Playing by Ear (Country Roads #1) - Chapter 25

I showered, grabbed my stuff, and headed out towards the front porch where Willie normally sat when he wasn’t on stage. Sure enough, he was in his favorite chair, relaxing, when I came out.

Sitting next to him, however, was a guy I hadn’t seen before.

“There he is. Charlie, this here’s my nephew Keenan,” Willie said, getting up and gesturing towards the guy who’d been sitting next to him.

Looking closer, there was somewhat of a family resemblance, although the age difference was pretty extreme. Willie was well into his seventies and this guy had to be in his mid-twenties somewhere, which would have made Willie’s sibling decades younger.

“Technically I’m his great-nephew, or whatever you call it. My granddad was Willie’s brother,” the younger man said by way of explanation.

“Ohh.”

“Keenan works in Raleigh, but he comes down sometimes when I go on tour and drives me around. Saves me from havin’ to hire someone.”

“Ohh, I thought …”

“That I was drivin’? Son, I haven’t driven a car in twenty years.”

“That’s nice of you,” I said to Keenan.

“Hey, I get to travel around, get into some pretty historic bars and clubs for free, and hear great music. Works out well for everyone. Besides, I don’t get to see Uncle Willie as much as I’d like, so it gives us a chance to catch up.”

“Well, I appreciate you giving me a ride too then.”

“Sure thing. Uncle Willie said you would need a ride home afterward?”

“Yea. I don’t have my own car so I have to bum a lot of rides.”

“I totally get it. Wasn’t that long ago I was a broke college student.”

“High School, actually.”

“Really?” he said, looking at his uncle.

“Trust me, you’ll understand when Charlie starts to play.”

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing, I’m just surprised. Uncle Willie hasn’t taken very many people under his wing, which is saying something considering how long he’s been doing this.”

“Ohh,” I said, looking back at Willie.

“Let’s get going,” Keenan said.

Keenan was carrying Willie’s guitar, putting it in the trunk of a small, compact sedan. As we got going, I sat quietly, thinking. I hadn’t actually considered Willie’s role in all this before. Everything had just seemed to happen organically and I hadn’t questioned it, let alone thought about whether Willie had trained people before me. It shouldn’t have been surprising, considering how long he’d been in the business. I couldn’t help but think about what happened to the other people he’d mentored. Chef had made it sound like it was unusual that I’d gotten my own stage time during music nights, so had none of the others gotten that opportunity?

Chef had said Willie’d been playing at the Blue Ridge for decades, so had it been that long since the last time Willie’d mentored anyone? Or had he done it at other places while touring? More important than any of those questions was what had happened to these other people? Had they made it, were they still playing in bars, or had they dropped out entirely?

It brought up a lot of questions, none of which I was sure I could ask Willie. The last thing I wanted to do was offend Willie by questioning why he’d decided to take me on or make it sound like I was just using him as a stepping stone.

“So, Uncle Willie said you were talented,” Keenan said, breaking into my thoughts.

“I do okay.”

“He’s bein’ modest,” Willie said. “Charlie can wail.”

“Have you been playing for a while?”

“Yea. My dad was a musician and when I was younger my mom and I lived on the road with him. He taught me to play.”

“That’s cool. Do you still get to go with him when he has gigs?”

“No. He’s not around anymore.”

“Ohh. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Before working with Willie, I hadn’t actually played in front of people. It’d just been lessons with my dad and other musicians while I waited for him while he was on stage. None of it compares to what I’ve learned in just the last few months.”

The conversation switched and we just chatted while we drove south. It turns out Keenan worked as a software engineer and was the first person in their family to go to college. It was clear from the way Willie talked about him that he was incredibly proud of his nephew.

The bar we were playing at was on the north side of Ashville, so it only took a little over an hour to get there. I’d been pretty calm the whole drive, distracted with learning about Kennan and Willie’s relationship and more about Willie’s family, which kept me from thinking about playing in front of a new, and apparently larger audience.

Once we pulled into the parking lot, though, my stomach started doing flips. For one, this was clearly a larger venue than the Blue Ridge. It had a large sign up announcing Willie was playing tonight, and the parking lot was already full of cars. Keenan had clearly been here with his uncle before, since he found a spot with no problem on the backside of the bar.

“You’ll do fine,” Willie said as we got out.

“Huh?”

“I remember my first gig on the road. I got so nervous I spent the first five minutes with my head in a trash can emptyin’ my stomach. Once you get on stage though, you’ll be fine. You’re a natural at this. It doesn’t matter what buildin’ it’s in, your home’s on that stage. Once you get up there, looking out at the people with your guitar in your hand, it’ll feel right.”

