Songs For Your Day

I was recently visiting my hometown of Newburgh, IN, where I received a call from an old friend that I haven’t spoken with in about five years.  She first contacted me via Internet so I was expecting the call and anxious. Four collegiate years plus one in the ‘real world’ leaves a lot to be said since high school and pop-punk glory days. We talked, gossiped about who we knew was doing (or not doing) what with their lives, discussed where we’ve ended up musically and went on just like old friends might.  The conversation was refreshing and long overdue. It was grounding to articulate what I’ve become in five years – how I’ve changed and not changed – to this person I used to know.

When we hung up I naturally jumped on a light-speed chase down memory lane to Newburgh, IN, circa 2003-04. My studded belt and a so-big-it’s-ironic buckle destroying the finish on the back of my first guitar, a skateboard I loved and wrecked myself for on a regular basis, unabashed rock n’ roll thrashing across my mom’s living room floor (we called it ‘practice’) and the half-working CD player in my ’92 Toyota Previa minivan that played back the albums that shaped me as I drove everywhere and nowhere across the southern tip of Indiana.

No album burned up that CD player like Nothing Feels Good, The Promise Ring’s 3^rd full-length, and no song got me driving faster than ‘Red and Blue Jeans.’ You can’t help but bob your head to the initial sway of the song’s salt-and-peppery guitars sweeping in and out of each other like kids playing ‘tag’ in stereo.  My accelerator always feels the weight of the song as the band unleashes into two separate musical interludes reminiscent of the final climactic minutes of Weezer’s Only in Dreams, divided by a series of ‘do do do’s’ that I dare you not to sing along to.  This and Davey von Bohlen’s repetitive lyrics and the fact that he couldn’t really sing them make this music incredibly accessible and impossible to keep from falling into.

A day after my phone conversation I got back on the road to Nashville in my (newer, much less fun but still incredibly practical) minivan and immediately revisited this masterpiece.  I rolled down the windows, unconsciously crept up to 85 mph on Interstate 164 and let nostalgia take over as Newburgh faded behind me.  As the final notes faded out it felt natural to wipe the sweat and swooping hair from my brow with a solid black wristband, trying to catch a breath in a t-shirt wrapped around my ribs tighter than skin.  I don’t know when or why, but the hair and accessories have been long since cut back and boxed up, and the t-shirts are less like corsets and more like t-shirts these days.  The music, however, will live on and thrive in me like a time machine blasting me back to a very happy chapter of my life with the windows down and fists in the air. I miss it like an old friend and I’ll always be excited to hear its voice calling me back.
-tommy