Andee Joyce: Unveiling the Beauty and Strength in Autism Through Music

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World.
Today's guest was diagnosed autistic later in life. She was
in her forties and she's a singer songwriter. Let's welcome
Andy Joyce to the show. Welcome Andy, Thanks for coming on.
Oh well, I appreciate you having me.
Oh my pleasure. So I believe you was diagnosed autistic
later in life.
I was diagnosed almost sixteen years ago.
Wow, And what age was.
That at I was forty four.
So what led you to get a diagnosis at that age?
Well, I actually wasn't shopping for a diagnosis. What I
was trying to do is figure out why my brain
was doing what it was doing. Yeah, because I had
all these perseverative thought patterns that I'd never been able
to really break them. And it was always really really
difficult for me to hold a job, find friends, find
a relationship, you sustain a relationship. It was just like
this fantasmagorical nightmare. And so my partner at partner suggested
that I see a therapist who specialized in neuro linguistic
programming to try to break that cycle. So I found
one that took the insurance I had at the time,
and I went to see them, and about ten minutes
into our session, they said, I think you might be
you might have Asperger syndrome, because that's what they were
calling it then they and when they had autistic people
who could talk.
So what was your response when the therapist brought that
up to you?
I was like, oh, but no, that's not me. I mean,
I'm not rain Man. You know, it's like I like
being touched. And he said, no, no, no, no, that's
one possible presentation. That's not that's the stereotype. But that's
only one possible presentation. You know, you got to look
at the diagnostic criteria. You have to think about what
you were like when you were like three years old,
and what people in your life said you were like
that age. And after talking to my parents about that
period of my life, and remembering what I remembered about
my childhood, I like, my god, they're right. Why did
I not know this? It's like, why didn't anybody tell me?
Because I had been seeing therapists forever. It's like, I
actually sought out a therapist myself at the age of fourteen.
This is this would have been in the seventies. No
kids did that. Then he said, you know what a weirdo.
I was, well, you know, not necessarily a weirdo, just
trying to find yourself. And I compliment you for at
least trying.
Nobody had ever mentioned this as a possibility. I'd had
a friend that kind of dropped that into a conversation once,
but I had waved it off. And yeah, I was like,
why didn't anybody tell me this? And the therapist said, well,
they don't know what to look for in a woman
your age.
Well, that totally makes sense.
Actually, the diagnosis basically did not exist for kids who
could talk back when I was back when I was
a little kid, it didn't exist. You know, Autism was
only ever diagnosed rarely and in conjunction with childhood schizophrenia.
The combination of which would almost inevitably get you institutionalized.
So how did you cope with all this? What was
your coping mechanisms? I mean you was having having a
pretty rough by the sounds.
Of it, Oh yes, oh yeah, I mean I bounced
around cities. I bounced around therapist, psychiatrists. This it's like,
and uh, you know there's a yes, depression, yes, anxiety. Yes,
well of course I have depression and anxiety. Look at
how I've been treated. Yeah, and uh. And then then
the next thing was was the add because it's very
common for late diagnosed adults to get the ADD or
ADHD diagnosis before they get the autism diagnosis, because especially then,
because at that time you couldn't co diagnose somebody with
a ADHD and an ASD. So like, Okay, we're getting
warmer here, getting warmer here, but we're still not quite there.
There's still some there's still some key. I don't have
to unlocking the door to relate to other people. I
just my senses taken things that people make people look
at me like, what.
Yeah, that's that's real. Off. I talked with a lady
that said she thought she'd lost a whole decade because
of misdiagnosis.
I had lost four decades.
Wow.
But yeah, even after I was diagnosed, I got At first,
I was like really wow, and then I got and
then I got angry, and then I got depressed because
I spent so much of my life. I'd spent forty
four years trying to be something I could never be,
and you know, feeling like I was just failing everybody.
That feeling still resurfaces sometimes, but I have I have,
I've more ways to deal with it.
So how do you deal with it? And what were
your feelings that you were going through at that point
in time?
Well, I was I was trying not to hate myself
really yeah, and it's like I was singing, well, maybe
if I had the therapists move in with me and
say things to me all the time. But yeah, it
just seemed like nothing really took. I just couldn't find
what I thought of, is that magic bullet that would
need me to have the you know, the relationships and
the acceptance that I craved.
Well, that's tough to go through, I'm sure. So did
you have any slipper of hopes that kept you going? What? What?
