“You know what, Birdy?” he said in the hospital room, with the afternoon light streaming through the window and those tubes up his nose. “Have to take me down in size some. So I can get through the Pearly Gates. Aw, honey, it ain’t nothin’. Come on, wipe your eyes. Laurie, get her a tissue. Listen, listen.” He gave her the stern look, the one that always worked. “Get yourself together. Mom tells me you’re not eatin’. Is that right?”
“Not hungry,” Jenn had answered.
“You better get hungry, girl. One thing for a big ol’ hoss like me to shrink down, and it’s another for a twig like you.”
“Dad,” Jenn had said, and her eyes had almost flooded out of her head.
And he was such a good guitar player, too. His hands were big, sure, but they moved so lightly on the strings. Together they sat on the porch, and they played songs like America’s ‘A Horse With No Name’, and Waylon Jennings’s ‘Luckenbach, Texas’, and his ‘Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys’. And so many, many others.
She was named after Waylon Jennings, who had taken the time to shake her father’s hand and talk to him like a regular person at a concert in Austin long before she was born. Her name wasn’t ‘Jennifer’, it was just ‘Jenn’. Jenn Stewart, that was her.
“Birdy,” he’d said one day in July on the porch, and this was just before he’d gotten sick, “you are a natural-born guitar player. And I swear, you’ve got lightning in those fingers. I can’t even do licks like those! Lord girl, you put me to shame!”
But that was his way of saying he was proud.
Her nickname, Birdy, came from him too. He said she could sing the birds out of the trees. Said she must be half-bird herself, to sing like that. That voice going up and up, right to the clouds. Up and up, right to God’s ear. You must be half-bird, Birdy. The other half’s an ol’ stinkbug! Ain’t that right, Laurie?
And her mother Laurie would grin and say, “Just like her daddy!”
Jenn had her father’s eyes, but she mostly resembled her mother. She was thin—much thinner now—and wiry, with the same copper-colored hair. She was a pretty girl—used to be—with high cheekbones and an elegant nose, again like her mother’s. That was a good thing, because many of the Stewarts and the Ingrahams had honkers. She could be funny, she had a quick wit and she liked to dance, but there was a side of her that had some of the hard earth of Texas in it. That side was serious and sometimes moody. That side didn’t go in for a lot of foolishness. An old soul, her mother called her when that side showed itself. Old beyond her years. That was the side that told her not to smoke pot or cigarettes, though her mother had admitted smoking pot herself back in the days when she was—and she said this with some pride in her voice—“kind of a hippie”. Jenn had tried beer at a party after the Crosstown Showdown, but she went back to her sweet tea.
Sometimes she wore her hair like her mother did, in braids. Today, though, it lay loose about her shoulders. It didn’t shine, though. It was dull.
She strummed the guitar some more, just trying it out again. Her fingers were not what they used to be. How long had it been since she’d brought this guitar out of its case in the closet? Three, four months? Half a year? Maybe so.
It had been a good concert last night at the Vista Futura. Her mom had told her about meeting The Five at the Denny’s, where she was a waitress.
You know what one of them said when I asked him what that thing with the fist and the peace sign meant? He said ‘Bullshit!’ His exact word. I almost pooted, tryin’ to hold back a laugh. But the girl was nice. She seemed kind. She’s the one who gave me the shirt.
Won’t you eat just a little dinner, honey?
Jenn had seen them on television. She’d followed their progress, and in a way shared their tribulations. First off, the sniper shooting the bass player in Sweetwater. Her grandmother lived in Sweetwater, so it had riveted her attention. Then what had happened to their road manager in Tucson. And that Stone Church thing, and finally two deaths in the New Mexico desert.
It was a tragic story. She’d gone to their website, heard their songs and watched their videos. She thought they were very strong, very talented, especially Ariel Collier, and she thought Nomad’s voice was as good as Waylon’s. So when her mom had brought in a newspaper ad saying The Five was doing a last show at the Vista Futura, and all ages were welcome and you could get in free if you wore the T-shirt, well…
No, Mom, I can’t go. I just don’t feel like it.
Jenn stood up, returned the guitar to its stand, and looked at herself in the mirror.
