it was about a week or two following mine and jason's deportation from australia that we were invited by my friend holly to a unique music venue in denver, colorado, called the oriental. she worked there at the time and was insistent that we go to see her friends, paper bird play a show (myspace.com/paperthebird). holly got us on the list, and she served us free beer, and it was, without a doubt, the show that changed my life.
it had been my goal the entire time we were traveling to get to thailand. i don't know why, but it was. prior to our untimely departure from aus, we were planning the dates for our jaunt to thailand, and we had every intention to buy those tickets as soon as we returned from fiji. fate intervened. with only a book bag full of tshirts and seashells, and about $200 (australian),we were dropped off at LAX. my little sister lived in denver, and it was the cheapest one-way flight we could find with 15 minutes to spare. we swiped the last $400 left on our visa, ran to the gate, and 4 hours later, began our new lives in denver. the first week post-deportation was full of jet lag, shock, an economy suite hotel room (thanks to Tori, my sister), some bottles of vodka, moving tori into her new condo, lots of phone calls, and tons of explaining to a lot of people in our lives. it was pretty crushing,actually, at first. jason and i both lost our instruments. my alvarez guitar was in the case i borrowed from my dad, an orange alvarez hard shell case with orange fur(ish) lining. it was complete with camouflage duct tape adhering backpack straps to it. shane played that guitar at every one of our gigs in australia, because his didn't have a pickup. jason lost the drum he bought when he first learned he would be living with shane in nyc . it went to the cleaning woman who covered our asses at the guest house we were running when we got the boot. she earned it, she deserved it, but still...we mourned it. we had no money and no instruments. all of our clothes were lost, and we spent what little money we had coming to us on getting the belongings we had collected in our year of traveling sent back to the states. to rub some salt in my fresh wounds, i learned that shane was going to thailand. he made it...without us.
the night we saw paper bird, i couldn't stop crying. it was father's day, and they each had their dad come up on stage to sing "you are my sunshine" with them. now you see them used to sing that song in australia. but we were young in the life of our band. we didn't understand the true meaning of what were were getting into; the commitment that comes with being a band in the truest sense of the word. we gave up on each other pretty easily, and we certainly didn't make much effort to understand one another. three is a really tough number, and the fact that we have a 10 year age-difference between us adds a lot of dimension to the ways we communicate.
during that show, i very clearly remember turning to jason with giant tears streaming down my red face and saying, "jason, i hate it. why are they so good? why are they SO good? i swear i'm going to jump off the roof." that's actually pretty mild compared to what i really said.... they had my dream. all to themselves, in front of me, they were living my dream. poetic story telling through songs full of intrigue and three part harmonies that blended seamlessly inspired romance in that room. They were all barefoot, and the girls were gorgeous with voices to make angels think twice. they were so happy. in talking to them afterward, we learned that their presence was genuine, and their music was true. They sold their old clothes with patches sewn onto them at their merch table, and their cd covers were hand-drawn. it was the physical manefestation of what i had been subconsciously dreaming of for a year. it was my wake up call. time to stop dreaming and start living! time to stop taking for granted that, "things would work out" without having to sacrifice to make it so.
the past year of the lives of now you see them came to that same sort of cathartic head when we played the orange peel for the first time on wednesday, july 8, 2009. no matter the outcome of the last band standing competition, by the time we struck the last chord on our last song, we had won. we ALL jumped up and down. there were people in that room who loved us, who supported us, and who wanted us to do well badly enough to be there! to tell their friends to be there! to come on stage and dance with us, and to lend their time and musical integrity to our cause and make us better. we were so happy! and i'm so proud of us. timing is everything, and we've worked our asses off in most aspects you can imagine to get to this point with our music and with our personal relationships. it's not easy when you're always shoved into spaces too small with not enough food or not enough money. it's hard to be vulnerable enough to share a song with people who know you. it's rewarding to feel that you've achieved your top goal, and fun to think of what could possibly happen next and how to make it happen best. it's good for me to know that we can be like paper bird, and we can change the way people feel about life, just by working hard to do what we love.
i feel like a superhero! like the pittsburgh steelers! like i can't WAIT to get to work on our set for bele chere, and to work out what we'll record at echo mountain. we are so fortunate to live the lives that we do, and lucky for us right now, we've been greatly reminded.
download our orange peel show! http://www.sendspace.com/file/thank you for being a part of making three peoples' dreams come true. i can't really speak for chris or pete, but i feel pretty safe in saying that they had a kick-ass time! they'll be playing with us when we kick off bele chere on july 24th somewhere around 3:30 on the mai
n stage.it would be an honor to see you there.
