Flashback Photo: Us in Pittsburgh's South Side Neighborhood

Candy Apple Blue with Shauna (1992)

Here we are back in 1992 with the legendary, talented, warm-hearted, and gorgeous Shawna (aka Katt) in Pittsburgh's South Side neighborhood. We had just strolled out of the Beehive Coffeehouse after a nice chat. We took this photo right before we jumped into our cars and said goodbye.

I have so many great memories from this time. I was 20 years old. We were all so young and we had so much ambition. To be LGBT in the early 1990's was no joke. The world and Pittsburgh was a very different place. We battled our way through it by looking stunning and keeping our chin up! 

Big love, Carly xoxo

More About "I Won't Say Adieu"

The Inertia Case (1997) Elton Lin, Hoyt Emerick, and Carly Emerick

Just yesterday, a friend reminded me of a song from our back catalog that Hoyt and I composed called I Won't Say Adieu. This Inertia Case song got a second life because it was covered and used in an indie film directed by Casper Andreas. We would often close our live sets with this song and it was always so well received. 

Back when we wrote I Won't Say Adieu in the late 1990s, Hoyt had just gotten back from a trip to France. For those of you who don't know, Adieu is a French word meaning "goodbye". I remember being excited about the title that we came up with. We already had a song called Between Love and Goodbye, so I thought that was a clever way to use the word again without sounding too redundant. 

I remember writing the bass line for this song and thinking; "oh, this is good". We worked tirelessly and passionately on the lyrics. The song had a universal larger-than-life feeling to it. There was something almost magical about the way the key signature, chords, bass line, lyrics, and tempo all came together. It was almost like the sky had opened up and a thunderbolt came down to light our path. This song felt important. It quickly became a fan favorite in our inner circle. 

We were getting ready to shop ourselves to the major labels by putting together a demo tape of our best 4 tracks. We all believed in I Won't Say Adieu. So for the first time in The Inertia Case history, we paid an outside audio engineer to help us achieve a more professional sound. Before this time, we had always demoed our songs by ourselves using a portable Tascam 4-Track tape machine.  

I will always remember Hoyt, Elton, and I dishing out almost $1,000 to try to properly record that song. In 1997, a thousand dollars might as well have been $10,000 to us. It was a mountain of money, but we were willing and ready to invest in our musical future. Sadly, this endeavor proved to be fruitless. The slow-moving recording process left us all feeling tired and artistically drained. This "professional" demo didn't capture the real spirit of the song and we ultimately disliked the results of this recording. So we never used it. 

Lately, I've been thinking a brand new Candy Apple Blue version of I Won't Say Adieu could be in the cards. I know, after all of these years of experience, that Hoyt and I could give our old song a new life. 

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me. I have many more stories to share. 

Big love, Carly xoxo