An Inauspicious Start
An Inauspicious Start
You remember it like yesterday,
but it could always be tomorrow.
Thick as failure, the cloud hangs
inches from your head,
dropping relentless beads of acid
down the back of your neck.
It’s always right behind you,
and always right around the corner.
The hardest part of the memory to accept
is that before it all went wrong,
it was the best you’d ever played.
You’re in Houston, Texas. You’re 22, maybe 23. Friends from the greater loop have picked up their friends on the way to this new venue, and they’ve told each other about their favorite lines from their favorite songs. Everyone knows what you’re gonna play, because you haven’t been doing this for very long, and your set list only changes when you learn a new tune.
Since this is a new venue on your roster, tonight will only prove successful if the place is full, and it’s not. You won’t get paid for this. Your only focus now is making sure the bar staff bobs their heads. There’s no telling who played before or after you. You showed up about 4 hours early, but you spent that time at a car wash vacuum station across the street, eating Rolo’s and french fries.
From the stage, the back of the room is the front door. Stage lights within reaching distance from the mic stand compete with puddles of light spilling through store front windows and licking the heels of all of the people you know from Pasadena to the Woodlands. Among your newest stage tricks is the banter you’ve started practicing while your eyes, hands, and ears focus on tuning your $200 Takamine 6-stringacoustic with a $100 chromatic tuner. The jokes get polite laughs, and the awkwardness provides a backdrop for new one-liners you rehearsed while driving in on the toll road.
You’re in Nirvana. Not the band, the state.
Nerves collide with confidence as the rush of adrenaline reaches your cheeks. As you step back from the mic, and soundcheck your best blues riff, you flashback ten years to a sweaty front porch outside of Baton Rouge where you stayed up past bedtime to rehearse the pentatonic scale. You quietly adjust your posture when you remember an older brother's voice calling you “Elvis” through the window, and telling you to call it a night. When the picking stops, you can hear crickets, frogs, and the current of the Tickfaw River. Tonight, the room sound is bar glass, collegiate giggles, and the humming threat of feedback in the monitors.
“How’s that sound out there?"
A few months from now, this will all seem significant enough to remember. But it will be years before you regret not writing it down. As far as anyone can tell, there’s no record of anything that happened until about 20 minutes before you walked outside. Everybody wants to hear Crash. You start with First Place to get it out of the way. You know it’s the only original in the top 5 on your close friends’ list, but you've got a strong closer tonight, and only 5 tunes in between.
You’re still learning how to put on a show. Good cover tunes are hand grenades - you gotta make ‘em count.
During Ballet Slippers, you think about why you don’t like it. There’s too much of your own limitations interlaced into the structure. You didn’t understand the Nashville Number System when you wrote it, so the foundation is off. Plus, the lyrics are sappy and bland. Gil digs it though. So do Dusty and Val. Eric and Brian will never admit it, but they both think it sucks.
Donny, your manager, talks all the way through the set. When he leaves, you’re two stanzas into Angel, and you’re building steam for the big closer. While the crowd is clapping and nudging each other, Donny comes back in and makes a b-line to stage right. It’s taken a few months to the hang of it, but his nervous laugh has as many variations as volumes, and by now you’ve learned the syntax.
“Hey dude. I think your car just got towed. Were you parked right in the front?"
The show must go on. Besides, you know that’s not what happened.
“I got one more song. I’m gonna need a ride."
When you finish Watchtower, your voice is shot. Screaming like a wannabe Dave Matthews isn’t healthy, but it sure is hard to talk over. For a few minutes, the whole room watches. When you say goodnight, the volume turns up. Glasses clank against the sink, frogs croak, and Whole Lotta Love hides the monitor hum. You unplug, slide your pedal board to the back of the stage to make room for the next act, and step right off the front.
“Hey man, great set. What happened to your car?"
“Hey! Great show! I have to tell you… I love that song about the dancer. Did they really tow your car?"
One after another. You pull Donny to the side when you hear him negotiating a number for the nearest wrecking yard from the bartender. “Why the hell wouldn’t somebody say something? He was parked there for hours. It’s not even marked as a loading zone!"
“I gotta talk to you.” You grab his shoulder.
“I got this, bro. Don’t sweat it. You need to be working the crowd. I can float you a hundred bucks or so to get it out, and you’ll be in Dallas by tomorrow night."
“I wasn’t just towed”, you say, and then you pause.
“I was... repossessed.”
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I knew I couldn’t afford it, but not until it was too late. I had missed 5 payments when I stopped counting. Gigs just didn’t pay enough, and when they did, I always needed new gear or merch. The 2002 Chevy Cavalier had 14 miles on the odometer when I drove it off the lot. 16 months later, it read 86,489 miles the last time I saw it.
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I wake up on Dusty’s couch in a state of stress-defiance. No clothes, toiletries, or electronics. On the floor next to me is everything I had on stage - my guitar, pedal board, and a bag of cd’s and stickers. Lucky for me, my parents are on their way through town today. Lucky for me, Stone and George are with them, so Dad’s in the church’s suburban. Lucky for me, we’re supposed to go visit Elton and Luke today. It’s a 4 hour drive from Houston to Lasalle Correctional Center in Olla, Louisiana, and lucky for me, my car - rather, GMAC’s car - is only a half hour out of the way.
The lot was probably dry once. It was probably a big, flat, dusty space with a chain linked fence around it before they filled it with cars. Then they filled it with cars. Then they put cars in the aisles between the cars. Then it rained, and they added gravel to the spots between cars between cars.
When the attendant holds out a manufacturer's key to my car, and asks me if I needed his, or if I brought my own, I stand still. Still stunned by the whole thing. I spent the morning making just enough phone calls to know the price of making this all go away - $14,750. That’s Blue Book value for the car as of today. Instead, I stand beside my mom while she pays $50 to have access to the car wherever the hell it’s parked, so I can take out my personal belongings before it is sold at an auction for 20% of that price.
Guilt, embarrassment, rage, depression… I can hardly breathe. The whole thing would be easier to stomach if it weren’t for the fact that I know the biggest surprise wasn’t just a few feet away. When we get around to the trunk, I try to stand blocking my mom’s view while I open it. Before I can even reach in, I hear her crying at the sight.
Everything I own is in this car.
At this point, I’ve been homeless for months, and as far as I can tell, no one had a clue. I moved to Austin with a chip on my shoulder, determined to prove people wrong. I tried my hand at a corporate job, and I hated it. Working at the church, at least I could come and go as I pleased. I never knew anyone who worked a 9 to 5, and the idea of letting someone else tell me not only what to do, but when and where to do it? No thanks. I’m okay being poor. It won’t be the first time.
My brothers stay inside while Mom and Dad help me load garbage bags of laundry into the back of the Suburban. My suitcase is neatly organized with books, cds, and good shoes. There’s a bumper sticker on the side.
“The only song the world has never heard is … yours.”
