Thank you for reading.

-billy

*************************************************************************************************************

The green garbage truck barreled down the street, down shifting and grinding gears as it navigated the narrow alleyway. Brakes hissed as it came to a stop, a brief pause in the pre-dawn hours. “Beep, Beep, Beep” the truck warned, breaking the silence as it backed toward the dumpster. Then a thud, as metal met metal. The mechanical arm whirred outward, engaged the dumpster, and lifted it skyward over the side, showering detritus into the gaping maw of the truck. It was a familiar roar in lower Manhattan by then, part of the city’s soundtrack. An echo of the solemn procession of trucks that had come before this one, loaded with twisted steel and still smoldering ash.

Vanessa slept through it all till That Dog started barking. Yelping really.

She opened one eye to see That Dog seated in the doorway across from her bed, head cocked to the side like he was studying her.

“15 more minutes,” she pleaded.

“Yap, Yap” the dog replied, rising upward on its hind legs with each bark. That Dog was a white-bodied Jack Russell Terrier with a smooth coat and a Spuds Mackenzie like brown spot around his left eye.

Vanessa rolled onto her side and pushed herself upright. “I’m up, I’m up.”

That Dog wagged its tail in appreciation. Her husband Brad named him that as a joke and she never corrected it.

Vanessa never imagined she’d have a dog. A German shepherd knocked her off a picnic table when she was two, and she’d never quite forgiven the species.

But here she was attaching a leash to his collar and taking him for a walk with her hair pinned to the crown of her head with a chopstick and a pair of Penn State sweatpants she slept in cinched tight around her waist. They’d been Brad’s. Despite how poorly they fit she couldn’t bear to get rid of them.

She grabbed her coat and they headed outside. That Dog pulled the leash, eager to get to the park.

“Hang on.” The park wasn’t going anywhere.

That Dog stopped as soon as they hit the grass and relieved himself. He then turned and shuffled in place like he was covering it up.

Two bulldogs came to investigate, straining against their red leashes, snorting and grunting as they circled That Dog.

“They are so cute.” Vanessa said to the bulldog’s owners. “What are their names?”

“This is Rocky, and this big guy is Bullwinkle.” the bulldog owner said, trying to untangle the leashes as the dogs apprised each other.

“Those are fun names.”

“Yeah, my husband’s a freelance artist. He loves classic cartoons. He even found this place on Chambers Street that engraved tiny cartoon faces on their name tags.”

“What’s your dog’s name?” the woman asked.

“That Dog.”

“That Dog?” Really? Interesting. Bet there’s a story there.”

“Yeah. Kinda.” She wished Brad were here to tell it. Talking about him was still hard.

The bulldog owner heard the catch in her voice. “You don’t have to. I was just making conversation.”

“No, it’s okay.” Vanessa tried on a smile. Her therapist kept telling her to not avoid him in conversation. “We moved downtown a few years ago. Brad walked to work every day.”

In her head, she could still see him coming through the door to their apartment the first day he saw That Dog.

“You should see him, Nessa,” he’d said. Another nickname he’d bestowed. “He’s the cutest thing.”

“Your first friend in the city,” she’d teased. He would get so excited about the simplest things.

“He hangs around the porn shop,” he’d said. “You know the one on Washington Street?”

“A dog in a porn shop?” Vanessa had stared at him. “So he’s a working breed?”

Brad laughed till he shook at the one, his chest heaving for air. Her mother would have described it as “He Got Tickled.”

And then, the next day. A new installment.

“Today he trailed me all the way to Liberty St,” Brad said. “Like he was escorting me.”

“Don’t you fall in love,” she said, pulling him into an embrace. “I don’t think I can beat the competition.”

“Never,” he said. “I only have eyes for you. But what would you think if we adopted him?”

“I don’t know, Brad. He must belong to someone.”

“I don’t think so. He’s always waiting for me.”

“You don’t even know his name.”

“I figured it out today.”

“You figured out his name?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that?”

“The owner of one of the stores came out and yelled, ‘That Dog! Like everyone on the block already knew him by that name.” Brad explained “Then he looked right at me and asked, ‘He’s yours?’”

“That’s a terrible name!”

“Who am I to argue with the neighborhood?”

That Dog surged forward and Vanessa tightened her grip on the leash.

“The name stuck and here we are.” And that was how she got stuck with a dog.

“That’s cute. I thought maybe it was because of the band.”

“The band?”

“Yeah. Pop punk band from LA. I was their publicist at one point. You know Maya Rudolph from Saturday Night Live? She was their original drummer.”

That Dog jumped up on Vanessa’s leg. “Hear that boy. You’re named after a band”

That Dog barked in agreement.

“Do we live in the same building? I think I’ve seen you before. I’m Giovanna.”

“Vanessa. I’m over in Le Rivage.” Vanessa said, pointing to the Art Deco High Rise on the corner of the West Side Highway. “5th Floor”

“We are too! How funny. I’m surprised we have never run into each other.”

Vanessa braced for the next question. She knew it was coming.

“So where were you?”

The question hung there. In New York, it was like asking about the weather.

“I was at work in Union Square.” Vanessa said slowly, practiced. She tried not to offer more than was asked. “I watched it on the tv in my boss’s office.”

“We were home when the attacks happened. My husband and I carried the dogs down 24 flights of stairs.”

“That must have been hard.”

“And your husband?”

Vanessa winced. 1 year, 1 months and 19 days later it was still hard to fathom.

Giovanna’s face changed. The leashes went slack for a moment, Rocky and Bullwinkle pausing as if they’d picked up on it too.

“He umm, … he died that day.” she said. That Dog looked up like he knew she was talking about Brad. “We’re not sure what happened. We think he might have gone into one of the buildings to help”

“You poor thing. I am so sorry.” Giovanna said “If you ever need anything, anything at all we are on the 24th floor.”

“Thank you.” Vanessa said. “I appreciate that.

“Come on boys, let’s go. Breakfast awaits!” Giovanna said.

“Thank you,” Vanessa called out as Giovanna walked away.

“Let’s get you home! I’ve got a busy morning.”

That Dog jumped up, head faked like Kobe Bryant, and took off running dragging Vanessa behind.

*

“Vanessa, how have you been sleeping?” Her therapist asked. She had a dark complexion, with unkempt bangs, and clip-on earrings that she removed when they started her session.

“OK. Other than That Dog waking me at daybreak.” Her therapist’s office was imposing, dark wood, low light, and high back chairs. The only splash of color was a bouquet of flowers on the desk in the corner.

“And how would you say this week has been? “ Her therapist’s voice was smooth, like a spoonful of honey.

“Ran into a neighbor in the park. I was able to tell her about Brad.”

“And how did that feel?”

“Fine I think.” Vanessa said, balling up the used tissue. “I got through it without sobbing hysterically.”

“That’s great.” Her therapist wrote something on the pad in front of her.

“Got asked the question, for like the millionth time. It’s exhausting .”

“Everyone is grieving. They are just trying to make a connection.”

“Grief shouldn’t be a conversation starter.”

“Do you think you are just avoiding the feelings that come with answering the question?”

“God no! It’s just everything is put through that lens now. First time garbage has been picked up since, first time a home Knicks game has been played since. The paper even had an article about the first parade. It’s like everyone is congratulating themselves for not dying.”

“Can’t we just move on?”

“What does moving on look like to you?”

Vanessa paused. Far away a horn honked. The clock on the mantle ticked. The room was silent, waiting for her to answer.

“Leave the past behind.”

“Then why keep That Dog?”

Vanessa looked away.

“From what you’ve told me you’ve always hated dogs…” The therapist shuffled pages on her note pad before reading “You said that when you were little a German Sheppard bowled you over trying to get to a bag of wonder bread.”

Vanessa curled her legs under butt and wrapped her arms around her chest.

“I’m struck by the contrast between your history with dogs, and where you are now. You’ve been chased, you’ve been bitten and yet you’re getting up before dawn with That Dog. What do you make of this shift?”

Vanessa felt cornered.

“I don’t know,” “It’s just ..,”Vanessa stammered.

“Take your time.”

“That Dog was Brad’s. Everything about him.” Vanessa teared up.

The therapist handed her a box of tissues.

“How he came into our life, how he got his name, even how excited Brad was when he brought him home.”

“Back then the dog was just one of Brad’s playful quirks. The thing that made Brad Brad. But when I see him now, he makes me so angry.”

“Angry about what?”

“Angry that he went into that building. Angry that he died. Angry that all I’m left with is a furry alarm clock.”

“How does it feel to say that you are angry at Brad outloud?”

“Terrible. I feel so guilty for even thinking that.”

“It’s okay to be angry at Brad.”

“It’s not. Brad couldn’t help it, he was just being himself.”

“It sounds like That Dog has become a monument to Brad’s impulsivity. The same instinct that drove him to bring home a dog from a porn shop is what drove him into a burning building.”

Vanessa wiped a single hot tear from under her eye with her crumpled tissue.

“A Monument,” Vanessa repeated under her breath.

The therapist waited, letting the ticking clock mark the time. Finally she spoke, her voice reassuring.

“One other thing I’m curious about. The porn shop, on Washington Street. Have you ever actually been there?”

“I don’t want to go down there.” Vanessa whispered. She purposely avoided it, cutting a wide path around the void. The fires were out, the cleanup complete, but the scars remained like the tattered missing flyers that littered the city.

“You’re already living with the dog. I wonder what would happen if you went back, not to the World Trade Center, but to the sidewalk in front of the porn shop.”

The Therapist leaned in, her hands crossed over her knees, and spoke.

“That Dog was Brad’s story. It was the last chapter he wrote.” She paused, looking Vanessa in the eye. “Maybe it’s time to write Vanessa’s story.”

*

Vanessa opened her apartment door, and was greeted by the smell.

“Eww” she said, clasping her hand over her mouth and gagging. “I wasn’t gone that long.”

That Dog stood at the end of the hallway, rigid save for the side to side swish of his tail.

“You couldn’t wait? She asked, as she passed by and threw her purse on the counter.

Vanessa grabbed a roll of paper towels and followed That Dog as he sniffed his way across the floor, leading her to the puddle and the pile.

