Down To The Waterline

While recently perusing through the stack of brochures and “informative guides” that I had acquired in the seemingly endless search for a panacea to my post-secondary quest for “the right” university, I came across a photograph of one “Imperial Theatre, St. John, New Brunswick”, hidden in a booklet designed to inspire the average prairie-landlubber to make UNBSJ their choice. It was laying on a full spread of a page, amidst the pastoral scenes of lone kayakers on shadowy sunset bays and the predictably joyous faces of “BA ‘08″ students, and for one reason or another, my habitual flipping of pages was halted. A renaissance-period chandelier dangled pregnantly from a generous, vaulted ceiling, which gave way to a single , new-moon balcony and an additional main floor. While not an extra-ordinary example of efficient seating or use of floorspace, everything seemed to be in its place. The warm, golden light reflected patiently off the crafted seats, and the carpeted aisles reminded me of something older and perhaps more genuine. Probably a result of my relentless fixation with the fifties. The whole place wafted an air of “something else”. Suffice to say, this simple photograph of just another atlantic Canada concert hall triggered something inside of me. The practicing 4-piece quartet in the foreground faded away easily to make way for a vision, driven by the inspiration I was experiencing from Dire Straits’ first album, which had been getting near continuous rotation since the end of camp. I let my imagination roll over me:

I peeked around the thick burgandy curtain that circled the right-hand backstage entrance at the scene beyond Andrew’s drums: The belly of The Imperial, brimming with the chattering mouths of our very best friends, family and loved ones, whose presence packed a punch of adrenaline into my heart. They had all been invited, from their different haunts and habits, to this reunion of 10 or 15 years, in which an evening of good old rock-n-roll music would ensue. (The reasons for them being there seemed less important than the fact that they were there in the first place.) All the guys I used to run with back in 07(which included the Legendary Gay Force and Team Laser Explosion), my very best com padres from Camp, my family, of course, and even some less-expected guests, including acquaintances I had kept only briefly, but whom I had wondered about with occasional sunday night tenderness: “Oh…I wonder how he’s doin’?”

Kirk and Wilson sat near each other with their significant others, whose faces were blurred by the lines of fate. I had to squint to spot Vlad and Randy Boucher nearer the far, right hand corner of the upper balcony. Those from high school of course overwhelmed the numbers of the others, but I felt this was okay; it served to drive home the significance of that period of my life, even to the present day. As I continued around, I recognized some of my band-mates families and their miscellaneous unfamiliars, but I was presently surprised to find that I knew(and loved) the majority of those in attendance. My nervousness lessened as this realization eased into my mind, and I continued my private scanning of the crowd: Kozmo and Faye were there, Matt V sat with his parents, and even Xplicit had made an appearance in plain clothes for the event. Carine, Cassandra and Sarah Hill sat in a troika a few rows back, in the center of the main floor, and the Ciaramellas lined a row closer to the left. My heart did an odd sort of jump as I skipped across a few aisles to the scattered faces of my previous girlfriends. They had come, even after all.

At that moment, I received a tug on my faded “Coming This Summer” tee; it was Cullen, motioning me back for the final seconds before we came on. Faber’s face was comfortably lit by the backstage shadows as he spoke. “Well, you ready boys?” Andrew “yupped” and Cullen nodded as he passed me my guitar, A 1955 Telecaster complete with chrome wammy bar. Light reflected off of it and into Cullen’s eyes. A flicker of a smile passed across his face as he said, “We’re ready. Let’s go get ‘em”.

I felt the lights dim as a wave of hushed excitement flowed through the backstage curtain that Faber was holding open. I tip-toed through, guitar in hand, into the enveloping darkness of the stage. I took my time, in order to make sure I didn’t trip, although I was watching out more for my nerves than for anything on stage.

“We’ve done this before in practice, I know what I’m doing.” They had already queued the opening reverb sounds by the time we had found our spots. I looked out off of the pier into black fog. I felt in a dream; then, a sole spotlight pierced through unto Cullen, right-stage, as he twanged the opening bars. I held my fingers in a silent “G”, making sure. Then, out of nowhere, I heard Faber count us out. We all dropped in perfectly as the stage blazed with light, and I found the crowd laid angled out in front of me. My soul jumped out at my hands to force them into the “Bm” and out to “G” again; I was momentarily entranced as the reality of it bowled me over. Tunnel vision. They really were all here.

