Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, page 22
“Deal.” He chuckles. “Sodium. How’d you get so smart anyway?”
“I get it from my dad.”
“Sounds like a hell of a guy.”
“He has his moments.”
“I’ll bet.”
Track Twenty-Two
That Song Could Be About Me
Friday, June 14th, 1996—the last day of school.
I push open the double doors of Green Valley High School and exit the building alone, the same way I entered it eight months prior. On the air, I catch the oily scent of sunscreen and a burst of tangy lilac. I plan on walking back through these same doors for my junior year in a few months, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, the present feels pretty good, and I’m not too worried about the future.
The Pena twins give me a ride home, and when I get there, somehow, River is already there with his guitar, his amp, and his bag of pedals.
“Can I catch a ride to Albany?” he says.
“Very funny.”
Like all the gigs I’ve played in my life, tonight’s gig in New York’s capital was booked by someone else, in this case, my brother Walden. Apparently, he knows a guy who knows a guy in Temporary Secretary, the band we’re opening up for at an all-ages club slash Tex Mex restaurant called The Giddy Up. We’ve printed some stickers with my name on them in swirly script and plan to sell them for a buck a piece after the show.
Hey, you gotta start somewhere.
With Walden at the wheel, we drive Howard the Duck down Route 7 through Vergennes toward the New York State Thruway, passing around a bag of Jax and swigging ice-cold Cokes, thick orange dust gathering on our fingers.
“You sure this thing will make it to Albany?” River asks, who looks a little worried about Howard.
“Don’t you worry about Howard,” Walden says. “He’s made it a lot further away than Albany.”
“We pretty much grew up in this thing,” I say.
“No wonder you’re so messed up,” River says, and I punch him in the arm, cracking us both up.
As the rule goes, music is driver’s choice, and thus a tape of Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait blares through Howard the Duck’s aged speakers. I’m riding shotgun and River and I exchange secret looks of disdain in the light up vanity mirror as River keeps fake vomiting down the front of his T-shirt. He hates Bob Dylan even more than I do.
Over the past two months of rehearsal, Rainey Cobb—the band—has polished our set to a deadly point, pushing deeper into the songs, examining and adjusting arrangements, tweaking song order, adding harmonies, guitar loops, instrumental breaks, walls of sound. We’ve replaced all but two covers with new original songs, leaving in only Sinead O’ Connor’s “Nothing Compares to U” and “Where is my Mind?” by the Pixies, with River on lead vocals.
We’re a force to be reckoned with.
Before we take the stage in Albany, we huddle up and Walden, looking deadly serious, says, “Let’s fucking destroy these people.”
River bursts out laughing.
“I can never take you seriously when you say that.”
Except the joke is on us because there’s only about thirty people in the crowd. Of course, most of them certainly aren’t here to see us, but there is a group of college-aged looking girls who come up front and listen intently while we play. I swear I even see one of them singing along at one point, but I’m sure my eyes are playing tricks on me.
After the set, with our meager $100 earnings folded and tucked into my pocket, I’m sipping a Coke in the shadows by the bar, a huge black X on my hand, when a pale girl with a pixie cut and ripped Levi’s steps forward.
“Excuse me,” the girl says. “Hi. Sorry to bother you.”
“Hi,” I say, and I instantly recognize her as one of the girls who came up close to the stage while we were playing.
There’s a glint of light as an object in the girl’s hand is raised and briefly reflects the bar lights. She hands me the object, which turns out to be a Maxell jewel case with a cassette inside.
“I can’t stop listening to it,” she says, her voice that blend of boldness and shyness I’ve heard so many times after shows. She looks down at her Chuck Taylors, at the flannel tied around her waist, then back up at me. “It’s so awesome.”
For a moment, I’m completely baffled. What is she talking about? Then I look more closely at what I’ve been handed.
Written on the tape case’s spine in block print are the words The Treehouse Tapes—Rainey Cobb. I rotate the tape and read the handwritten track list off the back.
Ordinary Girl
Secret Star
Peter Pan in Reverse
Anger, Part I
Everysecondeveryminuteeveryday
Anger, Part II
Anger, Part III
Bye
A Quiet Place
I can’t believe my eyes.
“Can you sign it to Svetlana?” she asks, handing me a pen, “that’s my name. I can spell it if you want. It’s Russian, in case you were wondering. My mom’s from there. But I was born here.”
“Where did you get this?” I say, not meaning to sound so accusatory.
She edges back slightly.
“Um, from my cousin Kendall in Indiana? She sent it to me a couple months ago. She thought I would like it. I’d never even heard of you before. Then yesterday, it was so weird, I was walking home and I saw your name on the board they put out front to say who’s playing this week, and I couldn’t believe it. Me and my friends go to SUNY Albany.”
My mind races, trying to fill in the gaps in Svetlana’s story. I’m fighting my way out of a vivid dream. “So, where did your cousin Kendall get it from? Before she sent it to you, I mean?”
“From her sister, I think. Or her sister’s friend. I’m not really sure. People pass tapes around, you know? Am I not supposed to have it or something?” She leans in and excitedly whispers, “Did somebody steal it?”
