Finding Abbey Road (20 page)

12:15 p.m., July 23

You bought your tickets months ago.

Marked your calendar.

Sent ecstatic messages to your friends.

Last week you planned who would drive, who would get snacks.

Found that random friend of a friend who could take that one ticket because somebody backed out. You hope they're cool. Or cute. Or at the very least don't mind Red Vines and Red Bull.

This morning you woke up too early, buzzing with excitement, the world electric with humid hazy air, with the complete perfection of possibility. . . .

Only to get in a fight with your parents, maybe because you were amped, or because there was something you said you'd do, something that could never compete for attention when this show has been the only thing that's mattered for weeks.

Or maybe because your parents could sense, from your boundless excitement, how you were no longer theirs.

Even though you always would be.

You drove around town, picking up your friends. You gathered gas money and filled the tank halfway, and someone bought an ill-advised frozen drink that made the car smell like strawberry syrup and suntan lotion . . .

But you hurtled onto the highway, windows down, thrusting into the brilliant midmorning. You drove with the radio blaring the meticulously curated preshow mix that your friend created, the perfect songs that aren't by the bands you're about to see, but tie them to you via a spiderweb of moments and references. Songs that are, as always, as much about where you heard them, and how you felt and who you were with, as they are about the melodies themselves.

You sat through traffic for an hour to get into the parking lot.

You giggled at the stoned kids in the back of the pickup parked beside you, steered clear of the thugs shotgunning beers behind the port-o-potties. You walked at a near-run, sweatshirt around your waist, tapping your pocket and feeling the imprint of your ticket, over and over. You ran, and you laughed . . .

And now here you are. Walking through the gates. In a mass of people. Passing under a sign that reads:
Insanity Tour.
The biggest one of the summer. Fifteen bands, two stages, forty thousand people. Two of the headliners are in your top-five favorite bands ever.

You find a space on the lawn. It was way too expensive to buy seats. Seats are for poseurs and parents.

Falling to the grass, you laugh, and scope out the cuteness around you.

You laugh, and peruse the list of opening acts playing during these early hours.

You get a text from that someone that you are hoping to casually bump into at some point during this long day. They're being evasive. Or coy. Why won't they just bring their friends over and sit here? It's annoying.

Then your friend mentions that he's heard some good buzz about the band going on next over at the second stage. Apparently there was this huge thing about them online, back in the spring. You've never heard of that band, but it's near the spot where they sell the best pretzels. Plus, if you go, you can be coy, too.

You're in the pretzel line when they come on. Actually you are in the middle of paying, but their first chord makes you turn your head. They rock, full-on, a young-looking drummer who's super cute, a fiery girl with a bass slung low, every movement with an edge, a dude standing in back on guitar who looks like he could be one of the other members' uncles. And a singer who is tugging at you, the melody, the words, you're not even deciphering what he's saying yet but there's this thing happening.
Listen
, the frequency of this band is saying.

“It's six seventy-five,” the annoyed cashier says again. You didn't even hear her the first time.

But the sound is washing over you and you feel like those chords, those notes, this feeling, it understands you. It's inviting you in. Spend time here. Inhabit this.

Let's go.

Pretzel paid for, you join your friend in the middle of
the crowd. There are maybe two hundred people watching, and you're literally twenty feet from the stage and there is an intimacy, like you're at a private party. You find yourself glancing over your shoulder to see if more people are coming. Because more people should be hearing this band. More people should be experiencing what you are experiencing, and yet, the fact that they're not almost makes it better. Sure, you hope they make it big, but right now, here in the early afternoon beneath a banner for Mountain Dew, this band belongs to a privileged few.

They are
yours
.

Their next song rocks hard, and you and your friend dance. After that comes a slow song that lifts you a few inches off the ground in a levitating swirl. You feel like you are made of lighter air . . . and also really need a bathroom.

But this song . . . this song.

You feel like you've heard it before.

You know you never have.

Feel like you were made for each other.

Do you know right then, that this will be the song, years from now, that you will hear randomly in a dorm room, in a coffee shop, that will rip you from the future and tie you back to this exact moment? Do you feel your future selves stopping by, a blur of you stretching through time?

Despite all of the newness around you, in all of your future selves, something is imprinting inside you about this moment, right here: the sunscreen, the pretzel, all the
bodies, the blinding sun at the second stage . . . this band, your friends, and the feeling that you have discovered the very first thing that is yours and yours alone, well, yours and a couple hundred others.

A secret language.

A pure crystal of the hope buried in the mines beneath your skin.

A conduit between you, and future you, and the universe, and . . .

Possibility.

Yours.

Everyone's.

It's over in a heartbeat. Your friend tugs on your arm. But you're not leaving. The band starts their next song, and this band, do they know, can they possibly know what they have done to you? The connection, the purpose, the infinite that they have made? They're probably disappointed. Wishing they were on the main stage. Someday they will be. And until then, you make it your goal to be sure that they know, that everyone knows. In crowds and on sites and on bathroom walls. Send out the signal, and see who hears. Who out there feels this, too? Your people, your tribe, scattered across a crowded planet, connected by a song . . .

No longer alone.

Their short set ends too soon. You linger as the crowd disperses, watching the stage, watching them unplug. You see the singer glance around the lawn, around the stage,
and you can tell he's taking it all in. It may not be the main stage, but it is further than most bands ever get. Like he knows it's precious. One bad break, one lost member . . . And you want to run to the stage and tell him don't worry, you got this. You'll be on this stage again, and so much bigger because we need you to.

Maybe you really should run up there and tell him. People should know when the things they do connect . . .

But he's walking offstage. Oh well. You've already found the band online. Liked, followed, friended, subscribed.

