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Love Songs in New Canaan

In the spring of 2007 I visited some friends in New York and at the same time contacted a girlfriend from Toronto, Joanne Perica, who I knew had moved to the Big Apple. It turned out that she and her husband and two kids had since moved again and were now calling New Canaan, Connecticut, their home. I accepted an invitation to stay with them for a couple of days.

Little did I know back in 1981, when I performed a concert there, that twenty-six years later I would return. The white-picket-fenced little town was a profusion of quaint churches, budding spring blossoms, and yellow daffodils. What a complete 180 from Miami! The garbageman who came up the wooded, winding driveway handed Joanne’s dog a cookie, everyone greeted each other on the sidewalks, and motorists stopped the moment they saw you approaching the curb.

In Miami, with its madcap Colombian, Venezuelan, and Haitian drivers, I often felt my life was in jeopardy crossing the street, and two of my friends had indeed suffered horrific traffic accidents. That was one of the negative sides of the city, but I knew I would miss the Latin spice of Miami. Still, New Canaan, named after the Biblical land of milk and honey, instantly seduced me with its gentile civility.

Joanne introduced me to a local recording studio and engineer, and offered to co-produce my new CD. Here was the solution to my life! I would move to small-town Connecticut, record with Srdjan, who was only an hour and a half away in Bernardsville, New Jersey, and escape the crooks, con artists, and money launderers of Miami.

I immediately started an online search for a place to live. Only at the last minute, with my Coconut Grove lease about to expire, did I find a home — a spacious white clapboard New England–style house. In July of 2007 I hired a moving company to transport all my furniture, clothes, and guitars, along with my Lexus, bike, and fifty boxes of personal paraphernalia up to New Canaan.

Prince Philip wrote that he had been surprised to learn I was returning to live in an area of North America that would soon be blanketed with snow, and he suggested I escape to the West Indies should I feel the need for some extra sunshine. However, such thoughts were far from my mind at the time. For the moment I was focused on my move and what lay in store for me in my new home. I couldn’t wait to begin rehearsing with Srdjan and to finally start recording together.

Packing up my life in Miami was a huge job. I sold off some of my furniture through Craigslist and enlisted the help of a couple of friends, including Ted. But it was mostly I who stayed up night after night parcelling, labelling, and sealing boxes. I turned up the volume on my stereo and blasted out the music of Julio Iglesias, whose Spanish songs always seemed to lift my spirits and whose music had accompanied my house moves over the years. There was no time for nostalgia, however, even though my dream of living forever in the Latin world had failed. Reality had taught me that things are not always as depicted in songs or on television.

Once unpacked, reorganized, and settled into my new abode, I joined the local YMCA and quickly memorized the town streets. It was fun to be exploring a new area, and Srdjan and I immediately began work on some new songs to add to our program. On weekends he could easily drive up from his home in Bernardsville, New Jersey, heading north toward me along the leafy Merrick Parkway.

Quite frequently I took the train into New York, where I could arrive in Grand Central Station within an hour. Manhattan, with its cultural delights, colourful neighbourhoods, and a few new-found friends, became part of my New England life. I explored Greenwich Village, attended guitar meet-ups in Soho, lunched at Wolf’s Deli and the Russian Tea Room, both of which I remembered from the seventies, and wandered around Central Park, always secretly hoping I might have a chance encounter with a romantic stranger.

Well-intentioned friends arranged several dates for me, but nobody captivated me enough to make me want to pursue a serious relationship. Through attending the occasional concert, play, or charity event, I developed friendships in nearby Westport and Greenwich with people who are still in my life to this day. Vincent, a young French pilot, occasionally cooked dinner at my place, and one fan flew in from Rancho Santa Fe, California, to take me to the theatre in New York. I reconnected with Joseph Pastore, the man who had presented me in Carnegie Recital Hall at the very dawning of my career, and we spent an enjoyable weekend at the home of his friends on Fire Island, drinking wine while discussing parapsychology and extraterrestrials.