Then I remembered I was supposed to be singing. Just in time, as I stepped up and bellowed “Sweet surrender on the quayside”. I had been nervous about that too, the first line; it had went alright though, hook and sinker, and so I relaxed as I found “You remember we used to run and hide” streaming out of my mouth. My hands moved automatically. “Convenient.” I thought, and then after that, it was a blur. Andrew punched it out seamlessly behind us, Cullen’s gold-in-hand tagged all the lynchpin fills and Faber bassed the way through the chorus, which he backed with his signature, but somehow appropriate rasp: “Let’s go down to the waterline…”

We weaved the solo, together. Bending and swaying all over the stage, the pleasure of practice flowing out like a cool mountain stream on a blistering summer day. I felt like a rockstar. Was I? All of a sudden I was back to 2006, Mac Hall, and Wilco. I had identified with them, they were what it was. Nels Cline was a rockstar. I imagined myself as him in his lumberjack shirt and chuckled to myself as we flowed out onto the safety of the lake, the end of the song and a girth of applause. My fingers tingled and my ears tickled. I eased more into the experience. It was real now. Tunnel vision fell away and I picked out some more smiling faces: Teale et al, Nick Kapple, Andrew, Luke and Matt, and….Tom Walker? Shit. I guess I had made it after all.

After that, an extra funky “Settin’ Me Up”. Cullen jingled and I jangled with Andrew’s crisp hats and Faber’s grounding lines. My favorite part? How we nailed that bit at the end with the Johnny Cash-country solo phrase. We bounced up and down and fell to the ground as Cullen dangled the crowd from a thread, Andrew boosting it out all the while. Faber had his trademark grinding smile working full-throttle. I shook and revealed stage tricks like Jimmy.

We played only the best. Mostly covers, but with a few notable exceptions, including a war-torn version of “Kathleen”, a bumping “She Drives Me Wild” and of course, the all-but-forgotten tribute to the bass man, “Here’s To You.” We joked too. Andrew, leaning into his drum mic: “Hey guys! When’s the intermission?” Cullen: “Forget it! We’re just plowin’ through!”

We stomped out “Green River”, JJ Cale’s “Lies” and SRV’s “Tightrope.” I gave myself goosebumps on “Last Dance With Mary Jane” and an Andrew Poirier inspired “Moondance”. We dashed and danced through a “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” reminiscent of Carniegraw. We even revisited “Freebird”. That had taken some coaxing of Cullen, but this time his monitor was bang on, and he demolished it. Brilliance, if I ever saw it.

A highlight of the night was when Special Guest Alex Lee joined us on keys and organ, and slid us through a heartfelt “One by One”. Alex reminded me of when I had seen B.B. and I had sat in the very last row of the old Jubilee. I was so far back that I couldn’t really see anything exciting, except for the guy surrounded by organ and piano keys. One hand on the piano, the other at a 90 degree angle, on the organ, he was all over the place and it sounded great. Like in “The Last Waltz”, Alex 1-2-3′d us in and out like he was cradling a baby. He strode off to passionate applause, still as wonderful as ever.

We closed out with track 7, 8 and 9 from the same album we’d opened with. Zipping and zapping by “In The Gallery” and into the quietly bolstering “Wild West End” , our finale crept up behind us all. By the time we got into “Lions”, I could see everyone could tell. This was it. The lights dimmed to black as we faded into a space-jam of A chord reverb and walked pointedly off in the dark, still playing. Andrew brought it flooding back at the last second with a massive flurry of sticks, at which we all jumped back on for the final blaze of light, and the last punch. Then we fell back into darkness and ringing ears. We waited behind the curtain, sitting precariously on the applause. We had planned it that way; Faber, who knew all about encores, would nod when the teeter-totter of time was balanced. Not too hasty, not too tardy a return. Just right.
Finally, he tipped his head and stepped out. We flew after him. The crowd burned with anticipation as we took our familiar places and waited. Cullen on my right, Faber on my left, Andrew directly behind. Like in the old Beatles movies.

Faber counted out again and we dropped in just like yesterhour, to the tune of…what else but… Sultans of Swing.

It was a far cry from the old basement sessions; no-one dropped their pick or had to read off of power-tab, that was certain. From the first note, the crowd was up and clapping on time. Faber and I sang harmony all through, with Cullen joining us at “….Sultan’s of Swing” and ripping the solo with his eyes closed and knees bent. We played the honky-tonk like anything, and everyone got it. They twisted and bounced and twirled. I was a ball of goosebumps, and before I knew, I was singing through those rare, soft tears. We kept it tight though, and swung through to our genuine finale, crashing and banging all the way to a thunder of applause that rocked us backstage.

We all looked at each other like we had just broken several laws. Then we broke out into laughter, and those wonderful, sharp high-fives. “Chya!” And then Faber said: “Good job boys…bonus marks for everyone! Just don’t open any chocolate bars.”

We laughed some more and then made our way out towards the real reunion in the glimmering foyer. Cullen and I dropped back before going through. The door trembled with what the other side of it offered. They were waiting. I looked at Cullen, my tears dry, my bandana sweaty. I tore it off and ran my fingers through my hair. “We did good, I think..” He looked at me, glowing. “Noah,” he said, “If we had been any more perfect, we would have been lip syncing.”