What did you do to dig yourself out of this.
Yeah, I mean it took a long time. I mean
it's like forty. I'd be in my low, long, slow
climb out of the hole when I was in my forties.
My fifties have been a bottle rocket. I'm gonna be six,
I'm gonna be sixty next month, just so you know,
that's great, and you know, creatively and in every other way,
my fifties have been a bottle rocket. It's like whoa,
It's like, this is what a real life is.
Like. Well, I'm glad that you found it, because you
deserve it. So what changed did your music come become
more prevalent? What did you do to keep digging out
of that so that you could keep your life the
way that you liked it.
When I started doing music again, it kind of took
me completely by surprise because I was I was working
on a young adult novel and I was trying to
cut it down because I wrote too long, and because
you know, details, details, detail, and so I would cut
like one hundred pages and then add one hundred and fifty.
So it was like the literary equivalent of yo yo dieting,
which I.
Like that.
But in my research, I had this instinct that if
I listened to some old Casey Casem's American Top forty
episodes from the nineteen seventies, which is what I used
to love to listen to, and you know, write all
the write all the the songs down and study the
charts and everything like that, which is a very very
weird thing for a teenage girl to be doing. It
was back then. I mean, it's just like you're what,
So it's like I didn't tell there. I mean, there
really wasn't anybody I could tell these things too. I
listened to these old American Top forty episodes because I
wanted to kind of connect with that absolutism that I
felt about music when I was in my teens and tweens.
Listened to an American Top forty episode and the third
song in was Ryan Highland's cover of Gypsy Woman, and
I don't know what it is. I guess I was
listening with my fifteen year old self's ears, but that
man's voice got to me. It's like, that's great, and
he was when the song was done. I mean I was.
I love Curtis Mayfield. I've heard you know may Yeah,
I've heard the impressions version of the song many times
and I love it. There there was something about how
he sang it, and you know, the sound he had
and everything, and it just it just got to me.
And when I was done, I kind of sat there
and went, what just happened here? Something just changed. At first,
I didn't really know what it was. I started working
on another young adult novel, this one. This one was
about an autistic girl who becomes obsessed with a with
an obscure teenage girl singer from the nineteen sixties that
kind of leads her to her discovery of her own musicianship.
So I thought, well, maybe this is what I'm this
is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm being led
on this path to write this other book. From having
this experience to where my characters would talk to me
when I I would create a character and they'd kind
of talk to me and say, I'm this and this
and this and this and this. So it's like I'm
interviewing Cyan I had. You know, I came up with
the name of Cyan for my lead character. So I
asked him this, it was Cyan your birth name? Or
did you make that up? She was like yeah, right,
Like my parents would ever have thought of something like
that for me. Yeah, And and then she said, you know,
if you really want to understand what me and Amy,
the singer who she's obsessed with, are like, then you're
going to have to start writing and performing songs again.
And I was like, uh oh, because because I tried
to do this in my twenties and my thirties and
it was just a epic disaster because I had no
idea how to manage, how to have the social or
the sensory environment or what that even meant.
Well, that's a great story, and I've heard from many
different writers that when they're writing, their characters kind of
take over. So did you start in your music and
how did that work?
Well? When I first started doing this, I was writing
my own stuff, and I was writing. I was writing
these epic songs there are like seven eight minutes long.
So it's like I had to kind of learn how
to condense my thoughts into smaller bits.
Yeah, that happens a lot in the music business.
That old writer's joke. If I had had more time,
I would written a shorter book.
Yeah, somehow that seems to never work out. So how
did your music progress From there.
I started having voice lessons because, yeah, I wanted to
find out what kind of voice I had. Now I
discovered that part of the reason, I guess my part
of my fascination with Brian Hyland is that his uh
is that his voice would become raspy when it got soft.
And I discovered that my voice did the same thing too,
And I wanted to make sure that if I sang
that way, I wasn't going to injure my vocal chords. Sure,
so I went to a voice teacher and she put
me through a bunch of range exercises and and squeak.
I squeaked out a bunch of high notes and and
she said, sounds like you're a soprano. And I was like, yeah, right,
which one, Tony?
I like that. That's good.
And and you know, I didn't say that, but I
thought it, and as a really he said, Yeah, you've
got like ten miles of head voice you're not using.
That's that's good. So U now that you've been doing
your music and your your recording and and finding yourself,
have you got it up on iTunes or any streaming
so people can hear it?
