I'm here with the band. Not really. I'm here with the band's web site manager, and I gave the lead singer a ride once. But if we're playing six degrees here, then yeah, I'm with the band.
I'm at a show for a local band. A band local to the city I live in, but had to drive an hour and a half to see. I'm at a coffee bar, it's late, and I can't stop myself from making the countdown of the hours until I have to be at work the next morning.
12...11...
Loud opening bands and endless sound checks. Look, a crossword puzzle.
10...
The countdown reaches midnight before Chip and Todd come onstage. Chip and Todd to me, The Port Huron Statement to you. I'm with the band, remember?
They start playing and I know that this is what it's about: a pair of goofy-looking guys jamming out to their homegrown tunes in their most comfortable jeans, favorite t-shirts, and oldest tennis shoes with the guitars they can't afford to smash. There just happened to be an audience watching. They might have noticed.
It was here that music still meant something, where people played because they just loved to do it, and me without my notebook. My right hand was black from writing on the local newspaper in whatever free space I can find. Tomorrow, which is now today, I will take these hasty notes and turn them into a neatly-typed piece, and no one will know its humble beginnings as scribbled black ink on typed black ink. Except that I told you, and it is for reasons such as these that I will never be a real writer.
9...8...
The audience is alternately quiet and respectful and then loud and enthusiastic as the songs come and go. They dig these guys, and they should. I know they're good without Casey having to even tell me, but he does so anyway just to make sure that I'm clear on that point.
7...
By the time they play "Tory", their anthem about the stripper in the American Revolution, we are theirs. We bounce without knowing it, a great mass of synchronized bobbings heads. We are all sitting together on God's dashboard, and it's a bumpy road.
And me, I stand in the back, scribbling across the personal ads, my hand resembling tar more and more with every word I write.
6...5...
Then it's all over, quick goodbyes before we're in the car again, heading back the winding mountain roads. We fight back sleep with our most potent tools: conversation, caffeine, and The Flaming Lips. The scenary grows more and more familiar, and as we pass the Dairy Queen on 105, Casey starts to get his things together, and I know we've survived another pilgrimage to Asheville. I try not to think about being cheerful in the morning as I travel the last few miles home.
4...
And I sleep.
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