Life extraordinary: Miriam Clancy's US travel diary

Miriam Clancy performs at the Chicago gig, Castro District (inset top), The GMC Bus (inset bottom). Photos / Supplied

Singer-songwriter Miriam Clancy departed Auckland for Los Angeles in August and has spent the past few months on an epic road trip across the States, culminating in a New York studio where she recorded her forthcoming third album. From horror movies to Halloween, freeway breakdowns and strange cries in the night, Clancy shares some ups and downs from her travel diary.

SUNDAY 7 AUGUST
Recorded some eerie vocals in Beverly Hills with composer Mario Grigorov for a horror movie. Grigorov wrote the music for the Oscar-winning film Precious and I met him when he was in Auckland composing for The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell. The film's director, Brendan Donovan, gave him a bunch of CDs by Kiwi girl singers. He picked me. He's a full-on dude. We've stayed in touch. After recording I went back to our cute little villa in Hollywood, built by Charlie Chaplin, and carried out an exhaustive Craigslist and eBay search for a new guitar. Finally found one. It's an all-black Fender Telecaster. You can take the girl out of the west but you can't take the west out of the girl!

TUESDAY 23 AUGUST
Played a show at El Cid, an old flamenco venue in Silver Lake. It's the first LA show where my new guitar/amp/vintage synth set-up didn't fail miserably (cheers, dodgy power conversion plug). Au contraire, it went really well. A bunch of people even danced - so not used to that, apart from the fabulous New Plymouth crowd. On the way home I drove past my favourite mural in all the world - the wall outside Solutions Audio on Sunset Boulevard that featured on Elliot Smith's album cover Figure 8. It's become a memorial to Smith. Super love. What an inspiration.

SUNDAY 11 SEPTEMBER
Hit the road with hubby/manager JP Winger in our 1973 GMC camper. We're the kind of people who always run late. We spotted Wallace, Idaho (population 784) from the freeway and just had to turn off. It's a cute little town with a sweet thrift shop. I got a fake fur jacket that I've been thrashing since. I wore it to the zoo in Minneapolis and the antelopes ran away - they thought I was a wolf. We parked up on a dry riverbed for the night. Across the Missouri River there was a crazy, lonely guy yelling for his imaginary friend (we asked). Slept with the baseball bat at arm's reach.

WEDNESDAY 14 SEPTEMBER
Stuck. We broke down on the freeway near Butte, Montana, so we spent the next few days getting acquainted with an amazing, once-flourishing copper mining town. Stumbled across Evel Knievel's grave. It turns out it was less than 100 metres away from the camper where we were sleeping.

SATURDAY 17 SEPTEMBER
After three days of camper repair, we finally drove away with fond farewells to Butte. We got out the drive and across the road before the engine burst into flames - a spectacular sight which had us do a hasty hoon into Walmart and a frenzied hunt for a fire extinguisher. One more bummed-out night in Butte.

WEDNESDAY 19 OCTOBER
Made it to Chicago just in time for a meeting with the CEO of Art Works Projects, a charity working against human trafficking. Back in September I played a packed fundraising show in an art gallery of philanthropists and now I'm writing an album for the organisation. Also met up with Prince and Cyndi Lauper's old live engineer, who gave us hubcaps for our camper and told me lots of cool tales from the early '80s music scene.

MONDAY 31 OCTOBER
Halloween in fascinating New Orleans. They are right into their voodoo and the vibe was intense. We pulled up late arvo, ate an oversized plate of Southern style fish'n'chips, then dressed up as zombies and spent a few hilarious hours in town, which was looking more over the top than usual. A Zombie costume was the only thing we could rustle up on the road. When you've got nothing to wear, just put on white make-up. We're still ploughing through the lollies we got that night.

THURSDAY 8 DECEMBER
Hit the studio in New York for the first of 10 days recording in West Chelsea with top indie producer Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Foals). It's taking shape really nicely. It's different from anything I've done before, which is the whole idea. It's how I'd always imagined my music - quirky, beautiful and dreamy. Chris speaks my language. And I'm in gear heaven using guitars and amps that belong to former Smashing Pumpkin, James Iha. Geek out! But also woefully sad because my beloved chow chow, Grover, died the day before in New Zealand. I was sobbing and trying to pull myself together. Leaving Grover was the hardest thing about going away. Found a buyer for the camper. Looking forward to doing touristy, cheesy things in New York once the long days in the studio are over, like ice-skating in Central Park.

*Miriam Clancy plays the Domain Wintergardens in Auckland at 6pm on Sunday 25 March as part of the 2012 Music in Parks season.