“I’d been a singer in a lot of different bands. With a lot of...

“I’d been a singer in a lot of different bands. With a lot of different names. But I’d never been out front. It had never been like, you know: ‘Jill Fucking Fiore.’ But I finally got the courage to put my own band together. I was making moves. Then it was like: ‘Poof, pandemic.’ I came down with the OG COVID. I spent days in bed. But when my quarantine finally finished I crawled out on the fire escape to see what outside felt like. It was one of those beautiful New York City days in early spring. Birds were chirping. Skateboarders were going by. And it was like: ‘Oh, OK. Life isn’t over.’ Then at seven o’clock everyone came outside to clap for the first responders. Thousands of strangers connected by noise. I thought: ‘Wow. That’s what music is too.’ And it gave me an idea. Things came together pretty fast after that. I called up my guitarist and made my pitch. We wrote some songs. We rehearsed. Then we used the broom handle of my Swiffer to cover the entire fire escape in pink Christmas lights. They kept falling down. It was like one of those shitty arcade games, when you can’t quite grab the stuffed animal. But when we were finally finished, the fire escape looked like a mini-Broadway stage. It was like: ‘Holy shit, this could actually work.’ I pimped it out hard. I posted on all my social media accounts. My friend Teresa even wrote an article in AM NY: ‘Jill Fiore is going to do a rock show on her fire escape at 6 PM.’ It was my first ever piece of press. Can you believe that? My name in print: Jill Fucking Fiore. At 5:30 people started gathering on the street. I was a nervous wreck: trying to get ready, fixing my make-up. When I peeked out the window there were like 40 people out there. It was like: ‘Shit! This is going to be a lot bigger than I imagined.’ But at 6 pm I crawled out the window, and it all came down to calm. There was joy in the air. People were having their first night out in weeks. And from the moment the first guitar chord hit, it was a moment of pure connection. I remember feeling like it all made sense. It was like: ‘This. My entire life has been leading up to this. This is why I play. This is the reason I have a singing voice.’”