May 10, 2017
BATHROBES ARE OPTIONAL AT
TASHA MILLER'S CHARITY CONCERT
By Samantha Swindler
On the cover of her new album, Tasha Miller wears a slinky black dress, dark lipstick and fake eyelashes, her hair styled and piled high, microphone cord wrapped around her fist like a lasso, looking every bit the R&B diva she sounds on her newest record.
But when we met at her home, she was wrapped in a white terrycloth bathrobe, sans makeup, hair knotted atop her head, a mug of warm tea in hand.
The latter is how she'll perform at Lincoln High School this Mother's Day during a benefit concert and release party for her new album, "National Bathrobe Day."
In her upscale West Hills neighborhood, Miller is known as the lady who wears a bathrobe out in public. This didn't start as a "walking art installation and constant daily life performance of humility," as Miller describes it. It was simply the look of a tired mother of three trying to keep it together – but it's come to represent a form of radical honestly infused in Miller's life, music and battles with mental health.
"It's a comfort zone thing. It's stripping down these things that keep us from feeling comfortable in public," Miller said. "And so the bathrobe in public is truly a force of kindness. It's like fierce love. ... If my oxygen mask is on, that's when I can help somebody else and put their oxygen mask on."
Miller first left the house in her bathrobe overcoat years ago when walking her children to preschool. And at that point, she thought, let's not go back in the house, let's just stop by the bank, too. Or make a quick grocery run.
"And next thing you know, I'm dropping off invoices for gigs I've done," Miller said. "What happened was for every one person that I would receive a scowl from in public, I would receive nine sort of moments of positivity."
Kids, in particular, responded positively to the bathrobe when she would volunteer at Chapman Elementary. Richard Melling, her children's former kindergarten teacher, said, "I have fond memories of Tasha in her bathrobe singing 'This Land is Your Land' with my class." The kids didn't find her modest and comfortable attire particularly strange, "being kindergartners, and being fairly new to the ways of the world," he said.
"The children recognized me as a warm human being," Miller said. If a child was struggling with an issue or outburst, "We'd sit together in the hallway, I'd wipe some tears with the sleeves, and it all started to become clear to me."
Clear that a bathrobe can be an instrument of healing for strangers – and also for herself. Miller has had depression, bi-polar disorder and obsessive compulsive tendencies throughout her life.
"Sometimes, when you can barely even move in your own home because you struggle so severely with compulsions ... sometimes you're not going to put on the makeup and the clothes and walk across the street and look like you've got it all together," Miller said. "For me, motherhood is what brought everything to the surface, all the truths of my life."
There's a moment Miller calls her "tipping point." It was about 10 years ago, when her three children were ages 4, 3 and 4 weeks. The youngest was in a baby seat, the other two downstairs while, as Miller describes it, she spent 45 minutes in the upstairs bedroom, checking to see if the duvet cover was in line with the rug.
"The bed had been made for two weeks already and there were cobwebs coming from the ceiling down to the 16 throw pillows that I had on my bed that were perfectly arranged," she said. "I made my husband and I sleep in the basement because my bed was so perfectly made."
About 20 minutes into this obsession, the baby begins crying "the hungry cry."
"Now when you're a mother, your first born goes for the hungry cry for about 30 seconds because you feed that child, max. Second child, two minutes, max," she said. "Third child, if you're mentally ill, the child can go 25 minutes screaming at you."
And yet, Miller recalled, the vexing duvet cover "was not in line with the rug," and she couldn't tear herself away. Eventually, she heard one of the children fall partway down the stairs, and it took a chorus of cries to get her to move.
"It was all three lives calling my name and that's why I ran out the room," she said. She grabbed all three children, then the phone, and called her husband.
"We're all four crying, and I said, 'I need help,'" Miller said. "He said 'call your doctor'... and my doctor, she said, 'I'm so glad you've called.'"
Miller still struggles with compulsions — she wears fake eyelashes on stage because she plucks hers – but she manages with medications. She's at a place where she's comfortable with herself and she wants to share that love, comfort and warmth with others.
"I want to connect and I want to help people and... the bathrobe, I just think there's a certain beauty to just saying I'm authentic, I'm a safe place," she said. "It's not a righteous thing, it's just, accept me for who I am and I will do the same for you. The idea is I just want to be comfortable with you."
Miller has never performed in a bathrobe – she's often on stage in stiletto heels and mermaid skirts – but this Mother's Day concert calls for something different.
Proceeds from Sunday's concert will benefit Lincoln High's music and athletic programs: Miller (née Jablonski) is a 1992 alumna of the school and a former volleyball coach. In many ways, Lincoln High already feels like home, but Miller is planning to make the connection even more literal by bringing chairs and rugs from her own living into the high school gym.
She'll sing her new album, front to back, with nine musicians on strings, drums, vocals and brass behind her. Families are invited for a cozy afternoon of music.
Bathrobes are optional.
If you go: Tasha Miller performs at 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14, at the Lincoln High School gymnasium. There's a handmade crown for the winner of the best bathrobe contest. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at mrstashamiller.comor at the door.