It was an unassuming brick ranch house on a culdesac, close to a
small river that was really more of a stream, except when heavy rains
came, or in wintertime, when it froze deep and we could ice skate
across, up and down. It was a suburb much like any other suburb, except
it was the furthest one west of Chicago, and as a result, had the chance
to grow from a small farming town to a sprawling upper-middle class
assortment of bric-a-brac shops full of things that most people couldn’t
afford. The traffic got worse and the smiles faded from so many faces,
because the folks who live there now come and go so fast, there’s no
percentage in being nice. What difference does it make if you’re in
and out in a year and a half? Time to invest in the stock market, but no
time to invest in life, but of course – I digress.. This is how it was
and how it is, and while I grew up there, it was mostly how it was. A
small, closed community, 99 percent white, middle-class, Protestant,
with a bit of a Catholic fringe. It was about as close to the middle of
the bell curve as you could get.
My parents were first generation Americans, striving hard to fit in
within the parameters of this sort of place. They did a good job of it
and did well by my brother, and me and I didn’t perceive any
discomfort with their place in the community until much later. When we
were adults and could talk about these sorts of things. My upbringing is
not that unique, especially for a creative sort, in that I felt out of
place a bit, always, although I could never figure out why. When I got a
bit older and turned onto the Beatles, Dylan, Springsteen, soul music,
reggae, the Clash, Orson Welles, Dashiell Hammett, Bukowski, I started
to put it all in some sort of perspective. The scepters of Art and
Freethinking and Possibility, the D of
survival turned my head around and made me understand why the community
fit me like a thrift-store jacket - okay, but never quite right.
Now, my brother was much older than I, and as a result, had already
moved out of the house when I was in my teens. He lived in an apartment
in Chicago, not far from Wrigley Field. Every once in awhile he’d
invite me into spend the weekend and hang out with him, and this was
always a magical time. Everything was different in the city. The sounds
and the way they bounced off our skin, the feel of street beneath your
shoes, the energy of the place always made a huge impression on me. We’d
go out to eat at some grimy all-night diner straight out of a Hopper
painting or we’d sit in the left field bleachers for a Cubs game or we’d
take in a second-run movie at the Parkway on Clark or we’d make the
rounds of all the best used record stores. It didn’t matter – it was
all cool. At night, after he went to sleep, I’d lay on the couch and
listen to the sounds that were all around me - sirens in the distance,
cars barreling down the street, loud voices shouting across the way,
quiet voices whispering in a vestibule, and, occasionally a distant
gunshot or firecracker. It was hard to tell one from the other. Lights
would flash in the window as the headlights from a passing car shot
through the shade and cast shadows across the room. The streetlamp
outside burned all night. Everything was so different from the suburbs,
where the quiet stillness of night was stifling and a bit upsetting, the
tension in a suspense movie, the quiet before the inevitable, the false
reality that would one day be exposed. To this day, I’m more
comfortable hearing the sounds of a city while I sleep. Friends might
have difficulty with the Manhattan night, the horns honking and shouts
caroming down the block, but bring it on, give me those jackhammers, I
say.
These trips to my brother’s are also forever connected to the music
of Van Morrison - I didn’t get into Van seriously until later, but my
brother had a bunch of his albums. Tupelo Honey. Moondance.
Wavelength. Something about Van fit perfectly with the city and
especially, the night. It wasn’t like the suburbs. People in the
suburbs listened to half and half dairy creamers like Thin Lizzy. All
respect to the late Mr. Lynott - people in the city listened to Van.
And, Van was real. That’s no lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, as he might’ve
sung. Did he ever sing that? Like Ro-ro-ro-ro-rosy? Well, if he didn’t,
he should have. Maybe he will some day.
Well, I remember one particular trip to the city when my brother and
I went to see a band that was pretty popular around Chicago at the time.
I forget their name - it was something like the Heartbeats – but
eventually, they became known in local legend lore as Nathan Coates. It
was the dead of winter, there was leftover snow and slush on every
corner and on the curbs, little mountains zig-zagging around the parking
meters, snow as dirty and grey as the sky. The bar was a corner bar,
like so many in northern cities like Chicago and Milwaukee and Detroit.
I was only 15 at the time and didn’t even get carded. I had this nasty
mustache that looked like something you’d normally find on a football
coach, not a 15-year-old aspiring musician. It was tribute to my
hormones, but certainly not to my style or good taste. I wanted to look
older, which I did. Not handsome, just older. Anyway, I got in with a
cinch, and that was exciting. The whole atmosphere in the club was
magical, especially to this kid from the suburbs who had found a certain
triangle of an aspiring rocker who’d recently discovered songwriting
and his own certain D of survival.
The club was standard, as I’d later learn – a long, dark, narrow
corner dive. To the right sat the band’s equipment and speakers or
"mains", large black boxes crammed into a small dark space.
