The Deep Field and the Electric Picnic

JOAN WASSER is glad she didn’t become famous until she was 36.

The former girlfriend of doomed singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley and a 15-year veteran of the music industry, she knew people swallowed by fame. By the time success arrived, she was jaundiced and didn’t let it go to her head.

“I’ve been playing in bands since I was 20, 21,” she says. “I have watched a great many individuals not make it in the music industry. And I have watched a great many make it and observed the different ways in which it affected them. When I started making my own music I’d experienced a lot.”