Outside, Lookin' In

Seeing Seattle-ites in Phoenix is so weird.

Two months after I moved here, Chastity Belt played the last Viva PHX festival, alongside Summer Cannibals, X, HEALTH, and LVL UP. They were booked at Pueblo, which was a hilarious choice, as chain smoking teens pushed and pulled to get inside, or at the very least, to crane their necks around the edge of the brick entryway. Kicking into the jams, the kids sang along with Julia and Lydia’s flawless back and forth with all the conviction that they would give American Football an hour from now. A few have snuck in Coors Light, but it feels like it should have been Olympia. Pueblo makes spacial awareness hilarious. The high school boys in the front don’t know when close becomes too close, feet away from the stage-less PA setup. They don’t know what to do with rock stars so tangible.

A few months months later, we see Dude York play at the Rebel Lounge, opening for The Anniversary. Peter was in a tie-dye Kingdom Hearts t-shirt, the kind you assume is from Hot Topic, but no one ever really knows. Claire and Andrew both hauled stuff out of their white van, squinting in the June sunlight. We get there early to say holy shit holy shit, we miss you so much. We miss your Cheese-Its and your selfie fest at Cha Cha and handing out random alternative rock label samplers at Everyday Music across from Oddfellows. They say thanks, then shred the night up on stage. I air guitar through the whole thing, sending PBR across the polished concrete floor. Peter gives the mic to a baby for “Paralyzed”. But the crowd is here to see The Anniversary play “All Things Ordinary” because that’s the way they prefer it. No surprises. No new records to take home with a smile and a sense of discovery. Just the way it’s been.

Sixteen months and another Dude York show pass. Minus the Bear played Planet of Ice at the Marquee and I relived my favorite show in high school. Jeremy Enigk played Frog Queen at Rebel Lounge and I cried my eyes out.  Death Cab came through but it sold out before I coughed up the cash.

Eric’s van is in the driveway. He beat us to our own home by about 30 seconds. We get out of the car and suddenly things seem so familiar. Even here, in the lingering late September heat, Eric brandishes an instrument as he greets us like we’ve met in a public place, warm and uncomfortable all at the same time. This is the way I learned. Seattle taught me.

We haul Eric’s stuff in through the front door. He says he got a system down in California. Once the stage setup is done, we haul the dining room table into the breezeway for a makeshift merch table. The records can just be displayed on the wall, but the t-shirts and stuff will go on the table. He says he figured out close proximity means people won’t take off as fast, you know, being in somebody else’s house and all.

The Say Hi living room tour is done through Undertow, the same organization used by David Bazan, John Vanderslice, and S. Carey on similar types of tours. It’s pretty slick, really. Undertow crowdsources venues, then they do a general fitness check and a background check to make sure you aren’t a crazy person. Then that’s it. Eric shows up with the van and it’s on.

The last time we saw Eric, it was Seattle, November 2015. He played Neumos with Telekinesis. Bleeders Digest was 3 months fresh. Now, it’s Phoenix, September 2018, Caterpillar Centipede, one month brand new. I’m not wearing a jacket. There’s no constant kielbasa smell pouring through the open Pike Street door. Instead, I’m letting people in through the back gate, past my recycling bin, to go up the porch steps and enter my house through the french doors and see Say Hi play an all request set from the comfort of the living room corner.

There is a familiar look I get from every person entering the doors. It is a look of disturbance. Like a vampire from one of Eric’s songs, we know there is a rule where you must be invited in. And for some reason, house shows have always felt this way to me. Once, in May of 2012, Beat Connection played a house show in Wallingford under the name Meat Collection, as to avoid the Sasquatch radius claus held over them through Memorial Day weekend. I got to the front door and then left. The invitation felt like too much to ask. I think that’s why for the Undertow living room shows, you pay in advance. This way, the social contract bit is taken care of. The invitation has a cash value attached to it. Brittany has the iPad and checks every name. Yes, you are indeed welcome here.

A few days after the 2015 show with Telekinesis, I emailed Eric asking him a favor. Brittany and I were eight weeks out from getting married, and I’ve never felt my dreams more tangible and within my grasp than in those weeks. I asked if he’d sit down one evening soon and talk me through what it’s like being a professional musician in 2015. What are the drawbacks? What are the hold ups that you wish you could get rid of? What are the things you with that venues and publications and writers and surrounding parties understood about your craft? I wanted to know everything.

Mind you, I had no interest in venturing off and starting a band. I’ve dabbled in music writing for years, but I had the common sense to know that mine was not a necessary voice on the grand imprint of the future. Instead, after years of writing for a Seattle radio station hyping up my favorite acts to infinity, I wanted to think bigger and grander in terms of my impact. Brittany and I wanted to make the first steps in planning to own a venue.

The conversation took directions I wasn’t expecting. I learned there was less to do in that arena than I had idealized in my head. Instead, Eric explained, the willingness to write about rising acts without pretense and without perverse incentive was a thankless but vital resource in the modern day. To be honest, I didn’t want to hear it - that this inconsequential imprint on the face of the earth was, in some way, enough. But it was.

The dream didn’t die, but it did morph, and at least part of it has gone into cryogenic freeze. In that conversation, Eric laid the seeds for Gila, though it wouldn’t manifest for another two and half years. That intentionality is a guiding force of Gila’s mission. And despite our meager numbers, it is enough to know that we try.

And so, as couples and groups of friends enter through the french doors and find remaining room on the floor of the living room and the dining room, I know that another part of that dream has come true. For just an evening, we do get to have that venue. And people look happy as they pass around beers and yell out unreasonably specific deep cuts from albums nearly 20 years old. But Eric’s having just as much fun with it as they are. The number of people in the room almost amounts to Gila’s full monthly subscriber list. And suddenly, the amorphous, intangible dream becomes tangible again, as Eric calls a wrap on the new Caterpillar Centipede material and plays “Northwestern Girls”. For this moment, everything is right in the world. It must be in the air here.