Yeah? I did, I did. I have put a couple
of songs up on Up on You, up on the services.
There's one called Positive ID, one called make You Want
to Dance, and one called Brian Wilson is Afraid of
the Ocean.
I like that great, great title. So what's the name
of your show that you're putting out there now?
Absolutely, I have a a one person show that I'm
doing called Rhythm and Autism, and it's a combination of
music and spoken word, and it takes it uses a
lot of the songs that I've written, and I've also
written some special musical material and some spoken word for that.
And doing that is just kind of felt like the
complete right thing for me. It just made complete sense
that I would go in this direction. But it didn't.
It took a while. Sure, I was like I was
trying to do the singer songwriter thing, and then it's
like I was getting really frustrated. Portland is teeming with
the brilliant young singer songwriters and I was never going
to equal them.
Well that's the beauty of music. You don't have to
equal anyone. You just do what you do and hopefully
people like what you're doing.
Yes, Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing, and you know
there's a lot of humor in it. I have this
song called how are You, and I do a little
spoken word piece. I could even do it for you
now if you wanted.
Oh absolutely, I'd love to hear it, and I'm sure
so with the listeners. So the stage is yours.
This is called how are You. I'm increasingly you have
the opinion that children should have acting lessons starting in
kindergarten because it was right around that age when a
friend of my parents ask me how are you? And
I said I have a stomach ache. I was told
that that was the wrong answer. The answer was I'm fine.
How are you? I said? But why would people ask?
They already know the answer, they still haven't told me.
You've seen me around this place once or twice, and
you talk to me and you thought I seem nice.
So when you see me, you stop and you ask me,
how are you? Well, it's a question. There's no answer,
and we're all supposed to lie, but no one ever
believes me, even though I try to seem doing great,
but not so great. You can't really He's so from
now on, if you ask me, this will be my reply. Well,
since you asked, I sleep like Elvis and I sing
like a Amy's cat and I probably should be doing
the upset of that. And I never did fit in,
not even in a looneyden. And how are you? How
are you? Wow? And by the bye,
I stunk up building self esteph and I flunk serenity.
So how are you with breathing next to someone like me?
I don't want to be scary to talk to, just
scary to abuse. And how are you? How are you?
Yeah? I love that. Phrasing is good, your vocal is good. Man,
that's just awesome. I really love it.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Oh yeah, yeah, and the message is just awesome. M
I love the line why do you ask me when
you already know the answer? That is just really good?
Right, Well, there's a yeah. When I go into the
second verse, I have I have this bit where I
say everything in theater, which is why the elistic world
needs autistic people. We dissolve bs on contact. Yeah, but
first they gotta let us in the door. I want.
When I did that, I did that bit live at
there was a local singer songwriter and night at a
performing arts Center out here in Hillsboro, Oregon. And I
when I did that line, people just busted up laughing.
It's like all these people I didn't know, they were
just in hysteric. So I was just like, hmm, It's
like it's like even even the normies, you know, they
they don't understand why these silly social.
Rules exist, right right. I mean, that's that's really good.
Thank you.
So you include lightheartedness? What else do you put in
your show to just round it out so that it
fits everyone?
Some I have some material that I do with with
with with backing tracks. So some of them are straight songs,
some of them are spoken word interspersed with singing. Some
of them are me playing a tambourine which resembles Tracy
Partridge's tambourine. So I have a song called Tracy's Tambourine.
And so it's like I have this whole bit that
I it's nineteen seventy one, You're a seven year old girl.
How do you tell the world you have a crush
on a percussion instrument? The answer is, you know, because
if we got out, your parents will have some explaining
to do to the authorities. The thing I'm kidding, and
so it kind of goes like that, and then and
then I go into the song where I'm I have
a backing track that I that I made it. It's
kind of it's sort of inn a Partridge Family is style,
you know, if it was like more of a more
driving rock thing.
That's great. I really like it. Sounds like you've really
got a good show together. So let's tell everybody the
name of your show again.
Rhythm and Autism.
Okay, that's great. So if I go to your show,
what am I going to expect to see and how
long do I expect it to last?
Well, it's like I've been I've been workshopping this thing
for a while. I do shows of varying lengths. I've
I've done shows anywhere from like fifteen minutes to two hours.