At the same time I was making new friends in Connecticut and New York, I was dealing with the task of getting my last name changed. The process of switching my surname from Simon back to Boyd seemed to take forever, as I became caught in a bureaucratic Catch-22 due to the fact that the name connected with my social security number did not match the one appearing in my Canadian passport. Beyond getting my name changed by the government, I also had to wade through entanglements with the many businesses and music publishing organizations I dealt with, to say nothing of the headaches I had restoring my various airline miles, which were all listed under Boyd Simon or Simon Boyd.

Trips down to the Social Security office and the Department of Motor Vehicles in Norwalk, and couriered exchanges with the L.A. County courthouse, which held my original name change documents, were a nightmare and felt like a waste of so much precious time. I swore to my girlfriends that I would never ever change my last name again!

• • •

In New Canaan Srdjan and Joanne immediately hit it off, establishing a link with their common Croatian backgrounds. Slowly we recorded our romantic songs. Srdjan encouraged me to sing “If Only Love,” a song whose melody I had originally written out on a Kleenex box in a hotel room thirty years earlier. What a thrill it was for me to finally sing this lovely song that had been only an instrumental for many years. Somehow my music video for this piece, which had been beautifully filmed in Palm Springs, California, went missing over the years and sadly no copy seems to exist, in spite of extensive searching.

Aside from the time I was working on music or visiting New York, I spent most of my days and nights in New Canaan alone. Indeed, for the most part my only visitor that year was Srdjan, who seemed to delight in my improvised home cooking — though I know his wife and daughter to be far better than I when it comes to culinary skills!

I did have the occasional visitor. Mehdi Ali filmed a partial documentary on my struggles with musician’s focal dystonia and reporters from the magazine HELLO! Canada came to visit me as did CBC’s The National. For the latter I was filmed in my New England house and the cameramen took shots of me driving around the quaint town and walking around one of the places I frequented on my meditative walks, a beautiful cemetery where wild ducks nested beside the water-lilied pools, and rabbits and squirrels played hide-and-seek in the shrubbery.

Vivien drove down from Kitchener and convinced me to attend a huge outdoor swing convention with her. She had become an expert dancer, and I was pretty good at faking the steps. My glamorous TV host friend Nancy Merrill also came to visit and kept me up till all hours talking about her life, loves, and constant travels.

In December a writer acquaintance’s Christmas party lured me up to Boston on the train where I hit one of those “storms of the decade” which crippled the whole city. My pen pal Prince Philip had been right. What in the world was I doing living in winter again?

• • •

In March I flew down to join my parents and Vivien, who were holidaying in San Miguel de Allende. The town had expanded so much, with dozens of new restaurants and sprawling developments, but the cobblestones that our leather sandals had helped to polish smooth back in 1967 and the brilliant blue skies of Mexico that never failed to seduce us were still there.

My parents had rented the same little apartment on Huertas, where they often stayed, and it was delightful to reconnect with many of my lifetime amigos — Jaime Fernandez, my short-lived flirtation from back in 1967, his wife, Paquina, and fellow Canadian, Toller Cranston — but most importantly simply to spend time sitting in our beloved jardin, or main square, with my parents who now walked very gingerly hand in hand along the uneven, stony streets.

• • •

In April I returned to Toronto to record the fiddle playing of Oliver Schroer, my childhood friend. He had been diagnosed with leukemia and realized his days were numbered, but Oliver, who had a widespread following across Canada, continued to record his unique, improvised music until the very end.

Although he was hooked up to intravenous machinery, I was able to collect him from the hospital and bring him to the studio. There, he added a lovely viola part to a beautiful melody written by Srdjan’s former duo partner, Buco, which I had made into a song called “Let’s Go to the Mountains.” The title for the song was a quote from the beautifully shot soft-porn film Emmanuelle, and the lyrics are very romantic. It remains one of my favourites.