“I hope so, ‘cause I’m not too far from looking for that trash can.”

Willie just laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. We went in through an unmarked entrance, where an older man in a cowboy hat met us.

“Just on time, it’s good to see you again, Willie,” the man said in a thick southern accent that sounded more like Georgia than the eastern North Carolina.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. You remember my nephew?”

“Willie, you ask me that every time you come down here,” he said, laughing and shaking Keenan’s hand.

“Just bein’ polite. This here’s Charlie, the boy I told you about.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Eugene Russell. Welcome to the Wild Cat. I’ve heard good things about you.”

“Willie’s biased,” I said with a laugh.

“I’m sure he is, but we get some of the same people that go up to Chef Tang’s place. All of em’ have been talking about some new wonder kid he and Willie found.”

“Well, I hope everyone enjoys it,” I said.

It still struck me as wild that there were people who liked my music enough to actually mention it to others. It wasn’t like I was playing my own songs or anything, I was just doing covers. I guess if I was being honest with myself, I’d admit that I was pretty good, but Willie and the rest of the guys had been playing for longer than I’d been alive. Hell, there was his name on the sign outside, announcing that he was playing tonight. It felt weird to get that kind of attention when I’d only just started playing in front of people.

I’d met a lot of people over the years at clubs. Some of them were cool and treated everyone the same and others thought they were God’s gift to music, acting like a bar that could barely fit a hundred people was selling out Madison Square Garden. I heard how other musicians talked about those people behind their backs, no matter how good they were. Even if I did get really good one day, I didn’t want to become one of those people.

This place was a lot different from the Blue Ridge. There, the stage was off in one corner, near the kitchen. While it didn’t seem out of place, it was clearly something added later, basically built in what was just restaurant seating at one point. They had to shut down half the restaurant and rearrange chairs to make room for people to listen. Backstage was just a supply room and you had to walk out the same door servers brought food through to get to the stage.

This place was clearly built with the music in mind and reminded me a lot more of the places Dad played while I was growing up. For one, it had an actual backstage. I could smell food cooking, so they must have had a kitchen somewhere, but the area we were taken to was a small room with a couple of couches and chairs, and a door that led out to the stage. Peeking through the door, I saw the stage had a big curtain across it, blocking the view from the patrons.

This is what I had in my head when I thought of clubs and bars to play at, again based on what I’d seen as a kid. What it did mean, was that we could set up without people watching us.

Willie introduced me to the other musicians setting up. Apparently, he’d played with them before because they all knew each other by name. Most of them played there regularly, backing up musicians who traveled without a full band. They were all nice enough as we set up, everyone talking in low tones, although I noticed several side-eyes. I imagined I looked young to all of them, as most of them were my dad’s age. Musicians who’d passed their chance for a big break and were now scratching out a living playing in places like this. It wasn’t glamorous but at least they were making a living doing what they loved.

I also knew that this was the life Mom really wanted me to avoid. This was where Dad was headed, before he headed to prison, as his days of getting gigs fell behind him and the only offers he got were playing as part of a house band and maybe the occasional session work.

“You okay?” Willie asked as I tuned my guitar.

“Yeah, just nervous.”

“Like I said, once the music starts, you’ll be good. Just focus on the music. Look at the floor at first if you want to. There’ll be more people out in the audience than you’re used to, so it can be a bit much. Close your eyes, listen to the cues, and play. You know the setlist; you know what you’re doing. Just let the music take the lead.”

Ever since he asked me to come with him, he’d been getting me ready for this gig, probably because it was my first one and he didn’t want me to mess up. It was one of the reasons we’d decided to keep my sets at the Blue Ridge the same for the nights I played without Willie.

Willie checked on everyone one last time and then the curtain opened. I wasn’t ready for what I saw. I noticed the building was two stories from the outside, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the center was open, allowing people sitting at tables on the second floor to look down on the stage while they drank.

The room was packed, faces staring down at me as Willie pulled his stool up to the microphone and sat down, one foot on the floor and one foot propped on the stool itself.

“It’s good to see so many faces out tonight. It’s been some time since I’ve been here, so I appreciate you folks makin’ it out here. If you’ve been with me before, you know I’m not one much for talkin’, so sit back and enjoy a little trip through the holler’s.”

Willie looked back at the drummer, who began the count. This first song was one that we did at the Blue Ridge every weekend. While it hadn’t been that long, I’d played enough sets and practiced the song enough it felt natural when I came in with the first riff.

