Instead, he found yet another side of Joplin.

“From the Janis we saw onstage, I’d bet she’d write letters filled with expletives,” said Myler. “I said, I’ve got to see these.” Myler had a good idea of the Janis that would be revealed in the correspondence: the pained lover of the blues songs she sang the hard-living archetype who died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27. But Myler couldn’t resist at least peeking into what Laura Joplin offered.”Their mother had just died, and she told me, ‘Before you say no, we’ve found a collection of letters Janis had written home to the family,'” said Myler. The theater veteran wasn’t all that interested he had just finished what he calls the “womb-to-tomb” show on Williams, and wasn’t looking to immediately do another. Laura wanted to see Myler give her sister similar treatment. Laura had seen “Hank Williams: Lost Highway,” Myler’s biographical musical on the country legend who, like Janis, had lived fast and died very young. In the early ’90s, Myler was approached by Laura Joplin, Janis’ sister. By the time I saw her, she had a real ease about being in the rock scene.”Some decades later, Myler was among the first, outside of Joplin’s circle of family and close friends, to get an even fuller take on the singer. You’d see her parked in her psychedelic Porsche, chatting. “She loved the kids, and the kids loved her. Myler obtained further insight from his aunts and uncles, who ran a Sausalito butcher shop that Joplin frequented.”Janis was always so available to the kids,” said Myler, now 53 and a resident of New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Myler, a child of the ’60s and of Sebastopol, a small town about 50 miles north of San Francisco, saw Joplin not only onstage, at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds near his home and in legendary clubs like the Fillmore, but on the streets of San Francisco. Randy Myler thought he had a fairly well-rounded perspective on Janis Joplin, one that went beyond the dynamic onstage personality.

Andra Mitrovich, in the role of Janis Joplin, rehearses for Theatre Aspen's production of 'Love, Janis.' (Mark Fox/Aspen Times Weekly)

Love janis by laura joplin