it's sixteen miles to the promised land
and i promise you, i’m doing the best i can.
About this time two months ago (when the last one of these things went out - hi, hello, how are you?), I was about to embark on a stretch of shows that felt like both a marathon AND a sprint because I haven’t yet learned to check my calendar before buying tickets. And I haven’t yet learned that four nights in a row out, three weeks in a row isn’t reasonable with my age and alarm clock and inability to gauge proper footwear. On the other side of that, exhausted but without any real regrets, I’ve been thinking a lot about the music that can bring me to my feet and the music that can bring me to my knees.
About this time two years ago, I slurred my way through an explanation to a friend about the sadness I was feeling standing in the crowd at a Conor Oberst show listening to a song I’d loved for more than a decade. I’d been struck by the (sloppy) notion that I was maybe at the last show I’d ever be at where I knew every word to every song. My Lonestar-fueled hypothesis was that it was never again going to be possible to love an artist or an album or a song with the same intensity as I had when I’d had the time to pour over lyrics and hunt down every b-side or bootleg. My Modelo-fueled conclusion was that leaving that feeling behind was going to be really goddamn sad.
In the time since then I’ve been happily proven wrong over and over and over again (and largely less inclined to make sloshing proclamations at shows). Maybe the obsessive, teenage love isn’t accessible anymore (an unsarcastic “Thank you!” to brain development for that one), but I’ve learned to see and appreciate that love in more nuanced forms.
There’s the love I felt watching someone push through a small crowd to headbang to William Tyler’s acoustic guitar wizardry six inches from the tiny stage - a good portion of my good will going out to the one tall dude in all of mankind and human history to notice he was a tall dude at a concert and move to the side so I could still see anything at all.
There’s the love I felt watching The Beths try to grapple on-stage and on-air with the idea of getting through a short set while preoccupied with horrifying news from their home on the other side of the world. Watching them grieve for an unimaginable tragedy while pushing through their songs both filled my heart and ripped it in two, and I’ll always love their music with the good parts of my heart, but save a little room in the darker corners to hate the audience who shouted through the quiet moments.
There’s the love I felt watching the lead singer for Fontaines DC pace back and forth across the same stage even though I hadn’t learned to love the song the way I do now and just because the raw and anxious energy of it reminded me of being 20 and waking up at a New Year’s party to find someone moshing alone in a living room and being glad that I was once that person but no longer am.
There’s the love that made me declare that a Lucinda Williams concert was the ship I’d gladly go down with when the fire alarm went off halfway through her set. It was my second night in a row seeing her and we probably should have evacuated and the people I was with reminded me that unlike our unscheduled intermission, the sinking Titanic still had music. But no one made us leave, they were still serving drinks, the band did come back out and sometimes waiting for the right song is a stupid kind of love, but the right one anyway.
There’s the “Yes, Steve Earle just opened with ‘LA Freeway’ and closed with ‘Copperhead Road’, so maybe you’re doing okay after all” kind of love.
There’s also the “I didn’t know I needed to hear this Rilo Kiley song ever again, and especially not with balloons falling from the ceiling, but I maybe needed that more than most things” kind.
And there are Golden Hours, and there are unexpected Dixie Chicks covers, and there are thankfully still Conor Oberst shows to know all the words to, and there are the moments where you were pretty sure you were going to cry in public on a Tuesday but managed not to because you found other people to sing along with and sometimes just knowing that other people that get it is the way to realize that maybe that initial feeling of sadness was just the joy trying to find its way out.
And there’s the love that comes from finding not one, but two Ted Hawkins albums in the bins at the record store at the end of a really shitty day of my own making that reminded me that even when I feel deeply lonely and know exactly which choices brought me to feeling that way and exactly which songs I’d like to soundtrack my wallowing, the music’s still looking out and will guide me away from that impulse.
None of these are exactly the same kind of love I felt as a teenager with an ipod and insomnia and a pervasive need to hear everything but it’d be so very wrong to think they weren’t more than enough.
The sheer volume of incredible music that’s been released in the last two months has been stressing me out and one of the factors in the long delay between dispatches - don’t doubt the power of decision fatigue.. But, I’ll be back next week with less weird rambling and more playlists and album recommendations.
In the meantime, please send me what you’ve been listening to and as always…