Oliver and I had dinner afterward, and I was moved to tears knowing I would probably never see him again. Our two young immigrant families had grown up together, and our mothers still keep in touch.

Shortly after our recording session, my friend bravely staged “Oliver Schroer’s Last Concert on Earth,” which sold out immediately and became the subject of a CBC documentary. Regrettably, I was unable to attend. He passed on shortly after that courageous concert. A CD of his music was released posthumously under the title Freedom Row. On the cover was a photo he had asked my permission to use — a black-and-white photo of me at thirteen practising my Nureyev-style ballet leaps on the long, winding driveway of his parents’ Beaver Valley farm. I somehow doubt that his fans ever realized who that young cover girl was.

• • •

In June Jack again came to visit me en route from a family wedding on Long Island and stayed in my guest room. I picked him up at the ferry terminal in Bridgeport and felt a thrill of excitement to see his tall, slender figure walking toward me. There was probably still time to change my mind about living alone. The door was still open should I choose to return, and I knew that any day that door could be closed forever. He had been such a loving husband to me, and many of my friends told me I was a fool to have abandoned the luxurious life he provided, a life most women dream of having. But although I still cared for him and I was filled with gratitude for all he had given me, I still chose my freedom to grow as a musician. As before, I prayed I was making the right decision for both of us.

I had made the choice to leave someone who had loved me. It seemed to be my pattern, and I hoped that my next great love would be my last.

I remembered in 1998 when, on a whim I had decided to call my former amour Pierre Trudeau to see how he was faring. Pierre had been genuinely impressed with Jack when he visited us in 1995. The men had hit it off splendidly on the day he came to our Beverly Hills house for lunch, and the previous day when Jack had accompanied him to see the Getty Museum’s antiquities. Jack had arranged for Pierre to be given a special private tour while I was busy recording the beautiful soundtrack to A Walk in the Clouds with the legendary Maurice Jarre.

It was so good to hear Pierre’s gentle and familiar voice, but he sounded more subdued than I remembered, and I supposed that, now in his late seventies, his life was quieter.

“So do you have a special girlfriend these days?” I asked.

“Mmm … Liona, I have several,” he replied. I could visualize the smile he would have had on his face, even over the telephone.

Yes, that had been the one of the most important issues that we had disagreed on and which ultimately led me to seek a man less flirtatious and not so susceptible to female charms.

Pierre and I chatted on about his sons, Justin, Sacha, and Michel, and he updated me on their expanding interests and studies. He even talked with appreciation about their sister, Sarah, the ultimate gift that Deborah Coyne had given him in bearing his daughter, a proposal that he had suggested multiple times to me, but that I had declined.

Chatting with Pierre felt so comfortable, yet it left me somewhat sad, reminiscing about the eight years when we had shared escapades and dreams. I remembered when he and a very pregnant Margaret were introduced to me one summer afternoon in 1975 up at Harrington Lake and how they and their two little boys had enjoyed my private guitar serenade after swimming in the lake. I remembered the following year when Pierre, now separated, had surprised me with a kiss in Kamloops on Valentine’s Day, and I thought back to my many performances for his friends and world leaders.

It was thanks to Pierre that I had been given the opportunity to play for Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, who had greeted me with that twinkle in his eyes. It was thanks to Pierre that, after I set my guitar aside, I had been offered a seat at the dinner table beside Ronald Reagan and across from Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Schmidt, and it was thanks to him I had spent two hours with Fidel Castro in Havana. I thought of how we lunched in Montreal shortly after I had married, and how Jack and I had met up with him for the very last time in 1996, when he came alone to sit in the front row of my concert for attendees of a palliative care conference at the Notre-Dame Basilica.

A memory collage of our romantic rendezvous in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and New York washed over me like a warm Connecticut summer breeze. Where were both our lives going now, though? We were both living alone and sensing the passage of time. A sense of mortality seemed to be mellowing Pierre’s spirit.