That hateful mirror. That ugly, ugly mirror. It showed her that the crows will fly, even if you stay in your own room and stop going outside. They will fly if you stop eating. They will fly if you shun food, because at first the sight of it makes you think of your father throwing up his dinners and shrinking down to a sick, dying sack of bones, and you don’t want to eat, either, if he can’t. And then, later…you think…really… I want to be with him, and play guitars, and be a family like we used to be, and I love my mom with all my heart but I need my dad, and maybe if I get right to the edge…right to the very edge of slipping into a sweet sleep, he will come as a spirit, whole and well again, to tell me you better eat, girl, and I can let him know how much I miss him, and how since he’s been gone all the music is gone too.
But he never came. He never could get through.
They call it anorexia. The doctor said: anorexia nervosa.
Jenn looked at herself. She really was a twig, now. Half of a twig. A sprig. Her bones could be counted.
No, Mom, I can’t go.
Her mother had said she might enjoy it, if she let herself. Nobody was going to know her there, if that’s what she was worried about. I’ll pick you up when it’s over. Jenn, go.
That band had gone through so much. Had seen so much death and tragedy. Yet still they kept going. They were unstoppable. So maybe…okay, Mom, I’ll go.
She almost didn’t make it in. She’d been outside the club waiting with about eighteen thousand people, it seemed like, and had started talking to another girl her age whose mother had let her off. The girl, whose name was Diane, wore very thick glasses and had a kind smile. She was wearing a The Five T-shirt and she said she was their Number One Fan. She said her mother had brought her from Waco. Then the doors had opened up and the crowd had started rushing in, and everybody was moving forward in a mob and there stood a man counting people on a little metal clicker, and when Jenn got up to the door with Diane behind her some people had pushed Diane back to get in front of her, and Jenn heard the man call out to someone inside, “We’re about at the limit!”
So Jenn had reached a scrawny arm back through the surging crowd and caught Diane’s hand and at first pulled her through and then pushed her forward so she could enter the door first, because Waco was a lot further away than Cedar Park, and Jenn had a cellphone she could call her mother with and Diane had just been kind of let out on the street.
But they’d both gotten in. The doors had closed about six people after Jenn.
“Breakfast’s almost ready!” her mother called from the kitchen. “Orange juice? Milk?” It was a hopeful question.
Jenn stared at herself in the mirror.
She heard that song again.
The last song.
She heard the words I’m sitting here like a candle on the darkest night.
“Jenn, listen to me, now. Listen real close.” It was her father’s voice, speaking to her in the hospital room on one of the final days. “I don’t want you to get sick. Do you hear me? You have life ahead of you. Hear me? I want you to be somebody’s candle, Jenn. I want you to show somebody your light. I think, with your talent and your heart, that’s what you’re gonna do. But you can’t get sick. You can’t follow me. Do you understand that?”
She did understand, but it was something she couldn’t control now. The crows were flying, and they destroyed little birdies.
> But that last song…
And the part Try and try, grow and thrive, because no one here gets out alive.
Her father’s voice once more, on maybe the very last day?
“Jenn,” he whispered. “My beautiful Birdy. Don’t cry, baby. Laurie, you don’t cry either. It’s all right. Do you think people get out of life alive? No, they don’t. That’s why you have to make every day…every minute…count. I love my girls. God bless you both.”
And hearing that line in the song, in the Vista Futura, had made tears bloom in Jenn’s eyes. Had made them trickle down her cheeks, until Diane had looked at her and said maybe Jenn ought to be the Number One Fan, if that song moved her so much.
Jenn had thought—had known—that at last, her father had found a way to get through.
It had been a good song. A really, really good song. It had deeply touched her. It had spoken to her in a way she thought it could speak to no other person in the audience.
But she thought she could do better.
She looked at her posters on the walls.
There was Gwen Stefani, who Jenn thought was one of the most beautiful and talented women in the world. Gwen Stefani had a sweet heart. Jenn could tell that about a person.
There was a woman named Joni Mitchell, standing on a stage before a huge crowd with her arms upraised. A vintage poster, bought off eBay. These two women, on the CDs she owned, were separate and distinct talents. Both had fire and passion in their voices. Joni Mitchell wanted to get things done. She wanted to give a voice to people who had none. She wanted to speak clearly, and to clearly be heard. And to do that, you also had to clearly hear.
Gwen Stefani used her talent as an entertainer. To enthrall and delight, to dance to a beat, to have fun, to laugh and help people shrug off the worries of the world for a little while. To help them find strength when the crows came flying.
