Who knew my Rockstar weekend would land me in
San Francisco – to rest? It was almost the perfect weekend in terms of music, really. A mellow launch on Thursday at the
Showbox with
Sound Tribe Sector 9, culminated to climax with
Sasha at the
Element on Friday, and a gracious descent with
Brandi Carlile at
Neumos on Saturday. The three best music venues in
Seattle, all in one weekend. A last-minute training session for work (yes, I have a day job) put me on a plane to SF at
9am Sunday morning. Exactly on time. You see,
San Francisco is where Jen Woolfe was born. The first Rockstar weekend began at the bay, when the crew came down to SF to celebrate
Roseann’s 25
th birthday on March 31, 5 years ago.
We hit all the biggies that weekend –
Ruby Skye,
1015 Folsom. We drove by the
End Up and, upon seeing the huge line, decided to ride the morning out at the Pier instead, gazing at the bridge and smiling at the early morning fisherman in our club clothes and crazy hair. It wasn’t long after experiencing the vibe a crowd of hundreds brings with their hands up in the air piously towards
Mark Farina, Chicago House legend and SF transplant, that I began to DJ. That weekend I found my gospel in haunting basslines, playful synths and rhythmic beats. Once I found my cadence, I found my moniker.
Jen Woolfe is not the name on my birth certificate. I’ve always hated the surname unto which I was born. Too structured. Too uptight. And unlike me, far too popular. I would receive random checks in the mail in college made out to me from people I didn’t know. Once my dentist pulled the wrong file and asked me how my jaw was doing. I was looking forward to a new last name when I got married, until I realized I was gay. I’d never felt close to my dad’s father’s name. Disappointed, I thought I was stuck with it forever.
Woolfe is my dad’s mother’s name. Lillian ‘Betty’ Woolfe. When my grandmother was 20, her uncle told her that America was for young people. She worked two jobs for two years and saved up enough money to catch a boat to the states. I’m very close to my grandmother in many ways, and far away from her in many others. She’s an old-school, conservative British-American woman who still asks me if I’ve found a nice boy.
Almost 10 years ago, I visited the birthplace of Lillian ‘Betty’ Woolfe.
Manchester, England. Something else was born there, too. The foundation of Rave culture,
Punk, a movement that would changed music
forever.
I was 20 when I arrived in Manchester, my hair freshly cut to my shoulders and bags popping out at the sides. My dad’s cousin Patsy picked me up and showed me the scrawny town. I’d never been out of America. I’d never been off the West Coast. I grew up a lot in my 6 months in the U.K. But not nearly as much as I’ve grown since that weekend, 5 years ago, in San Francisco.
Roseann has always been the one friend that got me into the most trouble. I went to my first party ever with her the first week of college, and we’ve been amazing friends ever since. I never went to any parties in High School. Never drank. Never smoked. Not that I didn’t want to. I was just never asked. I was liked well enough, but was by no means popular. I was a band geek. Shy. I sat hiding in the corner wearing tennis shoes and baggy t-shirts, unnoticed. I liked it that way.
I’ve often said that I live a double life. Geek by day and DJ by night. But my worlds are colliding. The old party-girl has arrived at her birthplace, laptop bag slung over her shoulder instead of her vinyl case. And on Friday night at club Element, an old friend stopped by to entice another collision. ‘Hey’, he said. ‘Aren’t you Jenny Hamilton?’. I almost shit myself.
I never thought anyone from High School would recognize me. My hair is bleach blonde instead of brown. I was wearing thick black-rimmed glasses. And hey, now I have style. Despite my disguise, Sam Franks and all 3 of his brothers were standing between me and Sasha, smiling. ‘Wow’, he said, ‘I haven’t seen you in 10 years!’
We all used to play at the elementary school when I was ten. I had a huge crush on Sam for a while, until I secretly fell in love with a skater boy named Chase. ‘How come I never saw you at any parties in High School?’ he said. ‘I was never asked.’ ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I invited everybody’.
Maybe I forgot to check my
everybody@shs.com email. But more likely, I just wasn’t ready. I was pretty bored in High School. I lost myself in books about other people’s lives. After high school, I decided to live a life worth reading about.
I’ve changed a lot in 10 years. Grown in ways I’d never thought to believe possible. I’ve seen outside this universe and inside myself. I’m not the shy girl anymore, hiding in the corner. But I haven’t lost her traits: her mind and her heart, her dirty sense of humor or her insecurities.
When I turn 30 in June, I’m legally changing my name to Jen Woolfe. I pass the explanation off as a Feminist thing, taking on my maternal instead of my paternal line. But I’m not really a feminist. It’s more about me and the person I’ve built out of my own imagination, through the process of aspiring to my own dreams. There’s the me that I was given and the me that I’ve created. I love both of them.
Some of my friends don’t like Jen Woolfe. They call her my sidekick and tell me to grow up. They are sad that I’ve lost the ‘old Jen’. But what they don’t understand is that I haven’t lost anything that wasn’t real. I’ve simply dropped the traits I didn’t like and merged the two together. The old Jen started writing many stories, but never finished the first chapter. With her sidekick, she’s created a persona in order to express herself. And why sit shyly in the corner when the main character is having so much fun?