The apartment was a corner unit, long and narrow with 90-degree-angle-wrap-around corner windows. When Brad and Vanessa toured the apartment for the first time, the broker said “Ta Da” and dramatically opened the blinds to an unobstructed view of the South Tower of The World Trade Center.

“Just think, Nessa,” Brad said, pulling her into an embrace. “No matter where you go in the city, you can follow the World Trade Center Home.”

They moved in, and were happy downtown. They walked the city, getting lost on purpose knowing that they could find their way home.

The memory faded, replaced by the smell of bleach.

“What am I going to do with you?” Vanessa asked as she kneeled down and wiped the floor.

That Dog licked the back of her hand as she worked.

“My therapist thinks you’re a monument.”

He cocked his head to the side, his expression almost human in its understanding.

“But really you’re a monster, sent to torment me.” She rubbed the back of his neck as That Dog’s collar jingled. She grabbed the heart shaped name tag and rubbed her finger across the smooth surface. An unpolished bit of business. If her world hadn’t spun off its axis, she thought, you’d have a real name.

She didn’t think of that Tuesday morning then, with its cloudless blue sky. She thought of the night before when the sky opened up and a storm swung low engulfing the towers whole. She and Brad sat in the dark with the blinds open, drank wine and marveled as lightning scattered across the sky, illuminating the Towers. The Strokes, Brad’s latest favorite band, buzzed low on the stereo. That Dog snoozed on the couch, his head resting on Brad’s lap.

“Maybe it’s time we gave him a name,” Vanessa said, topping off their glasses.

“Who?” Thunder rumbled in the background as That Dog lifted his head sleepily.

Vanessa nodded at the furry creature between them.

“What’s wrong with That Dog?”

“I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right.”

“I’ll make a deal with you. You think of the name and I will get that heart-shaped tag engraved with it. Deal?” He held his glass up.

“Deal,” They clinked glasses before she burrowed into his open arms.

It was the last time she felt safe. The last time tomorrow felt like a promise of wonder instead of a threat.

Now the skyline was wounded, the horizon a row of jagged columns like a giant game of tetris waiting for the next piece to fall. And That Dog still didn’t have a name.

Vanessa thought about what her Therapist said as she stroked That Dog. Maybe it was time to write her own story.

“Wanna go for a walk?” Before she even got the words out, That Dog raced to the front door.

This One's Called…Wonder (Part 1)

“That’s the end of the first half,” the announcer said “with your Golden State Warriors leading the defending Eastern Conference Champion Philadelphia 76ers, 48 to 41.”

“Do you need anything?” our publicist asked as he stood up and stretched. We traveled to the bay area for a weekend of Los Lobos shows, but took in the basketball game when his contact scored us primo seats.

“A napkin, maybe.” I said, brushing popcorn off my shirt. “And another beer.”

Before he left, it started. Lights flashed, and a distinctive horn blast lifted from an obscure 60’s jazz record filled the stadium. Warrior girls in tight shorts ran onto the court past a dejected Allen Iverson who was shaking his head as he headed into the locker room. A heavy looping breakbeat, driving bassline, and then a shouted vocal:

“Get Up! Get Up! Put The Body In Motion.”

The crowd bunched their shoulders, and bounced along, 18,064 people whipping themselves into a frenzy imitating a Mitsubishi car commercial.

By that point I would have recognized the song anywhere, but the hairs on my neck still stood up in the excitement.

I first heard The Wiseguys “Start The Commotion” back in late 1997 or early 1998 when I was the production manager for Mammoth Records. At that time, I heard most of the new projects we signed before the rest of the staff thanks to a massive ten disc burner that sat on the corner of my desk. When a deal was being planned, It was my job to burn copies of the music and distribute to the A&R staff.

Mammoth signed a joint venture with LA based Nickelbag Records. Nickelbag was owned by the Dust Brothers, the highly influential production team responsible for Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique, Beck’s Odelay and many other genre-bending records. The deal brought Mammoth instant credibility, and a pipeline of new releases produced by the Dust Brothers at their Silverlake studio. In fact I remember Mammoth founder Jay Faires saying that he did the deal just to get the Dust Brothers long-awaited solo record, which by that point had attained mythical status thanks to a steady stream of mentions in Spin, CMJ and other trend-setting press.

Nickelbag had licensed The Wiseguys album The Antidote for North American distribution from the UK label Wall Of Sound, in a deal that was common for the time. The Wiseguys were actually one guy, a British DJ called Touché (real name Theo Keating). The record was a crate digger’s wet dream, an infectious mix of rock, hip-hop, and electronic samples commonly referred to as Big Beat. As I recall, it was one of the only records on our release schedule not produced by the Dust Brothers.

Because the record had already been released in the UK, there wasn’t much production work to be done. We had to assign new catalog numbers (NB-0015) and add in the Nickelbag and Mammoth logos to the existing artwork. I put into production 12” single, CD singles, advance copies for press, and commercial CDS and 2xLPS.

While the deal brought Mammoth instant credibility, it also surfaced a host of problems that lawyers would be untangling for years to come.

Immediately, Disney balked at funding a label called Nickelbag. They were unequivocal in their belief that a drug reference would bring down the “House of Mouse.” I was ordered to retrieve the films used for production from the manufacturing plant and have them destroyed. It wasn’t enough to just ask the plant to shred them, Disney asked us to have them shipped back to their Burbank offices for disposal.

While I was undoing my work, the Dust Brothers and their team presented a new name and logo. I remember the snickers that went around the table when the new name of Hi-Ho records was unveiled. In my memory there was a tiny dwarf outline, but that could just be my memory making that idea even more ridiculous.

Before we could restart production Disney balked again, convinced that poor Walt was rolling over in his grave with the blasphemous way Snow White intellectual property was being treated.

Finally, all parties agreed to the new moniker of IDEAL, with each letter in a balloon-like shape. I’m not sure if the Disney lawyers understood they were agreeing to a sly drug reference or whether they had just given up. Either way, the third label name in the course of a year, (and its corresponding set of catalog numbers) stuck, and we were off to the races.

The record was well received but didn’t get much attention in the US upon release in 1998. The lead single “Ooh La La” was worked to college Radio and DJ pools, but didn’t get enough traction that anyone would remember it. It came and went, like a lot of good records did back then.

By early 2000, Disney shut down Mammoth North Carolina and moved me to New York to work for Mammoth 2.0. Besides our publicist, I was the only employee left that had any connection to Mammoth’s glory days. By then, I had forgotten about the Wiseguys.

Then, in early 2001, a strange thing happened. Deutsch Advertising built a campaign called “Are You In” targeting Generation Y. They were chasing a coveted demographic of sixteen-to-twenty-year-olds who hated traditional commercials but lived for music and style. A year earlier, Moby had shown this tactic could work, when every track from his 1999 Play was licensed, turning a flop into a multi-platinum success. Suddenly, ad execs were digging for the next left-field electronic track to break.

To hook them, Deutsch tossed out the standard automotive marketing playbook of boring financing rates and safety features, opting instead to create what they called “pieces of entertainment.” The formula was simple: put a bunch of attractive kids inside a silver Mitsubishi Eclipse and film them uninhibitedly dancing, popping, and singing along to The Wiseguys “Start The Commotion.”

Before 2001, if an indie artist put their track in a commercial they were accused of selling out. With “Start The Commotion” though, it was proved that a television commercial could break left-field music bypassing traditional press and radio outlets.

One of the execs was quoted as saying “Since no one had heard the song, it fit into the spirit of what we do.”

They certainly heard it in 2001. Throughout that summer, “Start The Commotion” was everywhere. Driven entirely by a car commercial, a nearly 3-year-old track exploded and started to climb the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The success of the ad literally started a commotion in our ten-person office. Overnight we had a hit and before we could react, the lawyers started getting involved. A slew of artists, publishers and rights holders showed up at Disney’s door claiming they were owed a piece of the pie. I’m not sure how the ad ran without the song being properly licensed, but at one point I was told 19 different entities had made claims on the song and the album including massive artists such ZZ Top, Deep Purple, and Booker T &The M.G.s. There was even a Sesame Street sample that had to be cleared.

Since the Dust Brothers and everyone at Mammoth was gone by that point, I was the only one with any institutional knowledge about the project. I was fluent in catalog numbers and side breaks, not publishing splits and overrides.

I was quizzed relentlessly by the Disney Lawers:

“Did IDEAL get the publishing cleared?”

“Is the main riff the Ventures or Dick Dale?”

And my favorite “Do you know where any of the signed contracts are?” Apparently when they shut down the North Carolina office, some items were “lost” in transit.

One afternoon while all of this madness was going on, I got a call from rapper Greg Nice’s manager. By that point it had been established that the iconic vocal that powered “Start The Commotion” was sampled from his song “Set It Off.” I took the call, expecting to just have to point him to lawyers.

“Hey man, I need your help.” the manager said.

“My help?”

“Yeah, your help. I heard you the man!”

“You’ll have to talk to the lawyers,” I stammered. “I can’t negotiate anything...”

“Nah,Nah, I ain’t talking about all that. Greg wants to go to the New York Auto Show. You know, a personal appearance with the new Mitsubishi Eclipse. Think you can hook it up?”

“Let me see what I can do.”

I shared what I knew with the lawyers, and helped right the ship. We put on a full court press, launched a new campaign, and slapped the phrase “As Heard In The Mitsubishi Commercial” everywhere we could.

Disney got more directly involved, including the track in the Ben Stiller Movie Zoolander. I got to go to a premiere-like screening of the movie with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.

At one point, completely over my head, I had a call with Mitsubishi’s US team about the possibility of giving away Mitsubishi Eclipse’s at commercial radio. The Wiseguys Theo Keating came to New York and DJed an event we set up, momentarily stopping traffic on the Lower East Side. It wasn’t the Beatles in 1964, but for a self professed indie rocker from North Carolina, it was an incredibly surreal, exciting time to be in the music business.

So when I heard the song blasting through the arena speakers and saw the reaction, I wasn’t surprised. Despite all the obstacles, great music always finds a home. Sometimes it might just take a few million dollars and a bunch of attractive people dancing in a car to do it.

The song ended and the Warrior Girls ran off the court just as our publicist made it back to our row.

“Here’s your beer.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the royal blue plastic cup.