“No,” I say, “it’s not that. It’s just. I don’t understand how you could have, or how your cousin could have, or her sister, or wherever it came from. I mean, I never even gave—” but here I break off. A window opens in my mind. Because of course I did send a copy of The Treehouse Tapes out into the world, didn’t I? To Juliet. I bundled it up in a padded envelope with my confession and sent it off to Michigan over six months ago. So, then, Juliet gave it to someone? Who gave it to someone? Who gave it to someone? Who gave it to someone? Who gave it to Svetlana? It’s the only logical explanation.
As for Svetlana, she hasn’t budged. In fact, she’s just staring awkwardly, waiting for me to speak.
“You really like it?” I ask.
“Oh my God! I love it,” she says. “It’s one of the best tapes I’ve ever heard. And Ordinary Girl…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just. That song could be about me. Sorry.” Svetlana wipes at the corners of her eyes, which are now moist with tears. “Sorry. I just feel like that all the time, like everybody else around me is trying so hard to fit in, but that’s such bullshit, you know? Especially when you just want to be yourself. It’s really nice to hear somebody else say it.”
“Thanks,” I say.
It’s a strange sensation, seeing this piece of myself in the hands of a stranger. In the heart of a stranger.
“Have you taped it for anyone else?”
She doesn’t seem to want to answer this question.
“It’s okay if you have,” I say.
“Um, yeah. For my sister. And half the people on my dorm floor.” She motions to her friends sitting at a table over by the door. “And I think maybe some of them have taped it too. Maybe you should start selling them,” she adds, trying to sound helpful, “then people would buy them instead. I would. Like, if it was a real tape, or a CD, I mean.”
After I sign Svetlana’s tape on the empty side B, with a little help on the spelling, Walden comes over.
“Who was that?”
I do my best to explain the encounter with Svetlana to Walden, who seems not only unmoved, but unsurprised. He casually swigs from a bottle of Budweiser, and combined with the way his facial hair is finally starting to fill in, he looks just like Dad.
“It’s really good, Rainey,” he says. “People want to share good music. Where the hell is River, by the way? I want to get going.”
“Getting pizza, I think.”
“God, is he weird.”
“I just think it’s strange she never told me she shared it with anybody,” I say.
“Juliet? Maybe she forgot. You guys still writing?”
“No.”
“She was a crazy girl, man. I still remember that day you showed up to school with your nose pierced. You got balls, Sis, I’ll give you that.”
He laughs to himself at the memory.
For a split second, the time it takes to flip a fried egg, I remember when Walden walked in and almost caught me and Juliet kissing. I’ve always wondered what he saw that day. If he saw anything. What he might have thought. But I can tell by the look on his face that he’s forgotten all about it.
“Do you really think my album is good?” I ask.
“That’s a dumb question. Don’t you think I do? I helped you make it, didn’t I? I’m playing with you. You think I’m putting time into music I don’t like? That I stopped playing with Mom for my health?”
I shrug.
“You actually thought I didn’t like it?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“God, you’re such a freak sometimes.” Then, he reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder. “I love it okay, so stop worrying all the time.”
Not able to hide my smile, I pick up a box of matches off the counter. Written in western style script around the body of a wagon wheel, it says The Giddy Up. The bar has sort of a pseudo-western theme that’s not very convincing: a picture of John Wayne over the bar, faux cowhide bar stools, saloon doors to the bathrooms. As if they started strong with the decorations, then said, “Aw, screw it.”
“Who gave you beer, by the way?”
“The bartender is pretty cool,” Walden says. “His name’s Rick. Like in Casablanca.”
I look at the bartender, a ropy, greasy guy in baggy black jeans and a flannel.
“I didn’t know you liked beer.”
Now Walden shrugs. We’re a family of shruggers, I guess. “It’s kind of growing on me.”
I grab the bottle out of his hand, look around, then take a quick sip and pass it back. Walden laughs.
On stage, the members of Temporary Secretary, four college-aged guys, are still setting up their gear. Tacked to the edge of the stage, there’s a bed sheet with the band name written in black magic marker, not very neatly.
“What a weird name for a band.”
“It’s a Paul McCartney song,” Walden says instantly. “From McCartney II. 1980. Kind of a deep cut.”
“Of course, you would know that. And you say I’m weird.”
With the dark road drifting past us as we drive back to Fairview, Walden driving quietly and River sleeping in one of the captain’s chairs, I keep replaying my encounter with Svetlana on repeat.
My mind wanders.
I imagine Svetlana opening up her mail one day to find a tape by a singer she’s never heard of. Maybe she doesn’t put it on right away. After all, who’s Rainey Cobb? She does her homework first, theorems, maybe, or research on colonialism, maybe dissecting a poem by Milton. But at some point, there’s a moment, maybe over a steaming Cup O’ Noodles fresh from the microwave, where she slips it into the tape deck, pushes play, and “Ordinary Girl” comes through the speakers for the first time.
My song.
