Earlier this year, my homemade Roterfaden cover gave out (to be clear, my amateur stitchwork has lasted just fine, but the spring in the wallet clip has sprung its last). This has resulted in the music notebook getting a bit banged up. 

Today, in the grocery store, I reached into my bag for my list. I spotted a bit of paper with my handwriting, and I pulled. And then gazed in dismay at the scrap of lyrics I was holding. (Did I succeed in finding the list while I was in the store? No. Did I remember to buy coriander? Also no.)

Most of the pages that have come free represent either completed songs ("Wake," "Who You Fooling," "The Comeback Kid") or pieces I have tried and found wanting ("Hush Hush No No"), so I don't think I have fatally damaged any work in progress. I'm cranky all over again that Moleskine discontinued its hardcover staff-paper pocket notebooks. And part of me is just sitting back and marveling at this. Of course, of course, in a year when it sometimes seemed I was tearing my own life to pieces, I would destroy my music notebook. 

The thing is, though, that this image is perversely hopeful. The notebook looks like this because I refuse to stop carrying it. Music has been one of the few bright spots this year. I haven't given up on it, and it hasn't given up on me.

Ten years ago today, I convinced Charlie Crane, Thomas Zeitner, Zach Sigelko, and Sarah Scanlon to help me play some songs I'd written at a taping of Chicago Acoustic Underground. During that session, someone referred to the group as Liz and the Baguettes, everyone laughed, and that was that.

At the time, Charlie, Thomas, Zach, and I had already been playing together for a while as the Loudness War, itself in its second version (Loudness War Starship, I suppose). And Thomas, Zach, Sarah, and I were all in the Strange Tree production of The Dead Prince, a folk musical. When I wanted to expand my own sound beyond what I could do alone, it was natural to turn to the people with whom I was already making music.

The CAU session was not the first time we'd played music of mine—"Grace" had been in at least one Loudness War set earlier that year—but it was the first time we kind of recognized the project as something new. A few weeks later I played what was supposed to be a solo set at LiveWire, and the band joined me for most of it. By early 2014, we were recording an album at the Workshop Jones.

Since then the lineup has shifted a bit, ebbed and flowed as lives have changed. Liesl Downey joined us in the recording sessions for Everything I Think I Know Is Wrong. Andy Miles subbed in on drums once or twice. David Chervony played bass when Thomas went off to live in Hawaii. Julie Jurgens started singing harmony during the sessions for Highway Gothic. Every person has made it better.

Mostly this all feels like incredible luck. ​A lot of bands don't get to year ten. A lot of bands didn't survive COVID. A lot of songwriters burn out. A lot of bandmates can't stand each other. (It's possible that we have avoided quite a few problems by the simple expedient of never making enough money to afford cocaine.)

If you've listened, watched, clicked, clapped, danced, worn a T-shirt, booked us, shared a lineup, worked sound, stamped hands at the door: you're a part of this too. And I am so, so grateful. Thank you, friends.