“Did you hear the Wiseguys?”

“Yeah, the crowd went nuts.”

“Hey, remember when we couldn’t get anyone to listen to them? And now….”

Start The Commotion peaked at #31 in Billboard’s August 25th, 2001 chart. We thought the song still had a long way to go because Mitsubishi had a full slate of ads to run in the fall. After 9/11, though, everything was scrapped, and the song faded from mainstream view.

This One’s Called… Start The Commotion.

PS Besides the Wiseguys, Nickelbag / IDEAL/ Hi-Ho Records released a string of great, though criminally overlooked, records, including April March, Natural Calamatity, and my personal favorite Creeper Lagoon.

PPS The Dust Brothers had a notoriously subversive streak. In 1999, after Disney washed their hands of the joint venture, the label put out a press release on April 1st claiming they were reverting back to the name Hi Ho Records due to a European distribution conflict. Whether it was completely true or just a veiled shot at Burbank, it fit their identity perfectly.

PPPS More than once since that summer, I have had random industry people tell me they were the one responsible for the song being synched in the commercial.

“Boy, you have a hell of a poker face,” my boss at Putt Putt said. I was fifteen. He was teaching me to upsell from single games to a ten pack ticket. “Don’t say anything once you’ve made the offer.”

When I interviewed to work at Disney, they flew me out to Los Angeles, put me up in a hotel, and dropped me in the C-suite with two secretaries and a leopard print couch.

“You don’t say much, do you?” the executive remarked.

In reality, I was petrified. Afraid of being exposed as a fraud. Afraid I didn’t belong in that room.

I shook my head no, and waited him out. While sweat trickled down my back and my hands shook under the table, he negotiated with himself, offered me more than I was expecting, and a generous move package to boot.

I’m sure I learned it watching my father. He spent years managing a department store, talking to customers and employees without ever betraying what he was really feeling. He nodded along, while a Winston burned on the counter between him and whoever he was talking to.

He rarely raised his voice, and I don’t ever recall him losing his temper in public. But I remember how he would adjust his glasses and clench his jaw when a customer walked away angry.

“You can’t please everybody Billy,” he explained. “But you can’t let them know that.”

After school or on weekends I would hang out at the store, waiting for him to finish up and give me a ride home. I would wait in the customer service department where portraits of all the managers hung.

To me his framed picture looked like a different person than the one I knew. Hair slicked back. Suit and tie. A starched collar barely hiding razor stubble along his neck. The corner of his mouth turned up, not quite in a smile. More like he knew something you didn’t.

Once an assistant manager who worked under my father saw me looking at the pictures.

“What do you think of your father’s photo?”

“It’s cool.”

“That’s his game face.” he chuckled. “Your father puts that on when he’s planning to win.”

Outwardly, he was always in control, never rattled when things didn’t go his way. Quiet. Observing. Clocking everything and filing it away for later. A bad day meant he turned inward, smoked an extra cigarette or two, and relied on a few drinks to soothe the edge. Looking back, I realize he was probably petrified too.

But that emotional control comes with a price. It did for my father. And at times, it has for me too.

Once for Halloween, I wore a pull over Chewbacca mask with fake fur and white fangs. I loved that mask but wearing it made it hard to breathe. I figured out that I could take it off walking between houses, and slide it back on for “Trick or Treat.”

As my career progressed, my game face became that mask. I wore it to protect myself, but the longer I did, the harder it became to breathe.

My wife says I like the perception of being unreadable. That, deep down, I enjoy keeping people guessing. That I use it to my advantage at work. To her, it’s a bit of smoke and mirrors, my “Jedi mind tricks.”

“Once you get to know him” she deadpanned at a party “he’s an easy read.”

She has an unfair advantage, I took the mask off for her a long time ago.

In negotiations, the ability to sit in uncomfortable silence pays dividends. But that silence can unsettle a team if you sit in it too long, trading connection for the upper hand. If people can’t read you, they will write their own story. And the story they write is rarely generous.

A while back I was asked to speak in front of a few hundred people, something I generally hate doing. I had worked at the company for a number of years. I was in the C-suite by then and didn’t have a personal connection with the majority of the employees. I was tolerated because of my position but I don’t know that I was liked.

When I sat down to write the speech I remember thinking I had an opportunity to take my mask off. Recently an employee died, and the company had barely mentioned it.

Rather than avoid it, I leaned in and I talked about him as a real person, and what his passing had meant to me, and to the company. I choked up when I mentioned his name. I felt the familiar urge to clench my jaw and wait the moment out but I didn’t. For once they saw the real me. More than one person told me they were moved by what I said too.

I don’t know if anyone told my father they couldn’t read him. I’m not sure he would have thought about it much if they did.

I think about it a lot. I still put on my game face sometimes, it’s a hard habit to break. And honestly, it’s comforting to know that I can. But I don’t wear it all the time. I’ve learned to leave it off long enough for people to see the person underneath. Even if that means letting them see me sweat.

This One’s Called… Game Face.

He showed up at the office of Student Programs unannounced, with a tape he wanted us to hear. He was undeterred when the receptionist asked him to wait. He sat down in one of the student union’s upholstered chairs, unpacked a hoagie with onions and began to eat.

“There’s a guy out front who wants to see someone.” The receptionist said.

“What does he want?”

“He’s got a tape.”

Damn.

I had to listen because the campus newspaper had run an editorial suggesting that there was a secret “no book” list that the Student Programming Staff referenced when booking concerts. A few disgruntled students gave anonymous quotes asking why if student fees were used to book the concerts, why wasn’t Janet Jackson or Garth Brooks booked for Appalachian’s State’s homecoming. It was a conspiracy, clearly. The reality was that we had minuscule budgets and were located in Boone, North Carolina, not exactly a regular tour stop.

I’m sure I didn’t help matters. When the reporter asked me about the existence of a secret list, I flippantly replied “Yeah, that’s right.”

The article caused a furor, and Student Government got involved, hauling us into hastily arranged hearings.

They were scheduled the same day I had tickets to see the Pixies in Chapel Hill. I tried to beg off but our advisor’s directive was clear: kill the narrative by answering their questions, showing that we had nothing to hide.

Blazer-clad SGA members fancied themselves Sam Ervin – fishing for a gotcha moment. I didn’t take the bait.

Not much came of this brouhaha other than we agreed we would listen to anyone who had an idea, and document the conversation to show that we were “open to the student body.”

By the end I think we would have agreed to anything to just get out of that room and on the road to the Pixies. We made the show but only in time for the encore “Planet of Sound.” As a small consolation we met Frank Black after the show; weirdly his car was parked next to us on the street.

I was upset about missing most of that show for a long time and I’m sure it colored my experience when I invited the hoagie guy into the conference room.

“Check these guys out,” he said, handing me the tape. “They’re from Charlottesville.” He spread his hoagie out on the table. “I recorded it the other night.”

The case was a Maxell 90, labeled “DMB 3/92.”

“It’s not rewound,” I said.

“Sorry about that, I was listening on the way over.”

When the tape was ready I hit play and was greeted by bursts of saxophone, off-kilter drums, and screamed vocals

“Not that,” he said, taking a bite of his sandwich. “You like Free Jazz? Been getting into John Zorn lately.”

“I’m not sure this would work,” I said “We still have to make money on the shows.”

“I know you can’t book this,” he said, laughing. “What I want to play you is midway through side two.”

I flipped the tape over, fast forwarded it, and tried to hide how annoyed I was. I thought I knew what was good. The mechanical whir of the deck was the only sound in the conference room.

“That’s probably far enough.”

I hit play and the tape wobbled, then squealed. A high-frequency hiss was replaced by the clink and chatter of an audience. The drums started, muffled at best, while a singer struggled to be heard at all, his vocals thin and distant. I remember thinking it sounded improvised.

The hoagie guy grinned broadly, and for a minute I thought he would get up and dance.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Pretty great, right?”

I listened, but my mind was made up the minute I missed the Pixies.

“What are they called?”

“The Dave Matthews Band.”

After he left I logged the interaction, to prove that we were open to student feedback. But I had no intention of booking them. I threw the tape in a box and forgot about it. At the time I thought I had broad taste, but really I had a narrow view of what qualified as “good.”

In a few years they would be one of the biggest bands in the world. Back then, they were midway through side two, and I couldn’t hear it. I’d like to think if this happened today I would pay closer attention.

No one gives me tapes anymore. But I wish that they did. I find myself missing the friction that an awkward interaction and a wobbly tape could bring. Those moments when a guy with a hoagie challenged my narrow view of what was “good”.

This One’s Called… No One Gives Me Tapes Anymore.

P.S. The semester after I graduated Dave Matthews played Appalachian State.

Nothing is more unsettling than a ringing doorbell in the middle of the night. Nothing, that is, except wondering if you heard it at all.

When it happened to my wife and me, we lay awake for hours trying to decode if it had actually rung. It seemed paramount to figure out what had made the noise.

As I lay in bed with my heart thumping and my senses on high alert, I cataloged the sounds I heard. A few mechanical clicks as the AC turned on, like a drummer counting off. A dramatic whoosh of circulated air rattled the vents. The clank of the icemaker, dry and sudden, as the cubes dropped through the chute. The trill of chimes on the back porch, played by the passing wind. I even listened to the silence, still and shapeless, giving space for the sound to ring out.

Nothing matched the doorbell, but our house showed off its musical chops. An extended improvisation just for me.

I wrestled with how to describe the sound of the doorbell. By tone, tempo or something else? My wife was pretty sure that the bell had rung three times in quick succession. For some reason that made me think of jazz pianist Bill Evans, who was known for his use of triplets–essentially playing three notes over two beats. It was one of those leaps you can only make in the middle of the night.

One of my favorite albums is Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue, and depending on the day you catch me it may be my favorite. Bill Evans played piano on the record, and as time has worn on been given more credit for its signature style, with Davis admitting in 1989 that “he planned the album around the piano playing of Bill Evans.”

I heard the record at my first job out of college with MAXI-management. At that time, my knowledge of jazz was limited. The closest I came growing up was a few Herb Alpert records my mother played. My boss had a large CD collection and one of us would load up the CD player for the day, and invariably Kind of Blue would be the first one.