Unlike at the Blue Ridge, where we sifted through a wide range of songs to keep things from getting stale, Willie pretty much had the same grouping of setlists for each place he played at on his tour. Instead of just a random scattering of songs, these sets all had themes. As he’d said before we started, the first one was based around the culture of Appalachia, specifically the various sheltered valleys the locals called hollers. Each song was either about a holler or written by a musician that came from the area.

The first song was actually a retelling of a folk tale, about a family that moved into one of the hollers early one winter, only to vanish without a trace when the snows thawed. While not as haunting as some of the blues songs Willie picked out, it was still pretty sad if you listened to the words. It was also the easiest of the songs, with a much slower tempo focused more on the piano than the guitar.

Willie had turned out to be right. Once the music started, all the nervousness drained away. I fell into the music just like I did at the Blue Ridge, the world around us fading away. With the first song out of the way, I was able to get into the flow. Each song picked up speed, turning a melancholy start into almost a party atmosphere as we got mid-way. We shifted from more down-home blues sounds into country blues and finally into urban blues. While they were all blues, each had a different sound than the one before. Down-home blues was slower, with an almost folk element in it. Country blues closer to what most people thought of when they thought of the blues, with its syncopated rhythms and repeated choruses, at times almost being call and response.

Urban blues wasn’t something we played a lot at the Blue Ridge and sounded almost like something between boogie-woogie and jazz, with its faster melodies and driving tempos. Of everything we played, this was my favorite, since from a pure playing standpoint, it was more fun. It didn’t hurt that it was closer to more modern pop and early rock than the other types of Blues I normally played. The audience also seemed to really get amped up, with people standing, clapping along and shouting out as we really got rolling. The other guys on stage also used it as an opportunity to improvise some, which was something I wasn’t up to doing. I’d played with doing some of that alone when I practice, but I didn’t have the experience or confidence to just start doing my own thing and have it mesh in with the song everyone else practiced. The audience noticed though, and seemed to really appreciate it.

I made a mental note to suggest to Willie we incorporate some of this back home, partly because I thought the audience might appreciate it, but also because I wanted to get more experience with this kind of thing. Everyone else seemed to be having a lot of fun with it, and I wanted to be able to join in someday.

Much to my chagrin, that wasn’t the end of the night, however. When we finished the last practiced song, Willie held up a hand for silence and started to talk again.

“I’m glad you folks liked that. Tonight’s music holds a special place in my heart. I can remember sittin’ on my granddad’s knee, watchin’ him pick out some of these songs when I was just a tiny tike. I know many of you are from around these parts, up and down these hills, and have heard them the same way. That’s why it’s important for nights like tonight when we can celebrate our music’s history.”

While I’d talked to Willie about music a lot over the last few months, I hadn’t heard him speak about it like this before. I’d always thought of music just as a thing that existed and that I enjoyed playing it or as something I grew up listening to my dad play. I hadn’t given a lot of thought to the history of the music, what its influences were, and what those influences meant for the people who recognized it.

Of course, thinking about it, it was obvious that the history of music was important, if for nothing else than understanding how to mix those influences together. I didn’t want to be just doing covers forever, and if I wanted to really make a career out of music, I needed to start working on my own music seriously. Clearly, that meant more than just coming up with riffs and lyrics.

I was enough lost in my own thoughts that I almost missed Willie saying my name.

“…Charlie’s been a big hit back home, and I brought him along tonight to show you folks a little something different. I’m kinda surprising him a little bit with this, but if you folks show him some love, I’m sure he’ll agree to play a song for you. I promise you it’s a treat you won’t wanna miss.”

I just stared at Willie, dumbfounded, while the crowd began half-heartedly clapping, apparently as unsure about this as I was.

“It’s okay. Let’s do Downtown Lover. It’s gettin’ regular radio play recently and it was a hit the last few times you played it at the Blue Ridge. Don’t worry about us; I gave the guys a heads up about what we’d be playin’. Just do your thing.”

It was probably a good thing Willie hadn’t mentioned this before, or I would have been hyper-focused on it all night, and it would have tripped me up. I switched places with him, and closed my eyes, focusing on what I needed to do. I’d played this song before, I’d practiced it, and before Willie had sprung his surprise on me, I’d been having a good time tonight.

I opened my eyes and looked out at the crowd, faces looking up at me from the tables on the floor or down at me from the second level. This song started with a short guitar riff, so I didn’t need anyone to count me in. After one last deep breath, I hit the first cord, playing out the slow rhythm that led into the song.

It was one of those songs that started slow and got into a steady rhythm by the chorus, only to drop its intensity during the following verses. It continued that pattern switching back and forth between medium intensity verses and higher intensity choruses. Thankfully, the vocal range was right in line with mine, which might have been one of the reasons Willie had picked it. I’d been working on my upper range, at least as much as I could by myself, and we’d started introducing more challenging songs on weekends that got into the upper range of my register, but that usually required me to work up to it, which I wasn’t able to do tonight.

