California Girl
Her official biography offers little about Amy Cook's life before age 25. It's not that she's cryptic; now 35, she boasts roughly 15 years in the business and is still exploring the bounds of her talent. It's a gratifying journey for both the local musician and her passionate fan base, one increasingly accompanied by the press, which delights in hyphenated descriptives. "Indie pop singer-songwriter" comes closest to the slippery realms where Cook's music resides.
"It's weird, like nothing happened to me before then," notes Cook about the absence of her history with a faint smile.
She grew up in the Bay Area's Silicon Valley, learning to play guitar in the fourth grade for the church choir she sang in. She dabbled in songwriting then and kept it up throughout high school, moving to open mics when she started college in Los Angeles. At 22, she recorded her first disc.
Who were your parents and what did they do?
"I'm adopted."
The question becomes the elephant in the room. Cook herds it graciously, frankly, philosophically.
"My dad worked at IBM, and my mother was a homemaker."
The Cooks had no other children.
"I know my birth mother though," she volunteers, "and have a sister."
Do you have a relationship with your birth mother?
"If I'd had a different relationship with my adopted parents, it could have been fine, but we came from totally different planets. It may be that way [in biological families], but it's complicated when you're adopted because you don't know that."
Another pachyderm lumbers on the sidelines.
Did you always know you were gay?
She nods, the smile that so easily slides across her angular face tugging at one corner of her pink mouth.
"I had a girlfriend when I was in high school," she offers.
Rainbows weren't where her religious adoptive parents planned their daughter's search for gold in life, yet those looking for evidence of psychic scarring or a lost soul in her music will have to keep moving along. Cook is well-balanced with the status quo, though she's aware of the emotional effort involved.
"David Garza sent me a message the other day: 'When I ask you to come up onstage, come up onstage! Don't be the kid sitting on the side of the pool!'
"That's who I've been. That's the kid that is me.
"A lot of it is Liz. She's not going to let me be the kid on the side of the pool. It's taking me a long time to let go of that – that I'm not good enough."
A clatter outside the room of hanging lamps is accompanied by the voices of workers who fill every room in the hotel. Cook rises and tiptoes to the door, shutting the noise out as she playfully presses a slim index finger to her lips.
"Let's close the door. Lampland should be more private."