A few months after our phone conversation, Pierre would suffer a truly tragic blow. His youngest son, Michel, died in an avalanche that November and it was then that Pierre’s life energy began to ebb. I remembered Michel, or Miche as he was affectionately called, as a bouncy, sweet child — the little boy whom Pierre and his big brothers adored. I had wept for Pierre when the news reached me, and I called to offer my condolences. His voice had completely changed, and Justin later wrote how the light began to dim in his father’s soul. I shed tears for Pierre, for his two remaining sons, and for poor Margaret, whom I heard grew closer again to Pierre through their shared sorrow. Losing a child has to be the ultimate heartbreak for any parent.

And indeed both cancer and Parkinson’s disease were to afflict the gentle Canadian man who had wanted me to share his senior years. In September of 2000 he too departed this world, and the entire country was overcome with grief.

Although he lost one of his sons, Pierre’s legacy lives on, in the political career of his son, Justin. Back when he was a boy, none of us could ever have imagined that Miche and Sacha’s older brother would one day follow in his father’s footsteps and become Canada’s prime minister. Justin Trudeau had always seemed inquisitive and bright to me, a more extroverted kid than his sensitive younger brother Sacha, but romping through the Gatineau woods with them, I would have been amazed to have peeked into the future to see what a dynamic and charismatic leader Pierre’s eldest son would become.

• • •

From 2007 to 2010 New Canaan had been a lovely contrast to Miami, but I was once again experiencing wanderlust. I flew off to Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the invitation of my girlfriend Nancy Merrill, who had recently relocated there. Nancy had lived in every place imaginable and was enchanted with the Santa Fe lifestyle. Her love affair with the place lasted until she suffered her first bitterly cold winter there, and she subsequently returned to California. Nancy and a couple of other gal pals I knew were all in the same situation, each of us trying to find our personal Shangri-La. My Santa Fe trip was a fun-filled diversion … chatting on the phone with Shirley MacLaine, with whom I shared a mutual friend, Hanne Strong, taking kundalini yoga classes, and attending the Santa Fe opera. However, for me the city didn’t feel sophisticated enough for me to consider moving there, in spite of its magnificent mountain scenery and dazzling, starlit skies. I was told that in this Mecca of the New Age four out of five people worked as some type of therapist. Yes, Santa Fe was a special place and certainly exuded a different vibe from that of New York or Toronto, but it was not what I was looking for.

Nevertheless, I did make an important musical connection in Santa Fe. Wandering through the town one afternoon, Nancy and I chanced upon Esteban, a guitarist who was performing a short recital with his son in an art gallery. In the short talk he gave to the gathering I was impressed by his almost fanatical love for the guitar. He struck me as an unusual mix of classical guitar aficionado and salesman. After I left the wind chimes and turquoise jewellery shops of Santa Fe, Esteban and I developed an email friendship. One day I asked if he would like to be my special guest and contribute some flamenco flourishes to “My Gypsy Lover.” Happily, he agreed to do so after one of his concerts in Connecticut.

Esteban, the eccentric American, who had built a castle in Santa Fe but mostly lived in Tampa, had gained a huge following on the Home Shopping Network and QVC, where he played and sold his inexpensive guitars. The elite classical guitar world made fun of the man with the dark glasses and black fedora, but in fact he was helping introduce millions of the uninitiated to our mutual maestro, Andrés Segovia, and to our beloved instrument. When not recording or appearing in infomercials, Esteban toured with his talented kids, who each played different instruments. Although not quite the Spanish gypsy lover of my song or my fantasies, Esteban was certainly the next best thing for his huge American following, and I was thrilled to have him as my special guest.

With Esteban’s contributions recorded, I thought that my CD was just about complete. However, one day in April of 2009, while flying back to Toronto on the commuter plane that I often took to visit my parents, I composed a simple, romantic summer song called “Baby Maybe,” and impulsively decided to add it to the album. Now we were up to seventeen tracks! I had written the lyrics to all of them except for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” an exquisite song that Srdjan had brilliantly arranged as a duet.