Jenn enjoyed them equally, as she enjoyed listening to all the many different musicians in her collection. But these two…these two separate and distinct talents, were the ones she went back to again and again.
She thought…if someone could merge them together, could meld them into one talent, one voice, a single personality. The seeker of truth and the joyful entertainer.
And both of them, the combination, writing songs from the heart.
What music that would be.
Jenn thought she maybe should eat some breakfast today. At least try it.
You couldn’t sing on an empty stomach.
You sure couldn’t dance on one, either.
“Milk,” she answered her mother.
“Alright, angel,” her mother said, and her voice was husky.
That last song, Jenn thought. It had spoken to her, in about as clear a voice as anybody could wish to hear.
Some things don’t change, they never do.
Some things do change, they change with you.
She looked again at the pictures of herself and her father, thinking about how much courage he’d shown when he was getting ready for his journey.
She thought she needed some too, for her own.
“Orange juice, too,” she said toward the kitchen. And added, “Please, ma’am.”
At breakfast, Jenn ate sparingly, like a bird, but at least Laurie thought it was a start. Just so long as she didn’t go into the bathroom and throw it up. Laurie asked her what she planned to do today, it would be another clear hot day, and Jenn said she thought she was going to mess around on the guitar, and she might call Noreen Velasco and Anna Cope and ask them if they wanted to bring their guitars over. It had been a while since they’d done that.
“Will you try to eat some lunch?” Laurie asked.
Jenn crunched on a piece of bacon. “Do we have any peanut butter?”
Laurie got dressed for work, in her Denny’s uniform. She would put on the tag that said Hi I’m Laurie when she got there. She put her hair in braids. She brushed her teeth. Thank the Lord Jenn don’t have my big ol’ choppers, she thought. The sun was about to come up.
She could hear her daughter playing her guitar again. Music was a beautiful gift.
She went in to say goodbye, and Jenn said, “Mom, I was thinking. Could I maybe start my lessons back?”
“I think you absolutely could. Absolutely.” Jenn had quit her lessons months ago. Jenn was good, very good, but she was the kind of person—or used to be, before she got so sad and sick—who always wanted to be better.
“Can we afford ’em? I could probably find a job at the mall.”
“Yes, we can afford ’em. And we’ll talk about that later. You just enjoy your day.” And don’t worry so much, Laurie almost said, but today she didn’t think she had to. She started to close the door.
Jenn said, “You can leave it open, Mom.”
“Okay.” Laurie listened to her daughter playing. Watched her hands moving on the strings. Sending music into the air. Who could say where it would go? “Love you,” she said.
“Love you, too,” said Jenn. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“You can leave a tip on the table,” Laurie told her, and she met her daughter’s quick smile with one of her own, and then she left the house with music in her ears.
On the way to the car, she thought that money was tight, it always was, but she would figure out how to get those guitar lessons for Jenn. It seemed very important to her, and it seemed very right.
Because for someone you loved, sacrifice was no problem.
For someone you loved, it was no problem at all.
Thanks and Dedications
I’d like to thank, first and foremost, Cass Scripps of the Metro Talent Agency in Atlanta for taking me through the life of musicians on the—his very excellent term—“knife and gun circuit”.
I’d like to thank The Verve. I was having lunch in a California Pizza Kitchen restaurant when I heard a song over the speakers. It immediately spoke to me, and I had to ask the hostess to find out for me what the name of the song was and who the artists were. That situation gave me the seed of this book—the power of a song to speak to an individual. The song was ‘Bittersweet Symphony’.
I’d like to dedicate this book to the following bands and artists. These are people I have listened to when I needed the balm or blast of music. All of them are in here somewhere. I have a long list to go through, and to be fair I put all the names in a blue porkpie hat and drew them out. They are not in any order of fame, or genre, or timeframe. They are in the order the blue porkpie hat decided.
