So I saw John Vanderslice

John Vanderslice played a "living room" show (it was actually at a small guitar shop - but a homey-feeling one) in Winston-Salem last week and I went.  I knew a larger percentage of the crowd than I was expecting.  It was a good time.  He went on to play shows in Durham and Raleigh over the next two nights, but I didn't go to those, but wish I could have (I just wasn't up for drives like that, at least not alone).

If you haven't listened to him, he can be hard to describe.  I have difficulty doing so.  He is about as "indie" as "indie" can be, but doesn't fit what most folks think of as "indie rock" at all.  His music is simple but compelling.  He lyrics are both odd and instantly understandable.  He is exactly the kind of artist who will never hit big, but who will have a small band of die-hard followers.  Despite not going to the other shows this weekend, I'd like to think I've become one of those.

He played several of his songs from across his albums and talked with us (for anyone unfamiliar with "living room shows" - I was until recently- they are just that; small venues, very simple and intimate).  Having seen him before, it actually was very much what I expected; great music, funny stories, a great deal of warmth and openness, an intense monologue on what is wrong with most vinyl pressings today, some details about his current drug use, and off-the-cuff acceptance of the idea that government agents killed Jeffrey Epstein.  The usual.  As he was playing he also took some time to extend thanks to my friend Jon for his role in getting the show together.  As he was doing that, something occurred to me.

For a few years now I've been on a bit of a journey of discovering new music and learning more about music.  I still don't know much.  Of course, I was just writing about this in my last blog post.  This really began with conversations with Jon who pointed me in the direction of some documentaries and was (and still remains) kind enough to entertain my hesitant and often uninformed questions.  In 2013, as part of a great deal of love that was shown me around my 50th birthday, Jon got us tickets to see Vanderslice play at Local 506 in Chapel Hill (I literally just had the date and place confirmed for me this morning).  He had already given me several of John Vanderslice's albums and I was deep into them.  I don't think I'd seen anyone play music live for over 15 years at that point, and I was never a real monster about that even when I had.

The thing is that I always sort of wanted to be.  I've always been a bit of a coward - still am at times.  I had this image of what I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to like and I've often been too lazy or too fearful to move far beyond that.  Music was something I "liked"... frankly it was something I consumed without thinking much about it.  R.E.M. and Steeleye Span were the only two bands I'd ever felt at all passionate about, but except for going to a couple of R.E.M. concerts that had just taken the form of me collecting albums (and in the case of R.E.M. a few bootleg cassettes of live shows).  Still, I'd been to some things (most notably in Iowa City, where I saw Mike Watt on one occasion and Johnny Winter on another) mostly due to friends suggesting we go.  I had felt this pull (especially at the Mike Watt show), but I'd never really responded.  I'd had opportunities, especially due to my friend, Jim McGowan, but I'd never taken them.  I'd hung around at the college radio station back at UNCG, I'd even done some voice-over stuff, because I knew a couple of people who worked there.  I kept seeing this whole world of music and artists, but I never stepped into it.  It didn't really occur to me that I could.  I'm not that guy.  I go to cons and SCA events... I don't go to shows.

So here I was at this show in 2013, and it felt perfect.  I also thought about those other shows, and how they had felt perfect.  It would be great if I could make that into my moment on the road to Damascus, but it wasn't.  But it was a start.  It took me that evening to realize something - I wasn't done living yet.  That had been a real question for me.  After my Mom died, and I was no longer being her care-giver, I had a decade of wondering what I was still here for?  I tried dating again for a while and just wasn't feeling it.  I'd gotten used to being alone.  So, if I'm not going to have a family, and I'm not taking care of family, and my dog has died, and my students couldn't care less about what I'm teaching them (bit of an exaggeration, but I was living in doldrums then), what do I have to live for?  I'd been there a while, even as friends around me were doing wonderful things and supporting me... and suddenly I'm in a perfect moment.

It opened up for me.  If I can have this, there is so much left.  If I have friends who will take me for a birthday weekend, how much else have I got?  I've got this music to discover... and how much more?  It was wonderful and it was a beginning.  I went to see the Julie Ruin with my friend Philippe De Los Santos a couple years later and thought "You know, you can just go to the shows.  You missed them when you were 'the right age' but you can just go now.  You ain't dead."  This then led to "I can go to Central Europe... Greece and Italy... Japan...."  I'm still fighting the fear and the depression, but I'm not dead.  I'll keep going.

So, thinking all this as John Vanderslice was speaking, I suddenly said "Thank you" to Jon, who was right next to me and seemed rightly confused about why I was suddenly thanking him.  I also talked a bit about this to Vanderslice, who hugged me and talked a bit about his own similar feelings of this disease of middle age.  We weren't able to finish that talk, but that's okay... next time I see him.

Minor postscript, Vanderslice sent me a message a couple days later via Instagram (I hadn't realized you could do that) saying he was happy to have met me.  I'm sure I'm one of many people to have received such a message from him after the weekend's shows - he seems to be like that.  Felt good, in any case.