At the time I was pulling double duty, managing bands by day, slinging beers at the Cat’s Cradle by night. Most mornings found me bleary eyed and tongue tied, showing up but not succeeding till the afternoon. Kind of Blue unfolded at a languid pace, fading in like a dimmer switch being turned on. The first track “So What” is over 9 minutes long but doesn’t really get cooking until nearly the two minute mark. The perfect accompaniment to slow starts.

The album was mostly an improvisation by Miles Davis’ sextet, built around rough ideas Davis sketched out hours before the first note was recorded. Each performer was given a set of scales that defined their style, but left wide latitude to what they actually played. Bill Evans’ piano playing stood out, which was no small feat considering the combo also included Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. Evans employed dynamic rhythmic phrasing, hitting the notes lightly. His fingers floated along at their own pace, giving the feeling that he was slightly ahead or behind the beat.

On the original liner notes for Kind Of Blue, Evans compared this style of jazz to the Japanese watercolor practice known as Suibokuga, where the artist must paint on thin parchment with a wet brush. A single errant stroke will tear the paper, and since no changes are allowed, the artist must simply trust the direct deed.

Evans explained, the final product might lack complex textures but “those who see well will find something captured that escapes explanation.”

Like writing about a doorbell in the middle of the night.

Recognizing that, I stopped listening for the doorbell. By then it didn’t matter. What mattered was whether I could capture the moment while fresh in my mind.

I got out of bed at 5 AM, went to my office, and put on Kind Of Blue. I wrote the draft of the short story in a single uninterrupted session. Like my days at MAXI-management, I got off to a slow start but by the time “Freddie Freeloader” came on I found my rhythm. No hesitation, just trusting the direct deed.

The story is real but the doorbell is still a mystery. In the end, we never figured out if it rang.

This One’s Called… On Bill Evans In The Middle Of The Night.

My wife roused me from my slumber with a sharp elbow to the midsection then declared “The doorbell rang. Someone’s at the door.”

“I’m up, I’m up,” I growled, struggling to get my bearings. The clock on my bedside table glowed 3:15 AM.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, listening to the silence. We lived on top of a hill outside of town, at the end of a long, winding driveway.

”Are you sure the doorbell rang?”

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It was strictly off the books. The kind of arrangement that came naturally to my dad.

Every morning at 7:30, I was dropped off at Malcolm’s party store. I waited on a wooden stool, wedged between an ice cooler chained shut and a Pepsi vending machine that emitted a constant electric hum. Malcolm drove a dented blue truck with an extended bed and an eight-ball shifter. He would race into the parking lot, squeal to a stop, and shout, “Well, c’mon,” as if I were the reason he was running late.

Our first stop was to pick up a crew member named Dennis, which was easier said than done because he was never in the same place twice. We would slow-roll through convenience store parking lots, neighborhoods with rows of identical shotgun houses, or down dead-end alleyways around the American Tobacco warehouses.

“What happens if we don’t find him?” I asked one day.

“He won’t be drinking tonight,” Malcolm said, with a snort.

Most days we found him outside the EZ-Quick Mini Mart with a paper bag of pickled eggs and a jumbo-sized Mountain Dew. He would open the cab of the truck and stutter, “Slide over, boss,” before I moved to the middle and straddled the eight-ball.

The job was easy enough, though sometimes backbreaking. We would show up at the store and my dad would point us toward an empty section where the merchandise had already been cleared out. Dennis and I broke the fixtures down by hand, piece by piece, until they were small enough to load into Malcolm’s truck. I worked fast because I thought that was what was expected of me. Dennis worked like he was perpetually in first gear, idling through the day.

Moving glass was trickier, because a chipped corner or a cracked piece cut into Malcolm’s profit when he tried to resell it. Whenever we had to move glass, Dennis would come to life and instruct me in the proper way to handle it.

“Grab her like this,” he would say, his calloused hands miming holding the edges of the glass flat, “and when I count to three, we swivel it in unison.”

I adjusted my gloves and nodded.

“And look here,” he said, pausing. “Slow down. If you drop her, let her go. Don’t try to catch her or she’ll cut you up.”

He held his left hand out to show a jagged scar that started in his palm, ran up his forearm, and coiled around the back of his arm just before the elbow.

“Now come on and grab hold like you mean it,” he said. I took the edge of the panel as he showed me, and swiveled on his count.

“Yeah! Yeah, Billy, that’s it. You got it,” he said louder than necessary, making a show for my dad and Malcolm, who had come over to watch.

We shuffled through the main aisle of the store and out the door into the parking lot. We wrapped the glass in thick blankets and stacked it in the back of the truck. I started to walk back but Dennis stopped me.

“Hold up. Next time I ain’t going to explain it. Uh Malcolm ain’t paying me enough for all that. You grab hold like I showed you, handle her with care, and you’ll be alright.”

Since I started writing this Substack a year ago, I’ve thought about Dennis. Writing in public feels a lot like moving glass. Some pieces I’ve grabbed just right and carried with ease. Others slipped through my fingers. What I’ve learned is that memories are fragile, as are the people who inhabit them. The trick isn’t whether you move them or not. The trick is knowing when to slow down, and when to let go.

This One’s Called… Handle With Care

“No script,” I said, surveying the set we had pulled together in the restaurant. I was friendly with the chef through my work with the Chamber of Commerce. He was a massive music fan, and more than willing to let us set up shop on a Tuesday afternoon. The restaurant was a few doors down from Yep Roc Records, on the main drag in Hillsborough. Noise-limiting glass buffered the street sounds leaving us a pristine stage. The chef had even prepared a tasting menu for our guests.

“And we are just going to film them….eating lunch?”

“Yes.” I glanced at the time on my phone. “They will be here soon.”

“I don’t know. I’d feel a lot better if we had a script. Or at least some idea of how long we are shooting for. I’ve got to change the batteries on the cameras every 15 minutes.”

“They’re both quick on their feet. Whatever happens, capture it the best you can.”

The front door opened, and two men walked in. Robyn Hitchcock, the British songwriter who’d been making surrealist rock since the late 70s, looked like he’d arrived via a time-traveling Trolley Car from 1967; Eugene Mirman, the stand-up comedian, looked like he was about to explain a very complicated municipal zoning law.

“Can I ask where this idea came from?”

I paused, and smiled.

“Why, the mail, of course.” I walked over to greet the stars before he could respond.

For a brief time in the late 80’s, I bought VHS wrestling compilations by mail. I wasn’t a tape trader but I paid close attention to the b&w text ads in the back of magazines like The Wrestler, Pro Wrestling Illustrated and Inside Wrestling.

A S.A.S.E got you an itemized listing of matches to choose from. You could cherry pick your favorites (Bruiser Brody was mine) or pick compilations themed around specific wrestlers, feuds or territories. With $20 dollars and a little patience, you were rewarded by media mail with a sharpie-labeled six hour tape of wrestling gold.

The footage ran the gamut of quality since these were second, third and in some cases more generation dupes from the original. I gladly suffered through the color bleeding, tracking instability, and audio waiver to see the larger than life wrestlers I had only read about.

I was always on the lookout for one specific match, considered the Holy Grail among collectors. Known as The Last Battle of Atlanta, It was the final match, or blowoff in wrestling parlance between Tommy “Wildfire” Rich and “Mad Dog” Buzz Sawyer after a savage two year feud. The match was loaded with stipulations, including one of the first steel cages with a roof on it. Throughout the fall of 1983 promos ran on Georgia Championship Wrestling on TBS, hyping the match. It was must-see TV for a 12-year-old wrestling fan with a vivid imagination.

After the match happened, it was never mentioned on TV again. No clips, no results, no follow up feuds. A few results in the magazines, but the wrestling world moved on without acknowledging it. I overheard fans at Dorton Arena speculate that it would never be shown because of how violent it ended up being. Another said Buzz Sawyer deliberately taped over it so that no one would see that he got whooped. Wrestling fans in 1983 were a conspiratorial lot.

After buying a few tapes from the same collector, I wrote him a letter asking him if he knew anything about the Last Battle of Atlanta. He sent me back a note saying that there was no copy of that match but he appreciated my orders and he was including a bonus.

That bonus turned out to be the 1983 short film Breakfast With Blassie, starring Andy Kaufman and “Classy” Fred Blassie. Kaufman was a renowned comedian and Television star who was also a major wrestling fan. “Classy” Fred Blassie was a legendary wrestler who transitioned from household name to bonafide folk hero with his catch phrase “You Pencil Neck Geek.” Blassie had been a fixture on television since the 1950s, but he was a god in Japan; in the 1960s, his blood-soaked matches with Rikidozan were so visceral they were rumored to have caused heart attacks among the viewing public. He was the ultimate ‘heel’, the man everyone loved to hate, and the perfect foil for Kaufman’s ineptitude.

The movie was a spoof of the 1981 art house film My Dinner with Andre, an uninterrupted conversation between Andre Gregory and New York Playwright Wallace Shawn. While My Dinner with Andre discussed the anxiety of modern life, Blassie and Kaufman talked wrestling and slurped their food. Kaufman wore a neck brace as he “recovered” from his run in with Jerry “The King Lawler” while Blassie insulted everyone in sight.

It was my first real exposure to Andy Kaufman, save for kids on the playground saying “Thank You Very Much” like Latka Gravas from Taxi. From there I went down a rabbit hole of Andy, Tony Clifton, and all his various bits, including wrestling women and getting slapped on Letterman. Andy leaned into a joke when it became uncomfortable, and leaned in further when it became dangerous. I heard someone say he wasn’t just committed, he should be committed.

The absurd, confrontational, and unclassifiable Breakfast With Blassie was the inspiration to film a lunch between Robyn Hitchcock and Eugene Mirman in Hillsborough. When I heard that Robyn and Eugene were both going to be in town on the same night, I pitched making a spoof of Breakfast with Blassie. I didn’t tell anyone the backstory about wrestling.

I had seen their surrealist banter before, two pros lobbying volleys just inside the line with ease. I thought if we created the right conditions, similar magic might happen.

“Garcon” Robyn said, kicking things off before we were ready. Our videographer scrambled to turn the camera on. Robyn made a show of tucking his napkin into his polka dot shirt “Might a cheese course surface like a distressed octopus with purple appendages in a sea of discontent?”

