Tennessee.

But the biggest attraction may be the space itself.

Their house sits at the end of a road surrounded by fields, meadows, and trees. There is no traffic. There are deer, turtles, foxes, coyotes, and armadillos. In the fall, the landscape changes color. Lollis is particularly looking forward to seeing enormous flocks of red-winged blackbirds rising from the cotton fields.

“We walk every morning,” she says. “Walking clears my head and songs fly at me. I just have to be open to receiving them.”

A Different Kind of Music Scene

Lollis has already spent enough time playing in Memphis to know that she’s not arriving as a complete stranger. But she also knows that San Diego and Memphis have different musical personalities. What attracts her to Memphis is the diversity.

“I go to open mics here and open mics there,” she says. “There is more diversity in ages, ethnicity, styles, genres. Everybody seems to be so earnest about what they do. Even though I’ve performed a lot out there over the years, few people really know me. So, I’ll have the chance to be whoever I decide to be on stage.”

“Ultimately, I am who I am, and that will shine through in all my odd or quirky ways,” she says. “I’ll carry my San Diego sensibilities with me, too.” She already has some ideas about what needs to come first in Memphis for Sandé 2.0—or, more accurately, 4.0.

Her first musical task will be finding a studio and some session players. She’d like to join a band again. She wants to improve her guitar playing and is considering lessons. She inherited the harmonicas of a late musician she played with and would love to learn to play them.

More than anything, though, she wants to find ways to contribute musically that aren’t just about herself.

“Right now, people can jam with me, but I don’t have the skills to offer that in return,” she says. “I feel like I’m missing out on that kind of giving, that kind of connection.”

Her music already has plenty of folk and country in it, but she’s not coming to Memphis as a country traditionalist looking for a Tennessee zip code.

Lollis is also considering starting a writers round and possibly a house concert series. She’s been offered a co-host position on a weekly radio show with her friend Donna Padgett Bowers on Radio Memphis. She’s also intrigued by WEVL, the listener-supported Memphis station known for its eclectic programming.

The San Diego Goodbye

Before she does, though, Lollis has one more San Diego show.

On September 4, she’ll hold a farewell concert from 6 to 8 p.m. at United Methodist Church in Normal Heights. Ted Stern will play pedal steel, along with musicians from her current album and a collection of collaborators from her past, including bandmates from Enter the Blue Sky.

The show is not just a farewell concert. “It’s going to be a celebration of different San Diego musical stages,” Lollis says.

When she was finding her way back into music, she was nervous about approaching musicians she admired. She remembers meeting Stern at a bar and being scared to ask him to play with her. She asked anyway and he was truly welcoming.

Lollis says she’s learned a life lesson in music: If you want something, sometimes you have to go get it.
She contacted Liz Abbott because she wanted to pick her brain about the music industry. The conversation became a friendship. She did the same thing with Bart Mendoza. Over the years, those individual acts of reaching out became a network.

She has also spent the last few years curating summer concerts at San Carlos Community Garden, including an artists-in-the-round series.

“It’s nice to fit,” she says. “So, fitting in like that opens up the door to fitting in with other people.”

Lollis expects to continue returning to San Diego, partly because her mother-in-law lives here and partly because she hopes to arrange gigs when she’s back. She wants to continue writing for the Troubadour, too.

And she has no intention of losing the friendships she’s built. Cathryn Beeks and Bonnie Nicholls, both singer-songwriters with whom Lollis has become particularly close, are already talking about a possible spring tour next year.

“I am definitely going to stay connected,” Lollis says. “They are too important to me and have been with me through so much change and growth. I love them to bits.”

The Next Version
There are some things about San Diego that Lollis knows she’ll miss. Really good Mexican food, for one. She’s not convinced Memphis has quite figured that one out yet.

“They still use a cheese sauce for quesadillas, and they love it!” she says. “That kills me, but I just shut my mouth about it. You know, it’s their culture and I’m new to it.”

She’ll miss the mountains and desert, too. San Diego’s geography has always made a spontaneous road trip easy. In Tennessee, the nearest desert is about 14 hours away and the nearest mountains about three. She says she’ll miss seeing the Milky Way.

But there are zero regrets about a no-brainer of a lifestyle move like this.

One thing seems to be consistent in music, no matter what the time zone is. Lollis says she has occasionally experienced ageism in the music industry. But she’s also discovered that getting older can be an advantage.

“I’ve been more than a surprise to many people,” she says. “That’s a benefit to being older.”

Yes, the September 4 show will be a chance to celebrate everything San Diego has given her: the bands, the collaborations, the friendships, the stages, the songs and the people who helped her find her way back.

Then comes October 1. Lollis and her husband will load up and leave.

There will be a big house, 11 acres, a new music scene, new musicians, and plenty of things she doesn’t know yet.

“I don’t think it’s about completely reinventing myself,” she says. “It’s more about having the freedom to see what this next version of me looks like.”