Jesus the Booking Agent Pt 16-2

Mike Hall has been immersed in music for over 20 years, touring the country ‘til he cried and playing in too many bands. He is currently incubating his sonic baby, the Fire and the Sigh.

Part 16:  The All Over and the Not Yet  (part 2)

Deep within the Comcast compound, wild-haired women coated our faces with just enough make-up pixie dust to make us feel pretty. With Born in the Flood’s cheeks properly pink, the film rolled as we sat awkwardly and answered questions from the gravel-throated Pinfield. This interview was the precursor to a concert we would play to a live audience; the entire show filmed under the moniker:  Declaration of Independents. 

Under the lights, interviewing one-on-one with the old MTV VJ, I remember feeling anxious with the unspoken atmospheric pressure to be, ah … witty. I’m fairly sure I wasn’t. I think I said something creepy about playing drums while still in the womb, and then I talked about Nathaniel being the first keyboardist I’ve ever been excited to play with … generally my percussive mind doesn’t vibe well with keyboard playing, but Nate beats his Fender Rhodes like he’s teaching the keys a lesson.

This lesson would be played for the masses very soon. When the interviews ended we were ushered next door to the “live studio audience” of a few hundred, where our instruments silently waited for us. Nathaniel walked on stage and first performed a few songs from his solo-project: The Wheel, (a taste of things to come for Nathaniel and the rest of the world) and then afterwards it was time to put down the acoustic; it was time to embrace some drum-pounding distorted keyboard punishment.

Walking up on stage onto the Comcast film-set, my gut felt heavy. Before this show my heart had been wandering from Born in the Flood for weeks, and now I felt this lack in my performance, in my drum-playing. Motions that years earlier were filled with deep meaning now lacked the spirit to propel them. Swinging the sticks around I almost felt as if I was lying, a deception: like a make-out session with a girl who’s leaving the country in the morning … it’s fun on some level, but down deep you both know it’s not going to last. I felt this way for most of the show, except this one keyboard song that Nathaniel pounds out the whole time, often cramping up his hand. I can’t remember the name of the song, but I played, we played again like men possessed by something warlike. Happily beating and smashing, those old faded desires fired up in my belly once more, and I felt warm from the glory of it.

It was a beautiful three minutes, but then it was over. The last crash of that cathartic three-minute-long song dissipated into memory, and it all ended. Guitars and drums were put back into their cages, spotlights were torn down, and film-sets were ushered elsewhere to accommodate cable cooking shows. Lost in my own sad thoughts I slowly tore down my drumset, and then helped the film-crew stack chairs.

Suddenly, a thuddy crash broke the post-show silence. My melancholy forgotten, I heard yelling from across the set: “Gunnar! Gunnar! C’mon, get up!” I ran over and a very large man was lying unconscious on the ground, in the middle of strewn chairs and his head in a small pool of blood.  His friends were bent over his body, pleading with him loudly and smacking his face ever so often in hopes of waking up their buddy.

As I anxiously looked on and watched a friend elevate the back of the man’s head out of the pool of blood, my old CPR training pushed its way through the cobwebs of my brain. I realized the injury to his head was not the problem. “Stop doing that,” I told the friend. “He’s not breathing.”

… to be continued

Category: The Post