“He’ll need that in writing,” Eugene said, producing a notepad. “There’s a process. You’ll submit your cheese request to the committee, allow three to five business days for review, and if approved, the cheese course will be scheduled for a future meal. Not this meal.”

The food was delivered, the batteries cooperated and two masters held court. We shot through appetizers, main courses and the requested cheese plate. My mind sped ahead, imagining other pairings like Dave Alvin and Colin Quinn or Chuck Prophet and Marc Maron. I was mapping a new series before we had even finished the first. In the room I thought we had bottled magic.

Later when we watched it back we realized we didn’t. Our editor didn’t mince words when he said “No one is going to watch two people eat lunch.”.

What I remember most is the awkward silence after each line. Witty one-liners hanging in the air, waiting for laughs that never came. We also hadn’t thought about what people actually sound like eating. Two men in a soundproof room generate more ambient noise than you’d think. What we were trying to do probably works best on a stage when the drinks are flowing and a noisy crowd reacting becomes part of the performance. Without that, it was just a recording of two people having lunch. We were so obsessed with creating content that we forgot some things are meant to be ephemeral.

I also don’t remember if we ever finished editing it, or whether we quietly stuck it on the shelf. Either way as of 2026 it doesn’t appear to be online. Perhaps the file was corrupted, or the lighting didn’t quite capture the “1967 Trolley Car” glow, or maybe the committee simply never approved the release. The evidence has become like the rumors at Dorton Arena, more fun than the actual event. And I’m ok with that.

The Last Battle of Atlanta was “found” in 2016. I watched it but was disappointed. Nothing could approach the mythology a twelve-year-old can summon in his head. My wrestling tapes are gone, and the film of Robyn and Eugene is gone, too. I could go looking for them, but I don’t.

This One’s Called… Why Some Things Are Better As Memories.

P.S. I texted Robyn to see what he remembered about the lunch. He replied “I think the eating took the wind out of our wit, but it was a fun event. It was a blur after the cheese… “ Robyn has a new book Stranded In The Future (out July 7) and new album The Confuser (out July 24). His Substack is a must read.

“Sure,” I said, slowing down by the door to wait. My friends oohed and awwed as they filed out of the church. One even made devil horns with his fingers as he mouthed “You’re in trouble!”

He was only a few years older than me, but carried himself as much older. He wasn’t a pastor. Not yet, anyway. I’d heard the minister say he was on the “divinity track.” He and his wife helped chaperone the youth group.

“I had a dream last night.” His eyes expanded wide as he talked, beaming ovals like the headlights of a Studebaker. “And you were in it.”

“Really?” I said. I had only talked to him once before. At Lake Junaluska the previous summer, when I capsized my canoe, he showed me how to paddle it in partially submerged.

“Really,” he said, with conviction, like this was the most important conversation he had ever had. His hands spread out in front of him as he talked, conjuring the scene. “I was in a wide grassy field. White tents punctuated the horizon, their support beams reaching skyward like a medieval cloister. Music filled the air as throngs of people danced and sang.”

“And I was there?” I laughed nervously. My first concert was still a few years away.

“Yes, you were.”

“Was I performing?” I said, hopefully.I had recently gotten a guitar. I thought that might be cool.

“No, you weren’t performing. You were off to the side.”

“What was I doing?”

“Doing? You were by the stage. A big wooden one, under a stand of trees.”

A loud bang rang out, followed by a girl’s scream. We both turned to the parking lot where my friend’s VW bug had backfired when he started it up. A wisp of blue smoke lingered above the car, before disappearing.

“I’ve got to go,” I stammered. “My friends are waiting.”

“Don’t you want to know why you were there?”

Was he serious? His expression said he was. “Why was I there?”

He paused, like he was calculating something. One of my friends told me he waited tables at Daryl’s when he wasn’t helping at the church, but I hadn’t seen it. He shifted his Bible between his hands.

“I think it’s where you’re supposed to be.”

I looked towards the parking lot, then back at him. His countenance was unwavering. He seemed content that he had delivered his prophecy. I withered under his gaze, unsure how to respond. Honestly, he weirded me out. We stood in silence, until I finally spoke.

“It was just a dream, right? That’s not real.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, and leaned in.

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

He smiled, clapped me on the back then turned and walked into the church. I didn’t see him again after that day.

A few years later, I was a freshman DJ at Appalachian State. I was alone in a production room, facing a microphone and a technics reel to reel machine. Spools of half-inch tape stared back at me, oversized and black like a bug’s eye. The VU meter flickered, measuring my breath like a lie detector. Through the adjoining window I could see the studio, where my roommate DJed the afternoon shift like Terminator X on the Wheels of Steel. The booth was airless, cold and unforgiving with sound proof tiles and noise canceling carpet ensuring silence.

I volunteered to record the PSA when I heard it was a festival.

I doodled a cartoon guitar in the margin of the copy, buying time because I didn’t know where to start.

North Wilkesboro? Where’s that, I thought as I read over the script. Did I drive by it on 421? Was the Festival at the race track?

I pulled a few records from artists playing the festival for the music bed. I wanted to use something by Chet Atkins but most of the station’s country records had been pilfered over the years. The Seldom Scene’s latest album was an option. The instrumental opening of “I’ll Be No Stranger There” might work if I doubled it.

“Tickets for the third annual Eddy Merle Watson Memorial Festival…” I read the copy dry, while focusing on my sibilance the way Dr. Tyrie had taught me. When I finished, I rewound the tape and listened back. I hated hearing my voice but thought I was passable. I dubbed the cart, labeled it, and dropped it into the production manager’s box. And I wondered about the festival.

Life sped ahead. I graduated, married and had two kids. I blinked and I was over 50. Music still mattered but it was a career. Festival season was marked on my calendar in red. I traded my microphone for the business of supporting artists and their art.

A few weeks ago I hit the road. I spent the morning in Charlotte in meetings, then battled rush hour traffic to go to Merlefest. I was running late.

I had boxes of Jim Lauderdale merch to deliver to the festival. Merlefest has an efficient transportation system. A driver in a golf cart met me outside the gates and helped me wrangle the tshirts, CDs and LPS. He dropped me off at the merch tent.

I stacked the boxes on the table, so they could be counted in. I watched as fans streamed past me filling the grassy field. My back hurt and I was hungry.

“Hey there feller.” The merch manager said as he opened one of the boxes. He pulled out a Jim Lauderdale LP and held it up. “Looks like you’re where you’re supposed to be.”

I froze. I was fourteen again. I remembered the way the Beav held his hands when he delivered his prophecy.

A band started on the main stage, the wooden one under the trees. People sang and danced. I was off to the side.

I smiled, and started unpacking the boxes.

“Yeah, I’ll be no stranger here.”

This One’s Called… Where You’re Supposed To Be.

At the Artists’ Entrance, the heavy door was held open for me by Vince Gill. He stood there with a quiet, welcoming presence, smiling as he gestured with his hand to come on in.

“First time?” he asked as I crossed the threshold, breathless and hauling my luggage.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, I hope you enjoy it.”

“Mr. Gill!” the security officer behind the desk called out. “You’ve got mail!”

The officer handed him a bundled stack of fan mail addressed simply to Vince Gill, c/o The Grand Ole Opry, Nashville. No street address, no zip code, just “Care of The Opry,” the way they had done it back at the beginning with Hank Williams, Minnie Pearl, or any of the thousands of legends that graced the stage. It was a staggering reminder of the history I was stepping into, but I didn’t have time to linger on the nostalgia.

I hurried inside, lugging my belongings into the backstage chaos where artists and hangers-on moved freely between the historic dressing rooms. Among them was an Opry film crew, shadowed close behind Mandolin Orange, filming My Opry Debut.

I flew to Nashville after our weekly sales report revealed the band was set to become Yep Roc’s best-selling artist on the very night of their Opry debut. I had worked with the band since 2011, helping them grow from their earliest days playing upstairs at a Mexican restaurant in Carrboro to opening for the Avett Brothers at Red Rocks. The band’s music was undeniable, and their connection with the audience unparalleled, but the coordinated campaign we built, brick by brick, laid a foundation that still supports them today.

Eighteen months earlier, we had pulled all 110 Redeye and Yep Roc employees into the warehouse and laid out a simple vision: Breaking Mandolin Orange. We unveiled a mandolin-shaped thermometer on the wall to track sales and put a Mandolin Orange hat on everyone’s head. My hands shook as I appealed to my coworkers on a personal level, asking for help and extra effort to make this project go. The band had real momentum, more than any other artist I had ever worked with. I don’t remember what I said. But I remember what 110 people sounded like when they cheered.

Afterwards, we hit the road promoting the band in New York, Los Angeles, and London. We secured partnerships with American Airlines, Intel, and Apple. Visit North Carolina kicked in to sponsor the band’s European tour. We met weekly, watching the red line on that thermometer climb with every win.

We even commemorated the sales milestone with a hand-painted folk art mandolin mounted on a board, created by our art director, Nathan Golub.

The Opry debut was the peak of a relentless eighteen-month push. It was a massive win for the company, for the band, and personally, for me. Standing there felt like the ultimate validation.

For debuts, The Opry is a marketing machine. They filmed the band throughout the day, from their arrival to soundcheck and a pre-show Facebook Live. The final event before the band was set to take the stage was a meeting with bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs. I tagged along, just out of camera view, a witness to history as Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz shared a quiet moment with Ricky. He was generous and affable as he talked about his time with Ralph Stanley and all the mandolins he had owned over the years. I was excited, picturing how this would be edited together.

Then, in an instant, I felt like I had undone it all.

I dropped my phone. The plastic cracked against a chair and bounced loudly across the floor, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the silent room. Every head snapped in my direction. I had just ruined the “perfect take” for the Opry’s documentary.

Ricky Skaggs snarled in my direction, never breaking his rhythm, and continued strumming the mandolin. A camera operator reached down, grabbed my phone from between Ricky’s feet, and brought it back to me.

“You should probably wait outside,” he said.

I stepped out into the hallway, dejected that I had ruined the moment. As I stood there, leaning against the wall, an Opry tour group came shuffling through. They were the paying public, led by a guide whispering about the history of the hallways. They peered through the open doors into the dressing rooms, catching glimpses of the stars. A few looked my way and, realizing I was no one, moved along.