Next time.

There has to be a next time.

12:58 p.m.

When Caleb, Val, Randy, and Matt step onstage, I can tell that the first thing they notice is the sea of empty space arcing around behind the crowd. They know the score: it's such a big festival. They are playing with some of the biggest acts there are, and for all the hype that releasing those “family sessions” caused, enough to get a band with barely even an EP to their name to be invited to play the summer's biggest festival, to be one of the thirty bands that
thousands
of bands would kill to be . . .

They are still a new fish in the biggest pond.

There are so many bands to see. It's so early in the
day. . . . And yet still, here they are. So they shake it off and check their instruments, and as they do, they make sure to look at the crowd that
is
there. These are their next new fans. It's Minneapolis: stop six on the Insanity Tour. Ten shows total. Every time, they've gotten about the same size crowd: two hundred, maybe three by the end of the set. They sell the same small pile of records, but the buzz online grows. More mentions, more shares, more people doing the digital equivalent of turning their heads.

Who is this band called Dangerheart? Wait, why have I heard of them?

Here is how the conversation went, somewhere over the North Atlantic, on the way home from London:

SUMMER: Candy Shell will let us go. We'll have to give the money back.

VAL: We don't have the money.

CALEB: I asked Randy. He can loan it to us.

VAL: Okay.

SUMMER: But that leaves you in a bad way, doesn't it. . . .

VAL: I'll be fine.

CALEB: What are you—I mean, what are we going to do?

VAL: I'm going to go see my mom. And we're going to talk like adults. No more running, no more fighting. She's sick. One of us has to do the right thing.

SUMMER: Do you think it will work?

VAL: Eventually. Might be a couple months of acoustic shows for you, brother, but if we can score something big with these recordings, you'd better believe I'm not going to miss it.

CALEB: All right . . . and Jerrod is really going to take Eli's lost songs and let us off the hook?

SUMMER: He said it was enough.

CALEB: What about Jason? Kellen?

SUMMER: Jerrod says we should leave that to him. We got him something none of those guys ever could, and they're going to benefit huge from it.

VAL: So we're free. So, now what, then?

SUMMER (smiles knowingly): Jerrod also says it's okay if we leak the recordings you made with Eli. As long as we don't actually say what they are. Just let the world figure it out.

VAL: And we're sure that's a good idea . . .

SUMMER: The session is amazing. It's so
you.
Like in a real, personal way. And it's your story. Your true story. The heart behind your songs, your past, it's a part of what makes you something the world should know about. And on top of that, the songs are amazing in their own right.

CALEB: (silent)

VAL: The idea that Eli is actually alive . . . people are going to freak.

SUMMER: Yes.

VAL: So what do we do, just watch it blow up and . . . not say anything?

SUMMER: Exactly. We just let it happen. And keep being us.

VAL (thinking): I hate to even wonder this. But . . . is this fair to Eli? I mean, he thinks we erased that tape.

CALEB: We thought he erased himself. Sorry, but, maybe putting these songs out there will force him to face the world again. To get help.

VAL: To be a real dad.

CALEB: I guess, but the point is, it will be up to him. He'll have something to come back to, if he wants it. But we have a right to have a father. He's already a huge shadow over the band. I say we use it. Like Summer said, it's our story.

And so we found a blog to do the release, and we had Matt record drums on the sessions, and then we put them out there. And it really did blow up the scene for a few weeks. Enough that Dangerheart got invited to the Insanity Tour, and got about a thousand management and agent and record label calls. But it also sold a ton of our songs, both the family tracks and the studio versions. Enough that we told all the sharks,
Thanks, we'll let you know.

But for all that, life didn't change that much for the band. Val was gone for about two months, and then she came back. We practiced, played gigs. We decided not even
to try finding a new guitarist while all this crazy hype was going on, so Randy's been filling in.

Somewhere in there, we graduated, had an all-night party, went to each other's family celebrations.

A few more things happened, too.

And now it's summer and Dangerheart is just another band on a festival stage.

The small stage, but the biggest tour.

The small stage, but with no expectations. A modest crowd, but a curious one. Daunting? Yup. But possible, as long as you remember that you are there, you are a part of it. In it.

This is your chance.

What will you do with it?

So they tune and check their vocal mics, nod to one another, and then . . . they rock. Val moves like steel coils and rubber bands, her hair, chartreuse for the summer, slapping back and forth, willing the crowd to move. Matt is head-down and so into it, and my three-minute stint as the drummer makes me appreciate just how dialed in you have to be to drive the drums, arms and legs all doing their own thing, creating the springboard for everything else.

Caleb is Caleb, only better. There's no doubt anymore. He is the son of a rock legend, but he is his own thing, with his own future. Not his father.

But his father is part of him.

The band is getting so tight. They've gotten so good
throughout the spring and into this tour. It hasn't always been easy to tune out the buzz from the Eli sessions, but any other band on our level would kill for this kind of chance. So you take it.

Take the chance. And then just play and play and play.

And even though I've seen this set five other times (and some of these songs how many times at this point?) I still love to hear them, still love to feel them, still love to lose myself in them, and yet still I have my graph-paper notebook out, pen ready, ears perked not just to what is, but to what could be. . . .

And, as they play, I get a little sad. It's hard to be far away from them. It feels different when you're right beside a tiny stage, or right in the front of a Mount Hope High crowd.

It's especially hard when you're watching through a laptop screen.

The set rocks. Even from just the single angle of the live-streaming camera feed, I can see that the crowd has grown from the beginning of the set to the end. I have a note or two. A thought about the middle section of “Catch Me,” about the new ending they just wrote for “Starlight” . . .