I imagine the moment when Svetlana’s ears perk up. Maybe her roommate is leaving for a date. Maybe the TV is on in the background. Maybe she’s just gotten off the phone with her mom. But there had to have been a moment when she realizes she likes what she hears. That she wants to keep hearing it. A moment when she turns up her stereo, stops everything else she’s doing, and listens.
Even after the two-hour ride back to Fairview, I’m still too wired to sleep when we get home.
As usual, my mind won’t turn itself off all the way and little moments from tonight keep pinballing around. I think of a small mistake River made during “Anger Part III,” where in the second chorus he played an A flat 6 instead of an A flat 9. How Walden’s brush tempo was a little fast on “A Quiet Place.”
I don’t mention these mistakes that only I ever notice, but not because people will think I’m weird. Because I’ve realized that they don’t always matter.
I eat a huge bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, then get out my journal and my lucky pen. Since I turned sixteen a couple weeks ago, I can’t add to my list of firsts anymore. Which means it’s time for a new list.
Things I Learned When I was Fifteen
Mistakes are okay sometimes. Mistakes might even be good.
You’ll never just wake up one day and be a different person. You’re always becoming the person you’re going to be.
Love is really complicated.
I have the best parents in the world.
If you spend too much time listening to what other people think, you’ll stop listening to what YOU think.
If you hurt the people you love, chances are they’ll forgive you.
Getting your heart broken is really bad for emotional stability, but really good for songwriting.
My brother is the most important person in my life.
Normal is 100% relative. Maybe nobody ever feels normal.
I love music more than anything in the world. I’m going to play it forever.
Track Twenty-Three
A Good Music Manager
Evan and I are lying on his bedroom floor listening to the mix I made him. It’s been a week since I finally took River’s advice and told Evan the truth. I think we were equally relieved.
“I wish you would have told me sooner,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I feel like such a jerk for how I treated you.”
“What are you talking about? I was the jerk.”
“Maybe we were both jerks.”
I don’t know if my mix is as good as Blowin’ My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, but it’s pretty damn good. Perfect song flow. Good balance of moods. Nothing you want to fast forward through.
It doesn’t matter so much what I think, though. It’s Evan’s mix. I made it for Evan to love it. And he does.
“You know what I’ve been thinking,” Evan says, taking my hand, which doesn’t feel weird at all, by the way. It feels nice.
“What?”
“That I might make a good music manager,” he says.
I laugh.
“For me?”
“Yeah. To book shows and sell CDs and stuff. You’re going to need one eventually.”
“Let’s get through junior year first, okay.”
“Okay.”
“Can you turn it up?” I ask.
“Sure.”
Hidden Track
Crazy Thoughts
The two boxes arrive a little after noon on a Monday in early August. Walden and I have been waiting impatiently for them for days and run out to the porch to bring them inside. We tear into them like kids on Christmas morning.
Inside of each box is 250 CD copies of The Treehouse Tapes. 500 felt like such a huge number, but that was the smallest quantity you could order. Walden thought we should have ordered 1,000, but I told him he was crazy.
“They’re not gonna last,” he says. “You’ll see.”
Over the summer, with Dad’s help, Walden and I mastered the album and sent it off to a company called Northway Sounds in Springfield, Massachusetts.
I had planned to use Dad’s studio to re-record a lot of my vocals and guitar parts from the original treehouse sessions, but he said we were crazy to mess with the spirit of the original, imperfect as it was.
“Dad, you can hear crickets on some of the tracks.”
“Look,” he told us, sounding really serious. “You might go the rest of your lives and never come close to what’s on here. The feel of it, I mean. You can always sing it a little better. Play it a little more perfect. Get rid of all the crickets, both real and metaphorical. But getting it to feel just right, that’s the real magic. Trust me.”
So, we did. When it comes to music, it’s usually better to trust my dad.
“What the hell, they’re not even shrink wrapped!” Walden says, taking a CD out of the box. “I thought they’d be wrapped like real CDs.”
I pick one up and look at it.
Rainey Cobb—The Treehouse Tapes
“Maybe you have to ask for that special,” I say.
“Well, that’s dumb,” Walden says. “It should be automatic. Who wouldn’t want them shrink wrapped? We want people who buy the album to be able to unwrap it, so it feels more official.”
“They look fine,” I say. “And shrink wrap is annoying anyway.”
I turn the CD over and look at the track listing and credits on the back.
All songs written by Rainey Cobb.
Recorded, mixed, and produced by Walden Cobb.
Walden took the cover photo. I’m leaning out the window of the tree house, looking straight down at Walden, who you can’t see but was directly below me, my eyes looking right at the camera. It was a gray day, which Walden insisted on for “dramatic effect,” and my red hair is the photo’s only bright spot, almost like the rest of the photo is in black and white but my hair is in color.
I open up the CD and pull out the sleeve, which I designed to be a schematic of a brain divided up into nine sections. Inside of each section are the song lyrics, which I handwrote in tiny print. It’s weird and wonderful to see my words in front of me, and it almost feels like someone else wrote them.
That night, I have an idea. Since the CDs aren’t shrink wrapped, I decide to number them.
“Like artist prints,” I tell Walden.
He thinks it’s a silly idea, but I don’t.