Andrew and Emily emerged from their meeting with Ricky and headed to the stage. I tagged along but cut a wide berth around the camera crew, nervous that they would ask me to leave. I was right behind the band when Vince Gill made the introduction.

“From the Great State of North Carolina… make them feel welcome. This will be one of the greatest nights of their life. Please welcome Mandolin Orange.”

From the wings, I watched Andrew and Emily step into that famous six-foot circle of wood on the stage. Their performance was flawless, pure, and devastatingly beautiful.

At my gate I’ll always greet you

At my door you’re welcome in

The irony of the lyrics wasn’t lost on me as I stood in the shadows. I had been welcomed at the door by Vince. As the harmonies filled the rafters, the “marketing machine” faded away. The crowd was hushed, and the 18 months of work was resonating through the wood of the stage. The magnitude of the moment hit me when they sang

Everything’s so great, can’t get better

Makes me wanna cry

But I’ll go out howling at the moon tonight

After the show, I shared a private moment with Andrew and Emily where I told them they were officially Yep Roc’s best-selling artists, not with one record, but with two: Blindfaller and Such Jubilee. They were astonished, happy with the success, and thankful for all of the hard work we had put in. More importantly, they didn’t mention the phone! It was the peak of my work at Yep Roc, and encapsulated nearly 10 years into one moment. A little over a year later both the band and I would leave Yep Roc, and Mandolin Orange would change their name to Watchhouse.

As I gathered my things to leave, I saw a familiar face coming back down the hall. Vince Gill was heading back toward the stage. He saw me standing there by my suitcase and paused.

“Well?” he asked with that same easy grin. “How was it?”

I looked at him, then back at the stage where the applause was still echoing. I thought about the warehouse, the thermometer, and the phone on the floor.

“Pretty special, right?” Vince said.

And he was right. It was.

This One’s Called… C/O Grand Ole Opry

P.S. For the sake of pacing, I left a few fellow travelers out of this story, including an attorney I respect very much. When I told him I was writing this, he gave me an entirely different perspective on Vince Gill and the mail, details of which I had completely forgotten. It just goes to show, there are two sides to every story. In this case, I’m just hoping he doesn’t bill me for the memory.

My father retrieved the Herald before I got up, shuffling to the end of the driveway barefoot, clad in a tattered robe. He would settle into his orange chair with one leg draped over the side and savor his morning coffee while reading the news of the day. The Herald had bold headlines and pithy commentary. If it happened after 7 p.m. it didn’t make it in.

I, on the other hand, would grab the Sun as I trekked home from the bus stop. I would spread the sports page out across the kitchen table and munch on a Steak-umm, a Pizza Quick, or some other microwaveable snack. The Sun had the luxury of covering all the stories that happened later in the day or overnight, particularly sports.

My father taught me to read box scores at an early age, teaching me to trace the columns with my finger. First with football, then basketball, baseball and everything else. There was even a point when we tracked NASCAR results, discussing the race by laps led or average speed. It was the one thing we did together that was truly ours, something we didn’t have to explain to anyone.

Washington was my father’s favorite team, so we paid particular attention to them. He would quiz me on what the score would be if a touchdown was made, or how many passes Joe Theismann completed. It was a skill that I used to ace 2nd grade math, my teacher affixing the prized Math Wizard sticker to my shirt when I correctly recited my seven times tables before we had learned them.

Living on tobacco road meant I tracked college basketball the closest. Duke, Carolina and NC State were favorites, but I paid attention to all eight teams in the ACC. I still remember the joy of analyzing every box score from the historic 1983 title run of Jim Valvano’s Cardiac Pack. I was sorry that there wasn’t a stat for coaching, because he would have led in every category that year.

By the time Len Bias entered his senior season, I could tell the tenor of the game simply from reading the stats. Most of Maryland’s games weren’t televised in the triangle, so I followed the season in black and white.

And what a season it was. He was the ACC Player of the year, averaging nearly 55% from the field, an astounding stat for a wing player taking mid-range jumpers. After an especially impressive performance against Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, he was saddled with the moniker of “the next Jordan.”

Once the season was over I continued to follow his story, tracking who might make him a millionaire. On June 17th, The Boston Celtics selected Len Bias as the second overall pick, trailing North Carolina center Brad Daugherty. The celebration was short-lived: two days later, he died of a cocaine overdose.

That fall I turned fifteen. Got a license, a job, and a girlfriend all in short order. I still watched basketball but stopped devouring the sports page the way I had before. My father and I were connected but it was different. Our shared language didn’t seem as important.

The death of Len Bias took away the magic of the sports page. Suddenly the outcomes became unpredictable and with death in the equation the numbers didn’t quite add up. I longed for the days when my biggest worry was if I could bait a hook with corn.

A few years later the papers merged, rechristened as The Durham Herald Sun. My father continued to read it every day. One of my last memories of him was reading the paper to him.

If you’ve been enjoying my free posts and want to support my creative fiction plus get access to my archive, I’d love to have you on board as a paid subscriber.

Coming up later this month: this Friday, I’ll be sharing a behind-the-scenes look at where I think this specific story came from. Then, on June 26th, I’m diving deep into the intense, 18-month push to break Mandolin Orange (now Watchhouse).

Thank you for reading, and for supporting my writing.

-billy

*************************************************************************************************************

“Do you think it’ll work?” I asked my cousin.

Peter planted his legs wide like a tripod as he worked, his straight hair sticking out from beneath a Yankees cap.

We stood at the end of an unfinished dock that jutted out over the lake. The water was smooth as glass, a mirror tinged purple in the last light of day. Across the lake, voices carried, softened and indistinct by the time they reached us.

“’Course it will. My dad and I do it all the time.” Peter scooped a handful of corn from the can and threaded the kernels onto the hook, his face pinched with concentration. The smell of burning charcoal drifted from nearby campsites.

Read more

The next afternoon, I kneeled down in front of the family stereo console, the fibers from the shag carpet irritating my scabbed knees. I put a cassette into the recorder and pushed the play, record and pause buttons simultaneously, the way my older brother had shown me.

“It’s faster that way,” he explained one day during summer break. “You can cut out all the talking and junk.”

I turned the dial to WIZS, catching the DJ midstream as he back announced “Love Me Tender,” “Blue Suede Shoes” and my father’s favorite “Hound Dog.” I knew it was his favorite because he would gyrate his hips, curl his lip into a snarl, and croon “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog” into an invisible microphone.

My favorite was “Heartbreak Hotel,” primarily because I had memorized the lyrics. When I would sing the line “I’ll be so lonely, I could die”, I would fall into a heap on the floor.

I spent that afternoon filling up a tape, curating the songs, and as my brother would say “cutting out all the junk.” I remember less about the finished tape than the act of doing it. Some things haven’t changed.

The impulse that drove me to record Elvis Presley off the radio is the same one that drove me to write my Life Soundtracks: saving the voices that make up my life.

My wife, Alissa, once told me she’d read that the urge to save things is really just a way of putting off death. If true, I’ve been doing it my whole life, and I’ve got a pretty good soundtrack.

In my head 11 songs is a complete statement, and enough for now. Blame the industry guy in me who still thinks in albums: calculating the statutory rate and how many songs can fit on an LP.

The tape is full. Time to label it and put it away. My debut is done.

Consider this one a hidden track.

An A&R rep I worked with years ago explained how a band’s first album was easy. “They have their whole life to make the first record, but only 18 months to make the follow up.” Maybe there is a volume two in me. Time will tell. There is still a world of music I haven’t heard yet.

As Matthew McConaughey says in Dazed and Confused “You just gotta keep livin’, man.”

This One’s Called… I Was Thinking That Night About Elvis

Life Soundtracks: Vol. 1

SIDE A

1. Welcome to the Jungle – Guns N’ Roses - Read

2. For the Love of Money – The O’Jays - Read

3. Walking the Floor Over You – Ernest Tubb - Read

4. Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd - Read

5. Rusty Cage – Soundgarden - Read

6. Zombie – The Cranberries - Read

SIDE B

7. You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile – Annie (Original Cast) - Read

8. Sweet Emotion – Aerosmith - Read

9. Stayin’ Alive – Bee Gees - Read

10. Da Doo Ron Ron – The Crystals - Read

11. Stairway To Heaven – Dolly Parton - Read

The overhead array converged, washing the field in a shadowless white. The steady beep of a monitor kept time, as the air handling system whooshed in accompaniment. The room was a crisp 60 degrees.

“Shuffle the music?” the doctor asked, scrubbed and waiting. A slow, finger-picked riff drifted from an unseen speaker.

“Dolly?” the nurse asked.

“Mmm-huh. A Durham label released it.”

“Really.” She squeezed the IV bag, watching the drip accelerate.

“Scalpel?” His blue-devil scrub cap never turned from the field.

“I bet he would have known.” She snapped the handle into his palm.

[SURGICAL NOTE] Left inguinal incision made sharply through Scarpa’s fascia.

“Why’s that?” He waited for the retractor to pull the edges wide.

“He works in music,” the nurse replied. “He was all kinds of chatty on the way in.”

“Versed has that effect.” The cautery tool hissed as he moved deeper.

Dolly sang, “...Because you know sometimes words have two meanings.”

“And get this: he wanted to know how I listen to music.”

“What did you say?”

“Are you kidding? The radio. WQDR’s free!”

The voice on the speaker rose.

“Ooh, it makes me wonder... I wonder, I really, really wonder...”

[SURGICAL NOTE] Primary structures secured, divided, and ligated. Sutures tied together and divided, leaving a 3cm tail.

“Guess what he asked me?” the doctor said, tying the silk.

He looked up, the loupes magnifying his eye.

“Wanted to know if I had ever done this before.”

“If he only knew.” she said, laughing.

[SURGICAL NOTE] Skin reapproximated with staples. Excellent hemostasis maintained. ESTIMATED BLOOD LOSS: 25 ml.

The doctor stripped off his gloves.

This One’s Called…

My mother’s been asking me for years, “What do you actually do when you go to a show?” I think she imagines it as one long social call. Me holding court, drink in hand, surrounded by friends and fans. In reality, I’m alone more often than not, floating around the venue, reading the room, trying to stay one step ahead of whatever might go wrong.