So, thank you,
To Duane Eddy, The Haunted, The Red Walls, Nova’s Nine, XTC, The Cuff Links, Pink, The Pretenders, Cat Stevens, Norman Greenbaum, Blood Sweat and Tears, Sex Pistols, Empire Of The Sun, Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark, Panic At The Disco, The Grass Roots, Wang Chung, Prince, AC/DC, Crimson Metal Dragon, Adam and The Ants, Annie Lennox, Brian Wilson, Pearl Jam, Booker T & The MGs, My Chemical Romance, The Hot Melts, Green Day, Allman Brothers Band, Cream, The Kingston Trio, The The, The Killers, The Trashmen, Elton John, the Beau Brummels, Dirtblonde, No River City, Carly Simon, The Clash, Chevelle 6, Delicate Balance, 10cc, Robert Fripp, Heart, The Fray, Moon Taxi, 13th Floor Elevators, Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, The Wheels, Spencer Davis Group, Cyndi Lauper, Gang of Four.
To Sonic Youth, Curtis Mayfield, 311, Soul Society, Metallica, Steppenwolf, The Specials, Procul Harum, Junior Brown, The Doors, Billy Joel, The White Stripes, Buffalo Tom, Spirit, Pink Floyd, Three Dog Night, the B52s, Amboy Dukes, Simon and Garfunkel, Uriah Heep, the Black Crowes, The Rolling Stones, Dion, the Human League, HIM, Pat Benatar, Herman’s Hermits, The Yeah Yous, The Farm, Gonn, Edwin Starr, Simple Minds, Jethro Tull, Flock Of Seagulls, Robert Palmer, Grains Of Sand, Brian Eno, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Famen, Tears For Fears, Leo Kottke, Bruce Cockburn, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blue Oyster Cult, Janis Joplin, Things To Come, Filter, America, Beastie Boys, The Police, the Flaming Lips.
To Traffic, the Goo Goo Dolls, Johnny Cash, the Black Eyed Peas, Fear, Lovin’ Spoonful, Alison Mo
yet, the Buckinghams, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Johnny Rivers, The Moody Blues, Buckethead, Gary Numan, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Rare Earth, Billy Idol, Jan and Dean, Evanescence, the Ides of March, Blondie, Sheryl Crow, Royal Trux, the Yardbirds, the Motels, Kronos Quartet, The Kinks, Red Sky July, Rage Against The Machine, David Bowie, The Swingin’ Medallions, Morning Bell, Mountain, Smashing Pumpkins, Slipknot, Black Sabbath, the Byrds, Mouse & The Traps, Talking Heads, Elvis Presley, INXS, Lily Allen, Alice In Chains, Joan Jett, Jefferson Airplane, the Pretty Things, James Brown, The Bold, Etta James, Supertramp, Chicago, Weezer, Donovan, Delphi Rising, 13th Omen, Ram Jam.
To Badly Drawn Boy, The Isley Brothers, The Cars, Crowded House, Squeeze, Insane Clown Posse, Guns N’ Roses, Jimmy McGriff, the Dandy Warhols, Joni Mitchell, the Beach Boys, Concrete Blonde, the Kingsmen, Fading Tribesmen, the Geto Boys, Jimmy Smith, the Third Bardo, the Cult, Roy Orbison, Aerosmith, War, Nine Inch Nails, Dick Dale, Rob Zombie, KC & The Sunshine Band, the Chocolate Watch Band, Counting Crows, Vince Gill, Gwen Stefani and No Doubt, the Seeds, Hole, Moby Grape, the Turtles, MC5, Joe Cocker, Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs, Count Five, the Beatles, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Oasis, Cheap Trick, James Taylor, U2, Band Of Horses, Wendy and Lisa, the Checkerlads, Jerry Lee Lewis, Journey, Dead Kennedys, Nameless, the Zombies, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Kings Of Leon.
To Warren Zevon, the Rockin’ Rebellions, Les Paul, Bruce Springsteen, Beck, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, the Waitresses, the Breeders, the Righteous Brothers, the Grateful Dead, Run-DMC, Duran Duran, Wire Train, The Band, Adrian Legg, Peter Paul and Mary, the Osbourne Brothers, Fabulous DJs, Van Halen, Natalie Merchant, Fall Out Boy, Toronados, Yes, Iggy Pop, Jesus Jones, Electric Flag, Alice Cooper, Poco, Joan Baez, Brewer and Shipley, Grand Funk Railroad, Jimi Hendrix, Tony DeFrancesco, James Gang, The Eagles, The Call, The Who, Tina Turner, Pet Shop Boys, Sugarloaf, Def Leppard, Dead Tight Five, Candy Store Prophets, Billy Joe Royal, Sound We Sleep, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.