I love you even when Rosie, sitting in the lonely bar in Saskatchewan that I’m playing at, is laughing the haggard, asthmatic, pre-laugh wheeze of a life-long partier. Is it possible that I’m loving you because of people like Rosie, who has obviously led a…rough life? I think so.

Rosie needs us to make her feel a little better, dance some, in her stiff grade-seven shuffle. After our cover of Cripple Creek, I overhear her say that she might have cancer, followed by, “life ain’t easy, might as well go out happy.” You said it Rosie.
She sits back in her seat and pounds another beer, smiles at us. At least for now, the band has made her happy.
Do I miss the luxury of the tour bus, catered meals and nameless, adoring fans? Yup. But maybe now it’s also as important to do this thing because I enjoy creating music with friends, and sharing it with appreciative folks, with the people who need it most, the ones thanking you profusely and genuinely for coming to their forgotten part of the world in order to make them happy.

Music. Remind me, how is it again that we met?
Oh that’s right. In the womb, my parents singing a Russian folk song duet to me. The first serenade.
And then there was that time you were hanging out in my brother’s new set of sparkling blue, 1980 Slingerland drums that he’d just brought home. You taunted me with the Scorpion’s Rock You Like A Hurricane. I cranked the ghetto blaster and stepped up. Remember? Note for note. Ten years old. Boy I loved you then.

When I was 12 your seductive powers were at their peak. I watched how you made the older teen girls, in their cut-off jeans and halter tops, swoon over my brothers’ band, jamming in the music room above the garage. A Police song, followed by Bob Marley, then some Stones and Van Halen, in a haze of marijuana smoke. I’ll never forget the starry eyes of the girls fixated on my brothers. Music, you were magnificent, how you made the girls bounce and shake, and the band curling and pursing their lips, and everyone swaying their long hair back and forth in rhythm. I was in awe. Take me music, take me anywhere. I was yours.
Seven years later in the same loft, the same party, different girls. Jason and Taylor and I made you sound like the apocalypse. But we did it with swagger, and anyway, times had changed. Hardcore was sexy.

You have to know how much I loved you when I dropped out of university for you a few years after that. Don’t you? It wasn’t easy. But I asked my parents to trust me. And they did. So that when you allowed me to make money through you, we were all proud. The trust had paid off.
I eventually made more money, quite a bit of it. Thanks for that. You were good to me. I toured and toured and travelled anywhere I wanted in between tours. Without you would I have stood around a bonfire with Martha Wainright drinking beers at a bush party in Whitehorse? Would I ever have reason to go to Horsefly BC? Vimerby, Sweden? Pomona, Tucson or Adelaide?
You helped feed me and my dog Leeroy. You bought me a truck, made me a better surfer, paid for friends’ dinners. Sometimes their addictions.
I enjoyed when you helped me make out with Meredith backstage at Coachella too. That was fun. And what’s her name after our set at Lollapalooza. You took me to Farm Aid where Neil Young watched me drum for a few moments. Then he shook my hand afterwards. I haven’t washed it since.
If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have shared a dressing room with a grumpy Steve Earle, or chatted with Rick Ocasek, all tall and awkward and polite.
Music. Oh man. Remember the night I spent with Heath Ledger celebrating whatever it was we were celebrating, smoking hash that he had smuggled in his crotch from LA, at a club in Montreal? Remember that? I am thankful.
If it were not for you I would never have toured with Ben Lee, one of the happiest, most grounded Australian humans ever. Or his right hand man Nic, who played on my band’s album. For free.
I have good, good friends because of you, who I will know for the rest of my life. Tegan and Sara. Ted, Kinnie, Marlow, Bunk, Jason, Wes, Kelly, The brothers Black, Lecerc, Kuba, Dan-o, Keith, Adam, Ian, Sean, Marta…
I never thought the fun would ever end.

But somewhere along the way I kind of forgot about you, the real you. I forgot about how we had met. I mean, I knew you were there, hanging around like a sugar momma. I became more interested in how you made me feel, and look, and the things I could do with the money you provided. It became all about me. Sure I still liked it when the audience was moved by you, through me, but I started to like it a lot too when they wanted my autograph.
But like Mr. Miyagi, you had to go and teach me some lessons. Didn’t you?
I had fooled myself, started to rely more on charm than talent, made myself believe I was worth it, owed it, deserving of your superficial rewards. Sometimes I was a dick.
So you made it all go away. The party ended.
Man, how I rallied against you. I stopped caring that you had ever existed, I stopped reading about you. I stopped listening to you when I was blue, knowing full well you were the only remedy. The love and magic were gone. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.
But the more I tried to hide from you, the more I heard you everywhere- in movies, commercials, people’s homes, gas stations, street corners, in my head. Especially in my head.
Then one day I realized that I missed you. I needed you. I saw you again in my friends and the songs we would make simply because we liked to. We liked each other. We liked you. I allowed the magic back in.
It made me feel good to know that you would never go away. You were part of me. An appendage. And even though I occasionally still imagine surgically removing you when you aren’t what I want you to be, I know that I can’t. You’re just here now. Until I die, you will be here, with me. A stubborn, beautiful old friend, making us all feel something, if not good.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Notes From The Caravan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.