Starcrost's Farrow: Liza with a Zig-Zag
'70s Austin jazz singer delayed a top legal career to sail around the world
“There was no turning back,” lawyer Liza Farrow-Gillespie said, sitting under a giant Robert Rauschenberg painting in the conference room of her firm’s 37th-floor downtown Dallas office. “It required a full commitment on my part.”
Farrow-Gillespie was not referring to the six years she and her anesthesiologist husband Alan spent sailing around the world on a 54-foot sloop. Nor was she talking about starting law school at 36.
This particular “all-in” decision was to drop out of UT at age 20 to become a professional jazz singer. This was the 1971 Temple High School valedictorian, who told her fellow students, “it’s not your potential, but what you accomplish.” To ditch her education to follow a lifelong pipe-dream would seem out of character, but just as Farrow-Gillespie never sang a song exactly the same way twice, her life’s path was unpredictable. Who takes a career break early in her attorney career to circumnavigate the globe?
“If I knew my mid-life crisis was going to be so much fun, I would’ve had it sooner,” she said.
I went up to Dallas to interview Ms. Farrow-Gillespie in 2018 for a lawyer trade magazine, unaware that she was once a rising star of the Austin jazz scene. The focus of the 800-word piece was how Farrow- Gillespie’s firm encouraged its lawyers- 13 of the 18 female- to have lives outside of work.
Starcrost released an album for Fable Records in 1976, but by the end of the next year the group- and Liza and bandleader boyfriend Mike Mordecai- had broken up. Farrow, who also played piano, paid the bills with solo gigs at the Blue Parrot on 15th St. and Caesar’s on East Riverside.
She gave L.A. a try, singing a “Run for the Border” ad for Taco Bell, and ooh-aahing in the background for the Carpenters and Joe Cocker. But one singing gig stands out: the soundtrack to Out of Africa, which won an Oscar. “It was on a soundstage with John Barry directing a 65-piece orchestra, with about a dozen singers, plus some of the top session players,” she said. “It was a magical thing.”
She reconnected with her Temple High boyfriend Alan Gillespie (their first kiss was as actors in a school production of Arsenic and Old Lace) in Los Angeles when he came out for a wedding and checked in on her. Alan (AKA “the Redhead”) was a doctor for the Air Force at the time. When his service was up the couple moved to Austin, so Liza could go back to UT. After getting her accounting degree, she took the LSATs on a lark and showed a high aptitude.
By her second year of law school, Farrow-Gillespie was editor of the law review and had a summer clerkship lined up with legendary Dallas Judge Barefoot Sanders. But the month she turned 38, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Even with a six-week recovery for a mastectomy and reconstruction, she graduated on time and went to work for Judge Sanders.
But a few days after Farrow-Gillespie was released from the hospital, she and her husband had the heart-to-heart that changed their lives. “Is this it?” she asked Alan. “Will we just go to work every day and then eventually die?” Ever the prince of levity, Alan replied, “You forgot TV.” Then, serious, he held his wife’s hand and asked her ultimate desire. “I’ve always wanted to sail around the world,” she told him of the fantasy she’d had since she read The Kon-Tiki Expedition at age 9. Alan admitted he had entertained the same fantasy.
The lawyer and the doctor banked half their paychecks for five years, and sold their house, cars and furniture, raising a half-million dollars for their blue-water escape. They started their journey in Fort Lauderdale, and stopped in about 50 countries along the way.
“We thought we’d be gone three years, but our money lasted six,” said Farrow-Gillespie, adding that the journey started with broken parts and some navigational miscalculations. “If I could’ve taken a taxi home from the Virgin Islands, I probably would have,” she said with a laugh.
The voyage of a lifetime ended in 2004, and the couple went back to Dallas, selling Heartsong III. “We thought our careers were over and we might have to get jobs flipping burgers,” said Farrow-Gillespie. “Who’s gonna hire a doctor or a lawyer who haven’t worked in six years? Still, it was worth it.”
They got their jobs back: Alan with Children’s Medical Center and Farrow-Gillespie with Sanders.
“Judge Sanders is still in my head. I hear him say, ‘Move it along’ when I’m taking too long to make a point,” said Farrow-Gillespie. “Another one was, ‘When you’re winning, sit down and shut up.’” Sanders was a music fan who came to see her ’90s band of attorneys, called Rough Justice.
“I’ve noticed that there is an inordinate percentage of lawyers who play music,” she said. “It’s the same left brain/right brain discipline.”
The firm she formed in 2007 with Heath, her good friend for 30 years, would be a female-centric practice, allowing associates to be in charge of their hours, without pressure. “We pay them for how many they work,” she said.
“[She] has fashioned a kinder, gentler firm culture, which brings out the best in everybody,” said Debra Witter, who became a name partner in June 2018. “We have an informal rule when we’re interviewing: no mean girls, no drama queens and no mansplainers.”
Farrow-Gillespie’s legal focuses include wealth management and estate planning, which seems fitting since she’s already experienced retirement. “We just did it in the middle,” she said.
Just as with musicians, there are money gigs for writers. Painful, but well-paying. “I thoroughly endured it,” fiddle great Johnny Gimble would say after such a gig. The lawyer magazine assignments paid a dollar a word, but took a little bit out of your soul.
But profiling Liza Farrow-Gillespie was more in line what I usually do- writing about musicians with great stories. She was full of good energy and we exchanged emails occasionally. I would send her an old Starcrost photo I found somewhere, and she sent me some chapters from her memoir (which were really funny and interesting.) One day I got an email that her cancer had returned. A couple months later came an update: “I’m still alive, but chemo is kicking my ass.” She was so strong and positive. She kept a blog updating friends on her latest medical situation. The last entry had her entering hospice care.
Liza Farrow-Gillespie died of ovarian cancer July 3, 2020. She told me a couple years earlier that she had no regrets about dropping out of UT at 20 to sing in clubs, even if it caused a 10-year education gap. And you can believe she was happy with her decision to delay a legal career to sail around the world. There’s a great lesson in Liza’s story.
“Falling in with that group of jazz musicians in Austin had a huge impact on me,” she said, comparing vocal improvisation to the “tacking” maneuver in sailing. That’s where zigging and zagging is the best way to advance against the wind. “It may take a little longer to get there,” Liza said. “But it’s a much more interesting route.”
Great profile! During our senior year at Temple High School in 1971, Liza played piano accompaniment for my trombone solo at U.I.L. competition. Part of her excellence was her willingness to perform a thankless task to help a classmate. Her 2019 memoir about circumnavigating the globe with Alan is a joy to read. https://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Heart-Song-Liza-Farrow-Gillespie/dp/1543957412
Mr. Corcoran,
I would like to thank you for writing such a great article on my Aunt Liza. She was a mentor to me. I’m forever grateful for her voice and wisdom. I truly enjoyed learning more about her and just wanted to say thank you.