Right now, I'm trying I'm honing it on a one
act that's going to be at seventy five minutes, and
then I'm also going to be doing a two act
at the Walters Center next April. They actually book almost
a year in advance, so I got but I got
a booking there to do a special sensory friendly program
where the first half would be one hundred percent free
of common sensory triggers, and so it would be like
flap flaws instead of clapping, you know, or flapping in time.
And yes, like I have songs about flapping and and
and I leave the house lights up so I can
see everybody flapping.
That's a great concept. I love it, and it appears
like it's going over. So I guess the next question
is the show's done. People have loved it. Now they
want the meat greet, they want their pictures with you, autographs.
How do you handle that? To you? Does that bring
on any anxiety or if you've got that pretty much
under control, can handle it pretty good.
So far, has it's been fine? I mean I haven't
had people besiege me or anything. They're probably not going
to do that.
Well, I asked that because I know some autistic people
have their space that they like and they don't want
anybody kind of invading that space.
Right. Yeah, well I try to build that into my
preparation and yeah, after a performance, I might need to
take a couple of minutes to kind of pull myself together.
Sure, that only makes sense. I guess the next question is,
now that you've started your music, it seems to be going. Well,
where do you see it going in the next three
to five years.
Well, like I said, I'm doing this show it at
the Walters Center, which I hope will be a prototype
for future shows where the first what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna have a program that details the sensory
elements that people can expect from each scene. And you know,
I'll give them your plugs if they if they want
to use them, they can move around the room if
they need to, or even step out if there's an
element that's that's hard for them to deal with. And
like I said, first half will be you know, you know,
I'll minimize the high notes and you know, the percussion
and all that kind of stuff. And then the second
half I'll bring in some of those noises that I love,
the clapping and the tambourines and stuff like that. But
people will have well, people will have fair warning about
what's coming.
Well that's great. So now we know that your music
is doing good. You've kind of given us the path
you took to get there. You mentioned that you'd had
some low points during your earlier years. So what was
your high school like before you got out and started
really working on getting to you know yourself and developing
your music.
I was fortunate and that I was able to go
to an alternative high school because I went like one
semester to the regular high school and it was such
a social and sensory nightmare that I was just like,
I just can't with this. And for fortunately there was
another alternative where there there was a lot more looseness
and you know, we could get up and walk around
and sit in whatever position we wanted and that kind
of stuff, and I could leave campus and go to
the library if I wanted.
Well, it's a good thing that you had the other
school to go to.
Oh, yeah, definitely. But if I'd had to, if I
had to stick with that, yeah, with that regular high school,
I don't know what would have happened to me, because
it was just horrible.
From the teacher's standpoint, from from the other students or
both both.
I'm well, yeah, both, but I mean a lot of
it was was sensory stuff too. It's like, okay, and yeah,
having to get up really really really really early.
Yeah, I can get that. I remember those days. Right.
That brings up another question. Did your parents completely understand
that you was going through some trying times and you
had to figure yourself out at all.
My parents were not very much in favor of my
going into the alternative school, but they'd split up and
they couldn't really stop me.
So it sounds like it was a very good move
that you went to the alternative school instead of the
other one because it allowed you to grow and learn
and do what you need to do.
Oh god, it was such a different world than Oh god,
it was. It was so different. It's like in those days,
it was commonly thought that if your kid was having
mental health problems, you know, it was your fault. You
did something bad. You know, yeah, there's there wasn't this
this theory of neurodivergence like we had were born with
certain things in our DNA. No, no, no, we're all
like blank slates to write on and and you know.
So it was so that that was like really difficult
because they were because I was trying to follow what
I what I knew were their expectations for me, which
were that you know, I'd be I'd be I'd be beautiful,
and i'd be you know, well liked, and I'd have
great grades and you know, every and and you know,
I just kind of breathe through school. The other thing
is that I was hyper lexic. That's that's another term
they didn't know about then. But I spontaneously mastered reading
before I was three.
Wow, that's awesome.
Yeah. I don't even remember learning how to read. I
just did it. That happens to like in the regular population,
the full population, it's maybe one in ten thousand kids.
I think with the autism spectrum, I don't know what
the exact percentages, but I know it's more than one percent.
It's at least maybe two or three percent of us.
So that's a much much higher percentage than with alistic kids.
Yeah, that's that's for sure. So did you have any
type of support system at all from coming from any
any parts of your life?
Once in a while, I mean once in a while
I would make friends, but we would talk about stuff.
