A Conversation with Diana Jones (continued)

PM: So although you and I are friends, we haven't gotten to hang out much together yet.

DJ: I know.

PM: Do you mind if I ask you about the home and the family you grew up in, and how your search for roots actually led to that record.

DJ: Right. Well, yeah, I was adopted, and I grew up in a family where there wasn't much music, but I was always interested in music. So I kind of found my own way to it.

PM: Where was that family?

DJ: It was on the East Coast, mostly in New York, Rhode Island.

PM: New York City, or--

DJ: Just outside. I was born in the City, but I grew up in Valley Stream.

PM: Valley Stream?

DJ: Which is Long Island. And that was like the first eight years of my life.

PM: You're a Long Island girl, who knew?

DJ: Yeah, first eight years anyway.

PM: Yeah, for my first ten years it was Yonkers, just down the road.

DJ: Well, I went to Sarah Lawrence.

PM: Oh, yeah.

DJ: So I actually lived in Yonkers. I know Yonkers very well.

PM: A real shithole.

DJ: I guess it was just after college that I started to search for my birth family. My main reason in doing it, because I had no way of knowing that my grandfather was musical or where they were from, was that I wanted to just sort of have that question answered, so I could go on with my life and become an adult person.

PM: Right, because you had been adopted as a child?

DJ: As an infant, yeah. And I left home when I was 15. I was very independent and very headstrong. So nothing's changed.

[laughter]

DJ: But I had just gotten to the point where I wanted to have the questions that surrounded my birth and everything sort of answered, as well as I could have them answered, and then move on.

PM: Yeah, one would have to know that, from whence do I truly come...

DJ: Exactly, yeah. And I think some people need to know it more than others. For me it was a big question. And I found a huge family in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. And finding them made me make sense to myself, if that makes sense.

PM: Does that mean that when you found that family that you actually found your mother, your father?

DJ: Uh-huh.

PM: My God! What was that like, if you don't mind my asking such a personal question?

DJ: It was really wonderful, and very intense.

PM: Did they know you were coming?

DJ: No, not exactly. [laughs]

PM: No. Wow! Oh, my lord.

DJ: I think my mother had some sense of it, because she had wanted to find me. But she had moved to England because she married an Englishman, so she wasn't even in the country, so searching for me was not as much of an option for her as me searching for her. But she was very welcoming, as was the whole family--which isn't always the case for people, so I was really lucky.

PM: Absolutely not, right.

DJ: And my grandfather, her father, I had been his first grandchild. And I was the oldest of 14 grandchildren. So I think it was really a big deal for him that I found him. And we became close right away.

PM: So the mother that you're visiting now is not the mother that raised you, but your blood mother?

DJ: Yeah.

PM: Ah. And do you see a lot of yourself in her?

DJ: Oh, yeah, yeah. I do. I see myself in a lot of my family. And the women in my family are very dynamic, lots of personality in this family. [laughs]

PM: Like yourself, yeah.

DJ: Opinionated. So they're really cool.

PM: Wow.

DJ: And of course, there are my cousins, and I have a sister and two brothers. And my sister just had her second child who is three months, and Alexander is three and a half years, so I'm getting to know them, which has been so amazing--to be able to have my career take hold here a little bit so that I can see them more and watch the kids grow.

PM: Wow. On or off the record, is there a good guy in your life at the moment?

DJ: No. Because I'm so busy.

PM: You're just too busy. Are guys like throwing themselves at you from the road? They must be.

DJ: Not at all. No one ever makes a pass at me. [laughs]

PM: God, you're such an attractive, interesting person, that's just beyond my comprehension.

DJ: Well, I think when you're on the road, it's such a fast-paced life that you don't really get to spend any good amount of time with anyone. Especially the tours over here, it's like sleep, eat, drive, play. So getting to stay anywhere for any length of time to get to know people, it just really doesn't happen. I felt pretty overwhelmed, too, I would say, the first part of last year, just keeping up with the touring schedule, which is getting a little more ferocious than it was, even.

PM: Absolutely.

DJ: But I'm getting more used to it, so I actually feel like I have a little more room in my head for something like that if it did happen. [laughs] But I'm pretty busy.

PM: And so I'm going to include it, unless you deny me the privilege, this information in the interview, so that guys out there don't assume, as I had, that, well, guys are lined up for a woman like that--

DJ: [laughs]

PM: So they might email and pledge their interest.

[laughter]

DJ: That's funny. Okay, well, I'll think about that.

PM: Frank Goodman, Folk Pimp.

[laughter]       continue

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