The night unfolded without a hiccup until the promoter called, asking me to meet her at the back door of the venue. Her voice carried a note I didn’t like, urgent but steady. I slipped through the crowd, bodies moving in rhythm to “Firebound Road,” every step taking me out of the music and into the problem.

The promoter laid it out quickly. A fan had been found with a twelve-inch hunting knife and ejected. While he was being escorted out, he told security that his “friend” had a knife too, and was planning to stab Town Mountain. My stomach dropped. A knife changes everything. I’ve handled a hundred things at shows: missing drummers, power outages, even once a collapsed stage, but never a blade in the dark. I learned early on that the show starts at the back door, and now, it looked like it might end there, too.

“Where’s the other fan now?” I asked, popping open my phone to check the set list and see how much time was left in the show. Most nights I snap a photo of the set list. It’s useful in the moment, and often even more useful after the fact.

“We’re not sure. Security’s up front trying to identify him. We’d understand if the band wanted to stop. It’s your call.”

I pictured our agent in my head, screaming the rule: never, ever offer to cancel a show first, always make the promoter cancel it so you still get paid. But this was different. It was the kind of situation you could justify pulling the plug on, and I was already weighing how I’d defend that call.

I spotted two muscle-bound, black-shirted security guys near the front of the stage, trying to talk sense into a man in a camo trucker hat swaying in the front row. Even from a distance, I could see he wasn’t cooperating.

“Can’t they just take him out?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “But he hasn’t done anything yet. We’re not in the habit of dragging people out.”

I pushed my way along the front of the stage, through fans packed shoulder to shoulder and washed in stage light, until I reached the pit beside security.

I leaned in. “Is this the guy?”

“I don’t know,” the first security guard said, hands resting on the black utility belt that held his radio and flashlight, “He’s definitely an asshole, though.”

“I don’t have to go anywhere! I know my rights!” the man shouted, slinging an arm around his date and spinning her in a drunken do-si-do, half to show possession, half just to stay on his feet. “And another thing, y’all don’t have the right to interrupt me while we’re N-joyin’ the show!”

“If he’s the one, he ain’t giving it up,” the guard said. “What do you want us to do?”

“Keep an eye on him. We only have a few more songs.”

I looked up. The band had noticed the commotion as they transitioned between songs but didn’t stop playing. I threaded my way back to the side of the stage and took inventory. I didn’t love the idea of canceling the show, but I also didn’t want to be the guy who gambled with safety for one more song. There’s no playbook for this. You make the call and hope it’s right.

When the song ended, I ran up the steps to the stage. With no tour manager on hand that night, it fell to me to tell the band what was happening. Leaning into Phil, the bandleader, I said quietly, “A guy in the front row may have threatened to stab you. Security’s with him now. If anyone comes on stage, assume they’re attacking.” I nodded toward the two security guards flanking the man.

Phil listened, glanced at the fan I’d identified, then turned to the band, said something quick, and launched into the next song with a few sharp strokes of the mandolin. I slipped off the stage and out of the spotlight.

I made my way back to the promoter and explained the plan. This would be the last song; we’d regroup during the encore.

“If you want to end without an encore, that’s fine,” she said.

“Let me talk to the band.”

The song ended with raucous cheers for more. One particularly exuberant fan screamed for the band’s biggest song. “Down low! Down low!”

The band filed off stage and gathered around me in the narrow hallway like a basketball team at a time out drawing up a last play. I explained the situation as I saw it and gave them the options.

No one said anything for a few seconds.

Robert, the singer and guitarist, pulled out a handkerchief, took off his cowboy hat, and wiped the sweat from his head. He looked up and said, “Whad’ya say? Let’s rip one.”

The show ended where it started: the band back on stage as the crowd kicked up their heels and hollered for more. The guy security was watching lost interest and wandered out. I followed him to the door just to make sure he really left.

Later that night, after the band was packed up and the goodbyes were said, I thought about my mother’s question. What do I actually do at a show? Nights like this: Anything I can to help the music go on.

This One’s Called… Let’s Rip One.

P.S.

This wasn’t the only close call I’ve had with Town Mountain. One night in Nashville, the promoter at the Basement East pulled me aside and said there was a freak storm headed our way. If it didn’t shift west, we’d have to shepherd everyone, five hundred people plus the band, into the basement of The Basement East.

The club had already been hit by two tornadoes over the years, so they were vigilant about weather. I mapped out how I’d get the band off stage and posted up side-stage, ready for action. A few tense minutes later, the storm veered off, and the show rolled on.

P.P.S.

Massive kudos to Heather and the staff at the Haw River Ballroom, who showed enormous grace under pressure the night a fan threatened to stab Town Mountain.

Growing up, my family had two framed family trees hanging on the basement wall. One for my mother’s side. One for my father’s.

On my father’s tree, the Maupins were traced back several generations to France. At the bottom was a small note explaining how they got here. It said the Maupins stole a horse to gain passage to the New World.

As a kid, that sentence always made me laugh. I didn’t know what it meant exactly, just that there had to be a story behind it. A chase, maybe. A bad decision.

Years later, as relatives started dying, I became more interested in family history. Not in a sentimental way, more out of curiosity. I wanted to know the people and places that quietly shaped who I am.

I started listening more carefully. Asking questions. I interviewed my oldest uncle for what I thought might become a film project. I learned how to use Newspapers.com and fell down rabbit holes of old clippings.

There were details I never knew.

A bomb scare at the department store where my father worked, including the exact words he reportedly said over the loudspeaker to get customers out. My sister, listed as vying for the title of Little Miss Farmville. My brother’s tie-dyed artwork scheduled to be displayed at First National Bank.

There were even notices of the days my mother was admitted to the hospital while she was pregnant with me.

My birth was covered more simply. My parents’ names. The date. And beneath it, just one word: “boy.”

When I left home, people would occasionally pause when they heard my last name and say…

It happened often enough that I eventually wrote it down. Not because the answer mattered, but because the moment did. I wanted my daughters, and whoever comes after them, to know something about me beyond the facts.

In truth, that’s why this exists too.

This One’s Called… isn’t a brand or a project so much as a record. A place to put the stories before they disappear. Some of them are about music. Some aren’t. All of them are my attempt to leave a note on the family tree.

If you’re just joining, or want to revisit some of the stories that resonated most, here are five places to start.

• Just Go Ahead Now

• The Setup I Missed

• Do What?

• The Perfect Pint

• Turns Out Osmosis Doesn’t Work

It’s been a year. I’m still here, writing. I appreciate the company.

This One’s Called… One Year.

After dusting ourselves off we climbed to the top, balancing ourselves on the cross bar like long-lost Flying Wallendas. Chris snapped on a portable transistor radio, tuning through the AM static until Shaun Cassidy’s 1977 hit broke through.

“Please, don’t try this at home.” I would implore my imaginary audience, mimicking the announcers from Wide World of Sports. “We are professionals, and have trained many years to be able to perform these stunts safely.” I would then hang upside down from the beam, swing chains rattling, as my blond hair reached for the ground and the blood rushed to my head. Chris would stand up on top and walk heel-toe across the crossbar, stepping over my draped legs, arms out and fearless.

The big finale was when we would climb back to the top, sit side by side and sing “Met her on a Monday and my heart stood still.”

It was our last great performance before Chris’s family moved to Michigan.

This One’s Called… Da Doo Ron Ron

“Stop right there.” I hoped I’d left enough room to open the doors and unload.

Bang. Bang. Bang.
The sound echoed louder than I expected as I pounded on a handle less door plastered with faded stickers and a red stenciled warning: EXIT ONLY. NO ENTRY.

A voice barked from inside. “Hold your horses. I’m coming.”

The door flew open and a guy not much older than me stomped out in the unofficial uniform of the mid-’90s: cut-off jeans, a blue flannel shirt tied around his waist, and a chain dangling from his wallet.

“Y’all the opener?” he asked, stepping aside as the smell of beer and bleach spilled from the darkened mouth of the club. He tucked his shoulder-length hair behind his ears, watching me.

I was fresh out of college, working my first job at MAXI-management. The gig? Earn my keep touring with Lustre. They’d just signed with A&M Records after a brief but intense bidding war, during a moment when labels chased anything that sounded remotely like Nirvana, Bush, or Alice In Chains. Lustre was a classic power trio with overdriven guitars but enough pop sense to make alternative radio a possibility.

It was the first night of the tour, supporting Seven Mary Three. We were unloading Marshall stacks and Big Muff pedals when a goateed man in slacks appeared at the back door and introduced himself.

“Excuse me, are you the tour manager?” he asked, flipping through a notepad. “Billy?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “I work for the band’s manager.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Al, from Atlanta,” he said, popping a piece of nicotine gum into his mouth. “I’m the Southeast regional rep for the label.”

“Regional Rep?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“Means I support the label on the ground. Radio stations, record stores, and live shows.”

“Hey, Al,” the kid who opened the door said when the conversation lulled. “You with these guys?”

Al didn’t hesitate. “Yeah. They just signed to A&M. Biggest deal since Soundgarden.” He winked at me.

As the kid walked off, Al leaned in. “First tour?”

I nodded, a little embarrassed.

He glanced past me at the cases and cables. “I’ll let you get set up,” he said. “I’ll be back to take you to dinner. Holler if you need anything.”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a stack of Lustre’s debut album flats and a roll of tape. He taped one beside the door and said, “Remember, kid: the show starts at the back door.”

He ambled along the building, posting the flats to brick, telephone poles, any bare surface he could claim.

I watched as he rounded the corner and disappeared.

Al came back after soundcheck and took the band and me to a Mexican restaurant, where over chips and salsa he regaled us with stories from the seventies, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Nantucket, and his personal favorite, Nazareth.

“Those guys would come to town and get people talking,” he said. “It wasn’t just the accents. They had presence.”

“I love ‘Son of a Bitch,’” I said, grinning. “Didn’t that go Top Ten?”

“No, it didn’t,” Al said. “And it’s actually called ‘Hair of the Dog.’” He paused just long enough to enjoy correcting me. “The follow-up, ‘Love Hurts,’ did, though.”

