Vol. 102 - Golf Trips
(kinda)
Every parent needs Me time.
That is, time away from the ceaseless grind of being in charge of tiny human beings.
That time increases as your kids age. When they’re babies, you get no time at all (unless you’re a shitty partner, if we’re being honest). But then, slowly and steadily, there’s more time for you to resume being you. As kids become more independent, what was once a minute or ten to simply take a shower becomes a few hours for a long bike ride, to have dinner with friends, or do whatever it is that adults do (which is easy to forget when you’re in the trenches of new parenthood).
Soon, you’re taking weekend trips to Fort Lauderdale or London, as Emily and I did on consecutive weekends recently (independently, of course. Who’s watching these kids?!)
The weekend away. It’s something you dream about when your kids are tiny, convinced that it’ll never happen again. But it does. (And someday, Emily and I might even be to take those trips alone together!)
Some dads like to take golf trips. I, on the other hand, am lucky enough to travel around playing music.
Playing music has been essential to my life since I was about ten years old. A few years later, I joined my first band and have been making music with other people constantly ever since.
That is, until my son was born. And then my daughter. And suddenly, I looked up and it had been a few years since I played in a band. Much of my break from playing was by design. Before my son was born, I was in a band that played well over a hundred shows a year (some years more than two hundred). When that band permanently parked our tour van, I put my guitars away and tucked them in the closest (save the one solo record I made and played all of three shows to promote).
I never planned for my hiatus to last five years, the longest stretch I’d ever gone without making music with other people.
Then, last year, a friend who fronts an absolutely excellent band asked me to fill in on bass. I jumped at the chance, loving the music, the people involved, and the fact that they didn’t play that often, which is a perfect schedule for a new-ish dad.
Since then, we’ve played some great shows opening for some huge bands in a handful of legendary clubs. And since this band isn’t quite a touring outfit, these shows have been one-offs, meaning we get to go out for the weekend, play the shows, and get back to real life by Monday morning.
These are my weekends to drink too much, to keep the dream alive, to be a bit reckless and almost wholly carefree. They give me an opportunity to recall who I am, a large part of the very nature of myself. They’re my chance to take a bit of time away from my wife and kids, to just be me. They’re my golf trips.
However, a pretty amazing thing happened last weekend when the band headed up to Washington, D.C. to open for The Hold Steady at the venerated 9:30 Club.
My son came to see me play.
It was the first time he would ever see me play live (or so I thought. When I asked him if he was excited to see his dad play for the first time, he quickly and coldly reminded me that he saw a solo show I did here in Chapel Hill a few years back. “You remember, dad. No one was there.” Thanks for keeping me grounded, pal).
Emily and I drove up in our shiny new wagon—a far cry from some of the crumbling, grumbling tour vans I’ve plodded around the country in—with our kids in tow. The plan was to drop our daughter off with a trusted babysitter while Emily and our son came to the club.
He helped me load in before soundcheck, carrying my backup bass (always travel with a backup guitar, kids. No one wants to watch you change a string on stage). His eyes were as wide as saucers as I took him on stage. He asked questions about the monitors (the giant on-stage speakers through which musicians can hear what they’re playing) and the massive disco ball hanging from the ceiling. He asked if he could get a Coca-Cola from the bar.
A few hours later, after we soundchecked and the doors to the club opened, he and Emily returned, joining the band in our green room. He had his Coca-Cola, discussing the soda’s merits with our guitar player, the inimitable Peter Holsapple, and enjoyed most of my cupcake (the 9:30 Club is famous for a lot of things, one of which is leaving a box of 9:30 cupcakes in your dressing room).
As I strode on stage to start the show, I looked up and saw my son in the balcony, frantically waving at me. I smiled, waved back, and motioned to the small sea of nearly a thousand people in front of me. Pretty cool, huh? I asked him in my mind. Lot more people than last time you saw me play.
I won’t always bring my son with me when I play shows. And maybe he won’t always want to come. After all, show weekends are me time. But to be able to share that thing with him that is so intrinsic to who I am, to have him see me play in front of a thousand people, to let him watch the joy that making original music brings me, it’s worth the fact that my me weekend had a few very tiny special guests.
And anyway, I’m not sure he’d make it through an entire round of golf.