There was just so much that I needed that I
didn't get.
So basically, it left you to work on yourself by yourself.
Yep, that was pretty much it.
I've got to say, though, you've done really well. Oh
thank you considering everything that you've been through and gone through,
and like you say, it took you so many years
to get it figured out. But once you did get
it figured out, you've grasped a hole. And this music
thing is just awesome.
Oh thank you?
Oh yeah, I just really love your concept. There's nothing
better than a song that tells a story. Okay, so
let's change gears a little bit. You've written a couple
of books that you mentioned. Did you get them published?
Well, the one that I was telling you about is
called the Amy Virus. Who knew, right, It's like this
came out and I finished it in twenty sixteen. It
was actually on the Moltnomo County Writers Project, which is
which is the Portland Library System. That was on their
ebook system and I was never able to get I mean,
I had some paper publishers who were vaguely some independent
publishers that were interested, but they wanted me to cut
like a third of my book out because they because
they said it was going to be too expensive to publish.
We'd have to charge thirty dollars for a paperback at
this length. And it's like yeah, okay, And I couldn't
get an agent to read it either because of the length.
You know, they would just leave word count and go no, no, no, no, no,
And so I was thinking, I was trying to. I
was wrestling with how I would cut it down because
it was like, I mean, I couldn't see how I
could get rid of more than maybe twenty pages of it,
and if that, and then and then and then somebody
actually read my book off the you know, off the
e book system, because it was on the overdrive system,
so any pretty much any library system could could access it.
And it was on smash Words too, so and apparently
somebody must have read it, and they put up this
page of it on TV Tropes, and I have no
idea who did it, but it was just like, this
thing is like full of spoiler bars and it's really detailed,
and it's like, obviously somebody really loves this book. So
I said, mmm, since it's now been put on TV
Tropes at its at its length in detail, I don't
think I can cut it.
Well. You probably could have if you'd wanted to, but
it just doesn't make sense at.
That point, right, yeah, exactly. Once it went on TV
Tropes at that length, it was going to be confusing.
If I had right right exactly.
I'd have to call it something else.
Yeah, yeah, and edit or whatever you wanted to do
with it. So what about the other one? Did you
ever finish it or whatever happened to that?
I never finished the first one, Okay, I mean I
finished it, but I didn't finish it. Finish it. It
was like I couldn't really get It's like I couldn't
really get it into Uh. I couldn't really get that
into an unacceptable length either, Right, I just wrote. I
just wrote too long.
So when you write and do things like that, it
sounds to me like you you really go into great detail.
You're very defined, and you explain so that everyone knows
what's kind of going on.
Yeah, sometimes too much detail.
Well you know, that's that's all part of it, right,
So so what are your hopes now now that you've
got your show going? You've got you you seem to
have a pretty good place in life, and you know,
understanding and and and knowing yourself and and what what
the autism allows you to do because of the way
to function. What's your uh, what's your hopes now that
that you can do with either your music or your
writing or both.
Well, I'm hoping I can take the show into as
many places as we'll have it I'm actually working with
a with an organization that's helping me develop a school
version of it.
Oh nice, so nice.
Yeah, and so some of the frames of reference are
going to have to be different. Like with that that
song about about Tracy Archers Tambourine, I would not even
have not only have to explain to them what the
Partridge Family was, but I also have to show them
what a nineteen seventies lunch box look like, what a
you know, what a record album looked like, what a
fan magazine looked like, because they would have no idea.
Well, you've you've definitely got an interesting life going. I mean,
I mean, it's it's sad that it took you so
long to find it, but I'm just glad that you did.
Yeah, thank you. I mean it would have been nice
if I could have gotten it together, like, you know,
a little bit sooner than this. But yeah, but this,
I mean, the show wouldn't exist in its present form
without everything that I've been through.
So I feel like, yeah, I don't know if you
watched Star Trek or not, I don't know if you're
a Treky. One movie they wanted to take and change Kirk.
They told them they could take away its pain. He said,
you can't do that. If you take away my pain, yeah,
then you've taken away my story, right. Yeah.
No, I just want to take this anywhere, anywhere I
can possibly go with it.
Right, Yeah, sounds good. I've got to say this has
been a great conversation. I've really enjoyed it, and I'm
just so happy you was able to come on.
Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate you having me on.
Absolutely my pleasure. And everyone, make sure you check out
Rhythm and Autism. Thanks for taking the time out of
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