“Who would’ve thought a Scottish band could cover an Everly Brothers ballad and have a hit?”

Lustre got restless about the show and left dinner early. Al and I stayed behind while he paid the bill.

“Thanks for dinner,” I said.

“Don’t thank me,” Al said, tucking the receipt away. “Thank the band. They’ll pay for it.”

As we walked back, I asked him what it was like being a regional rep.

“Not too bad,” he explained. “I set my own schedule. Mostly work out of my car. Every day’s different.”

“Only problem these days is the corporate heads expect a report on everything. It hasn’t been the same since Herb and Jerry sold the label.”

“You have to write reports?”

“Oh yeah. Weekly. Sometimes more if there’s a big tour coming through. I have to validate everything I do, record store visits, radio programmer dinners, even the shows I go to. Since they expanded my territory into North Carolina, I’m averaging four or five reports a week.”

“So you’re going to write a report about Lustre’s tour with Seven Mary Three?”

“Absolutely,” he said, smiling. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them it was your first time.”

We walked back to the club together and stopped briefly at his car. He popped the trunk to reveal boxes of CDs, posters, and T-shirts.

“Grab anything you like,” he said, nodding toward the trunk. “You never know when they’ll come in handy.”

“Whoa, thanks,” I said, grabbing new CDs by Monster Magnet, Del Amitri, and Sheryl Crow. Some of them hadn’t been released yet. He pulled out a couple of Lustre CDs and slipped them into his bag.

“So what goes into one of your reports?”

“Anything that tells a story of the band or the night,” he said, closing the trunk.

“Like tonight. There were no posters up when I got here. It’s why I always bring a stack of my own.” We walked back toward the club as he talked.

“The label just did a big reorg around local and regional marketing. Someone should’ve handled that.”

As we approached the building, a line snaked out of the lobby and down the sidewalk. Al studied it, then bypassed it altogether. The kid from earlier waved us through. Al patted him on the back as we slipped into the noisy club and stopped by the merch table.

“You seem like a nice kid, just getting started. Want me to show you how I work a show?”

He didn’t have to offer twice. I was new to the business, filing everything away.

“I’d love that,” I said.

“Okay,” Al said. “Lesson one: be seen before the show starts.”

“You mean by the band?”

“Not just the band. Crew. Security. Merch sellers.”

“Like the guy at the back door?”

“Exactly. His name’s Pete, by the way.” Al nodded toward the entrance. “Introduce yourself. Offer to help. Make sure he knows you’re working the show.”

He popped another piece of gum into his mouth. “Which brings us to lesson two.”

“What’s that?”

“Get to know the doormen,” Al said, pointing toward the front. “I’ve been to enough shows that they wave me in without looking. But say you show up and you’re not on the list, what do you think happens?”

“They don’t let you in?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe they remember you from earlier and wave you in anyway.”

“It makes sense. I used to work the door at the Cat’s Cradle, and sometimes I’d just wave people in.”

Al turned and walked to the merch table, waving me over. A pale woman with dark bangs and a nose piercing rose as we approached.

“How you doing, hon?” he asked. “What’s selling?”

“The American Standard shirt is popular,” she said, pointing to the display. “And the 7M3 hats. A lot of people are asking if we’re selling a single of the song ‘Cumbersome.’”

“There you go,” he said, nodding.

“Why is that important?” I asked. “About ‘Cumbersome,’ I mean.”

“Kid, the fans tell you before the charts do.”

“What about Lustre?” I asked, turning toward the merch seller. “Anyone asking about them?”

“Not yet. Maybe after they play?” she said, hopeful.

From the stage, a local DJ started to speak. “All right, who’s ready to rock? We’ve got Seven Mary Three in the house!”

“Come on,” Al said. “If we hurry, we can still make it.”

I followed him into the crowd, not sure where we were headed. He moved like a boxer on his toes in the first round, never rushing, bobbing and weaving between bodies without jostling a drink or blocking a view. I did my best to keep up.

Security gave him a nod, and we slipped past the barricade to the side of the stage just as the DJ wrapped up.

“Let’s get things started,” he said. “From right here in Charlotte, North Carolina, Lustre!”

“Knock ’em dead,” Al said, fist-bumping the singer as the band took the stage. The crowd roared, happy the show was starting.

Al leaned in, his arm around my shoulder. “This is where you want to be,” he said.

A guitar wailed from the stage, the club awash in feedback.

“Wow, that’s loud,” Al shouted. He fished a couple pairs of earplugs from his pocket and held them out to me. I took them and put them in as the squeal from the stage grew louder.

“Adding an addendum to my lessons,” Al shouted over the noise. “Always wear earplugs.”

As the DJ came offstage, Al grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him down the hall backstage. The band launched into the first song, and I watched from the side of the stage.

Al reappeared. “Kid, come on.”

I followed him back to Lustre’s dressing room.

“The band’s onstage. Shouldn’t we be watching?”

“We will but come in the dressing room,” Al said, pushing the door open. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Billy, this is Chris, the program director from 106.5 The End.”

Chris was fishing beers out of the cooler.

“Chris, Billy’s with Lustre.”

“How you doing?” Chris said, opening his beer and taking a sip. “I’ve heard a lot about the band. They’re loud, though. Hard to hear the songs,” he added, laughing as feedback swelled from the stage.

“What are you talking about?” Al said, shooting me a look that said don’t say anything. He fished a CD from his bag and handed it over as he talked. “These guys are tailor-made for big stages. Why don’t you take another listen to the single and let’s talk about Weenie Roast next year?”

“I’d like to have a local on the show,” Chris said, examining the CD. He slid his glasses down his nose to get a better look. “A&M going to support it?”

“You give me twenty spins a week and the Weenie Roast, and the label will put together a promotion.”

“Let’s talk next week,” Chris said. “If the single’s as good as you say, we can probably work something out.”

Chris grabbed three more beers from the refrigerator. “Okay if I take a couple of these out to my friends?”

“No problem,” Al said, escorting Chris to the door. “Let me know if you need a few more, and I can open a tab at the bar.”

Al shut the door, set his beer down, and began writing furiously in his notebook.

When he finished, he looked satisfied. “I’ve been trying to catch Chris for the past few weeks. If we get an add and a spot on Weenie Roast, this’ll have been a very productive night.”

“Is this a typical night?” I asked.

“I don’t know if there is a typical night,” he said. “The most you can do is keep your eyes open and try to anticipate what’s needed.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said, heading for the door. “I need to find Pete.”

“I’ll be right here,” Al said. “Getting a jump on my report.”

After I talked to Pete, I made my way back to the dressing room. Al and I talked until the band came offstage, flushed and exhilarated.

“Who took our beers?” the drummer said in a southern drawl as he slammed the cooler shut. “Don’t they know I’m a rock star?”

Al started to speak, but I cut him off. “The club’s bringing some more. Pete helped me out,” I said.

“Bout time,” the drummer said. “Thanks, Billy.”

Al smiled and nodded.

I never saw Al again after that tour, but I never forgot the way he moved through a room. Years later, I found myself moving the same way.

This One’s Called… Biggest Deal Since Soundgarden.

PS

Lustre never became the band everyone thought they would. Seven Mary Three did. “Cumbersome” went everywhere, and that tour was one of the few times I saw a hit take shape in real time.

I eventually found that I liked the training better than the races, preferring long stretches of solitary running to crowds of people trying for their personal bests. I would grab my red iPod Nano, cinch my laces and head out for 5, 7, or 10 miles without a second thought. For a while the act was enough. Eventually my competitive side kicked in, and I needed a goal to hit the road. I compiled my times on the app map my run, weighed myself obsessively, and tracked how I felt on each run with short notes to myself like this one from April 6th, 2009: “fell, bloodied both knees.”

When I started writing in earnest, the same thing happened. I enjoyed writing for pleasure, but without a goal I started to lose interest. I needed to name the distance I was trying to cover. The Iceman Cometh became my finish line.

This was long before the Substack, or anyone knew what I was doing. I treated the draft like a training cycle, creating a spreadsheet to track my progress over what turned into a six-year journey of rewrites and refinements. I needed that rigid discipline to reach the end of an idea I couldn’t quite explain yet.

That idea comes from a time when I believed the worst thing that could happen was losing a job, a fear I carried through my early professional life. The fear wasn’t so much about losing a job as it was the waiting for the end. My father, I later learned, carried the same fear until he was finally laid off. Years of anticipation and dread ended in a single afternoon. Looking back, he was noticeably happier in the final decade of his working life.

At one point, I was employed but stripped of responsibility, waiting for the inevitable end. I still went to work everyday, playing Madden Football with my coworkers. A delayed flight and a chance encounter saved my job at the last minute. Two years later, we were back in the same place.

I don’t run much anymore. When I do, it’s on a treadmill in the garage, squeezed between a lawn mower and Christmas decorations, binge watching a show like Game of Thrones. But I write every day.

I’ve never read The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill, nor witnessed a staging of the play. Likely I walked by the theater in Times Square when the Kevin Spacey-led revival was performed, but that was the extent of my exposure to the play about alcoholics, outcasts, and drifters clinging to “pipe dreams.” Somehow, though, the title stuck with me.

In the end, I realized I wasn’t just writing a story; I was answering a question the title had been asking me for years. By the time I reached the final page, I understood what O’Neill’s characters and my own history were trying to say: the Iceman eventually arrives for everyone. You might as well be mid-stride when he does.

P.S.

O’Neill’s play was famously long, most performances clocking in between 4 and 5 hours. According to various sources it averaged 4 hours and 20 minutes. The first marathon I finished in 4 hours and 19 minutes, besting the Iceman. Coincidence? Probably, but it is the sort of minutiae that keeps me awake at night.

If you missed part one, you can read that here. Part 2 is for paid subscribers only. If you would like to support my work and gain access to my archives, (or just see how the story ends) grab a 7 day free trial here.

-billy

It was anything but business as usual as we waited to learn our fate. Rumors flared then spread, opinions leaping from one person to another.

The first and most persistent was that the founder was going to buy the company back. In this rumor the founder was in some far off locale visiting bond markets to raise the capital needed for the purchase. He was determined to swoop back in and save the company from the clutches of the corporate hegemony that stifled his creativity.

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