Mirrored signs advertising brands of beer lined the wall. Opposite the
stage were a few round tables, formica tops, and those metal and vinyl
barstools you find everywhere. There must be some plant in Terre Haute,
Indiana that makes those stools and ships ‘em all over the universe. I
wouldn’t be surprised if I switched on the news someday and saw
pictures of astronauts in a space station cafe sitting on those very
same stools. Anyway, beyond the tables and the equipment, deeper into
the room, stood a jukebox and a pinball machine, and to the right of
that, directly behind the "stage", a small bar lined with
stools. The T.V. was hanging above the bar, at the opposite end, and the
bartender moved slowly, with blank face, wiping the counter. Two or
three old grizzled regulars sat at the bar, watching a game show on T.V.
They looked Polish or Ukranian, or Greek. Chicago is that kind of city -
these men are everywhere and no matter how many generations pass, they
hold down the fort, in parks and on buses, and in corner bars. Craggly
faces, overcoats, big calloused hands. It’s hard to imagine them as
babies, but you know they were - once.
According to a flyer on the door, the show was supposed to start at
10 and we got there about a quarter of and grabbed two of those stools
directly across from the stage. My brother and I were the only people in
the joint, apart from the band, a couple of band girlfriends, the
regulars, and the bartender. The players were milling about the stage,
tinkering with their equipment, laughing nervously over some private
jokes, setting drinks on their amplifiers and doing what only musicians
can do so well – hurry up and wait.
The show started about half an hour later, as the band kicked into a
solid brand of Springsteenesque rock and pop that was decidedly Midwest
in flavor and origins. A couple times removed from Van the Man, but the
music sounded very much like the night, in a city where people are out
and about no matter how cold it is, and something is happening and being
underage, I was given the key to this secret world. I paid close
attention to what the band was doing with their songs, the rhythm of the
lyrics, the bass guitar and the drum and the way they locked in, the way
the rhythm guitarist supported the drums, yet left enough space to move
melodically behind the lead. The vocals were straight-ahead; two part
harmonies at times, to reinforce dynamics. I didn’t know it at the
time, but the performance, like so many others I would see throughout
the years, added to the pool of musical experience that would spill into
my own songs and my own life, and particularly, my own way of looking at
things. That’s why it’s always good to avoid crappy music and
literature – it poisons you. But, of course, I digress.
I’m sure we were the only people in the audience and I’m sure the
band thought the performance would be quickly forgotten. I didn’t, but
it wasn’t simply because I can look back as I write these words years
later. There’s no sense of posterity or boxed sets in a corner bar in
Chicago, that time, that place, but why does something have to be
photographed or recorded to be considered permanent anyway? Never mind,
because I never forgot that the band played as hard as if they were at
the Uptown Theatre, opening for the Boss himself. They played like they
meant it, and that registered, that clicked. They didn’t carry an
attitude on the stage because they were somehow slighted by the Gods of
success that particular night, no, they played hard and for me, it made
that night that much more magical. About a year later, when they
released their first and only independent album, I bought it. I dug it.
I still have it.
At the time, I remember being, not envious, but respectful of those
local legends playing in a dive for next to no one, because I was
itching to get my own band together and carry on with the development of
my own music. I wanted to be up on that stage and I didn’t think about
how many people might come out or what kind of money I’d be making, I
just wanted to be doing it, because somehow, doing it meant be part of
something, living for something extra. It was more than just watching
the world go by, it was part of being the mechanism that makes it turn.
So, I’m writing this recollection for my friend Shaun Belcher in
the U.K., for his Flyin’ Shoes magazine, and I’m making plans to
come over pretty soon and hang out and promote my first European
release. I am out there doing it, so to speak, three indie albums
stateside under my belt and another on the way. I guess you could say I
have a "career" of sorts, and some of the highs and lows,
worries or concerns that sometimes hang heavy on the definition of that
italicized word. But, you know, I try to let that go. It’s true that
sometimes things don’t click in the studio or a booking isn’t
happening or the crowd isn’t as big as you’d hoped or you don’t
feel like you’re in the best form. And, it’s true that sometimes, if
I don’t watch it, little negative voices creep into my cerebellum and
try to make themselves heard. But, I’d rather listen to the car horns
outside and the voices in the street and the sound coming from the
speakers. I’d rather suck things up and think of that first night,
that time in Chicago with my brother, when the lights were on up and
down the street, cabbies darting in and out of traffic, Van Morrison on
the stereo, and the band in the corner bar painting the perfect hazy
neon backdrop for all of it, and pretty soon I can’t help but smile a
little, I think about the players onstage with me and the sounds blowing
through the air, and the perfect crystalization of those notes as time
does stand still and there’s a magic, there’s a stillness, that
magic, and I realize I’m looking in at the moment and my good fortune,
a beautiful life, doing something I love to do, a passion that gives and
yet is given, and it’s taken me a few years to realize it, but this is
also privilege, a gift, to be allowed to carry the torch, in ways big or
small, to travel the roads in the wake of souls that made things turn,
inspirations that lifted me in ways that went far beyond the music,
starting back in that suburban town where things weren’t quite right
and I didn’t know why. Now I know exactly what Van the Man meant when
he sang of his "Beautiful Obsession." I know and I try to
honor it, best I can. That’s all I can do. And, that’s no
lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.