The Back Room

Seeing a friend from the past perform his music in Berkeley. Sharing a love of music and singing with my sensitive five year-old. The experience of being back in an audience.

The sky is a blanket of gray. When we park and step out of the car, there’s a chill in the November air. Sunday, 4pm. The weekend is once again coming to a close. The general weight of the world. The early evening overcast sky in November can bring a sense of that weight. This is a strange time to see live music, which we haven’t seen enough of in recent years.

We used to attend music shows all the time, the way many adults who don’t have children and who live in cities often do. The Bay Area offers plenty of venues for live music. Having an infant…and then having a toddler during the pandemic…kept us home too often.

Five year-old Rebelle Harmony is excited to see a concert. Maybe too excited. She asks if she should bring her xylophone. I often play guitar with her in the garage. We sing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” together. I spent 20 minutes in the garage with her. Playing the guitar and guiding the vocals of a 5 year-old vocalist is an involved and painstaking process. We’ve been listening to Tom Petty lately and recorded her cover version of “Learning to Fly.” She sings the lyric “Life will beat you up” with a rascally innocence. She wants to meet Tom Petty.

I don’t want to tell her he’s dead. Her class has been talking about death since Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and the class ofrenda. We gave her a framed picture…