What a nerve I had, I chuckled to myself, knowing that it had been Roberta Flack’s monster hit. Yet to this day I like to think our version is much prettier, and to my ears the original drags on too slowly. Even if I possessed her amazing voice and sustain, I would still prefer our slightly faster tempo.

Through a New York talent agency, I hired a handsome Italian actor with whom I filmed a short music video to “Baby Maybe” on Great Captain’s Island off the coast of Greenwich. He offered to bring along his red Ferrari — an added bonus. Frank, a former narcotics officer, had gorgeous, thick black hair, beautiful full lips, and seductive dark eyes. The director found no resistance on either of our parts when he needed a retake of the kissing scenes. Realizing that this was probably as close as I would ever get to a fantasy Italian lover and that my young actor was enthralled by me and by my music, I decided to make the most of our scenes together. We had instant physical chemistry but, with just a twinge of regret, I never took up his keen offer to meet up and savour more than lovely summer embraces on our beach blanket in front of the crew. An affair with a married man was not something I wanted to pursue. His kisses alone were absolutely perfect.

Joanne later commented that the video was “far too sexy,” but knowing it might be my last chance to be filmed running around a beach and being carried in the ocean wearing a skimpy bathing suit, I went along with the director’s ideas and enjoyed every moment from licking melting ice creams to smooching with my leading man.

The hair and makeup gal my video producer had insisted I hire was a disaster. Her idea of hair styling, applying mousse and more mousse, was immortalized in the footage of us riding home on the ferry. Why did I not learn? I resolved to do my own hair in future shoots.

A few days later Srdjan and I finger-synched our duo performance parts to “Baby Maybe” in a nearby studio, with me singing to a sped-up track that gave an interesting slow motion effect to my floaty, pale mauve dress. After a quick hair and wardrobe change we just had time to record a second video for “Little Seabird.” Srdjan kept forgetting the words, and with my braided hair I looked ready to play the role of Brünnhilde, but we somehow pulled it off !

I think Srdjan and Frank look completely different, but so many fans could not tell the difference and were convinced that I was kissing Srdjan in the video. And I am the one with mild prosopagnosia, or as it is commonly known, “face blindness”! Obviously, they both have thick dark hair, but the similarity ends there.

In the fall of 2009 Universal Music Canada offered a distribution deal and I commuted up to Canada, with Srdjan in tow, to do some promotional TV shows, including our singing debut on Canada AM and Entertainment Tonight.

Was I completely out of my mind to be singing in public? Liona, the English schoolgirl who had been thrown out of the choir at age eight and told she could not sing, and the one whom Ozzy Osbourne’s vocal coach had ordered to quit before even starting, was now about to sing before millions! But somehow, with Srdjan’s encouragement, I felt ready and I welcomed the experience after so many years away from the stage.

One of our first live performances was for a wonderful non-profit organization in Greenwich, CT, “Walk on Water,” which enabled sick or disabled children and veterans to experience therapeutic horseback riding and bond with the animals. Previously Srdjan and I had held an informal dress rehearsal at Joanne’s house for a gathering of her friends. Curiously, I never experienced the same nervousness or pressure while playing as a folk duo as I had playing as a classical soloist, where all the weight had, for years, fallen upon my shoulders. If the odd squeak or buzz happened, we accepted it as part of the live performance. I knew my intonation was not always perfect, but audiences were forgiving, we had fun onstage, and Srdjan exuded such abundant charm and charisma that audiences warmed to both of us immediately. He had proven to be a fantastic discovery!

Our repertoire had expanded to include John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the ultimate sixties song, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “If You Go Away,” “Jamaica Farewell,” “Dona Dona Dona,” and “Guantanamera,” in which we enjoyed singing a little Spanish. As an encore we added one of Srdjan’s favourites from his past career, the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love.” Who ever could have predicted that for a short time I would become a folk singer!