Just like when the set started, once I got into it, I shed the nerves and started melding with the music. It wasn’t that I no longer noticed the audience, since I was still trying to play off of them, and picked up the rhythm as we hit the chorus a third time, when it seemed like they were getting into it. The guys had been keeping up with me and I signed Willie how he’d taught me to indicate I was picking this pace up. Apparently, the house band knew his signals, ‘cause they followed along even though I didn’t notice him passing the signal along.

Willie had also been right about picking this song because it was currently pretty popular. The crowd seemed to know it and I noticed some of them singing along as we got into it or bopping with the beat.

The applause wasn’t thunderous or anything, but when I finished, they seemed to enjoy it.

“What did I tell you, folks?” Willie said, speaking into the mic that had been in front of me. “He’s even better when he isn’t put on the spot like that. While we’re calling it a night, you can find this young’n playin’ weekends at the Blue Ridge just on the other side of Wellville, just up I-29 an hour or so. Now, don’t forget, we’ll be playin’ dates around the area for the next few weeks before we take things further south. If you liked the music, check our dates and come see us.”

Chef would probably appreciate the free advertisement, although I felt awkward hearing Willie promote me. The crowd gave Willie another cheer as we headed off stage. The curtains stayed up as the house band started up on their own, probably playing for a few more hours, until the place closed down for the night.

We said our goodbyes to the staff and Mr. Russell, packed everything up, and were back in Keenan’s car by the time I finally asked Willie what had been bugging me.

“Why did you have me play at the end?” I blurted out from the back seat, completely separate from any conversation that was happening. “This was your gig. I appreciate you bringing me and giving me the chance to see what playing other places is like, but these people were here to see you. They didn’t want to see some random kid they don’t know play, especially not for the last song of the night. Couldn’t this make it harder to fill seats on your next gig or next time you come through?”

“You think this is the first time Uncle Willie’s done this?”

“Ohh, I guess that hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Every now and then Uncle Willie finds someone to mentor, and takes them out on the road with him.”

“Keenan makes it seem bigger than it is,” Willie said. “When I was comin’ up, I got my break thanks to some people lookin’ after me. I’ve seen musicians come and go over the years, and the best ones give back, helpin’ bring the next group of youngsters up. Music isn’t just a thing to do. It isn’t a hobby and it isn’t a way to get rich.”

“It is for some people,” Keenan muttered.

“Shush. Music is a livin’ thing, Charlie. It grows with us. I wish I could show you how much I’ve seen it change over the years. New people come in and build off those who came before them. Those of us old hands have a duty to help direct that change, making sure we don’t lose the real talents that could make the next big change. I love music, Charlie. Have all my life. I’m an old man now, and I might not be around much longer, but while I still can I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the thing I love keeps goin’ after I’m gone.”

“If you let him, he’ll keep on with this for a while,” Keenan said.

“I said shush. Charlie, I’ll tell you, I’ve helped a mess of people find their place in this business over the years, but you … you have the most talent I’ve ever seen, from any of them. You could really do something special. I’d be a fool if I didn’t do everything I could to make sure you got that chance.”

“I appreciate it,” I said, a little embarrassed.

“Don’t let that swell your head none. Just ‘cause you got talent doesn’t mean this business won’t chew you up and spit you out. Music is a mean mistress. Even if you do everything right, she might just shut you out anyways. It’s up to you to make sure you don’t let that happen. That means you never stop practicin’. You never take whatever you’re given for granted, be that help or, God help me, if you ever get all famous or whatnot. Remember your roots and remember the music. You do that, you’ll make it.”

“I will,” I said, looking out the window into the pitch-black trees whipping past the window.

Once again I realized how little I really knew about all this. I knew I liked playing and I really enjoyed being up on stage, but I hadn’t put enough thought into what it was like to actually be a musician. Meeting the guys who made up the house band at the Wild Cat and thinking about how my dad had been on the way to being one of them, and then thinking about what Willie said, was kind of a wake-up call. If I was going to actually do this, I couldn’t just play at it. Of course, I had no idea how to actually start taking playing music seriously. It wasn’t like I could go out and start playing gigs on the road, building up experience like Dad had done.

For one, Mom would kill me, but beyond that, Dad wasn’t the best role model to follow. Willie had made some success, but considering how he’d come up and the cultural differences, especially from when he was a young man, meant I couldn’t exactly follow in his footsteps either.

I’d have to find my own path, and I had no idea how to actually do that.