peevish mama

Shame on me for not responding to Creeper Bud’s text while I was on spring break. She was offering me her two tickets to see Dawes perform at the Electric Fetus this past Tuesday at 6. It’s not that I don’t love Dawes and the Electric Fetus and Creeper Bud, for that matter. It’s just that 6 o’clock on a Tuesday seems dubious when you don’t have your calendar in front of you. As it turns out Creeper Bud left me the tickets anyway and as Tuesday unfolded, a little field trip before dinner seemed like the perfect thing. I’m a firm believer that when there’s a choice to do or not do, you just gotta do. And I proved myself right yet again.

Saint James was at tennis practice, so I took a very neutral Supergirl as my sidekick. She was unfamiliar with Dawes but she’s nothing if not game. Turns out she’s the perfect wingman. When we arrived 20 minutes before the show, the line was snaking around the block, so she yelled at me to let her out and go park. I parked a few streets away and ran to meet her – hustling past all manner of hipsters, girls in bright lipstick and tights and plaid clad folks to find her tucked into the line with her hood up – chill as a buddha.

Turns out the kind of people who make an extra effort to check out a Dawes show in a record store are an affable bunch who think nothing of letting a little kid worm her way to the front. Time and again, people would smile at her, let her through and look back at me to see if I wanted to follow. Who am I to say no? We ended up with a perfect spot front and center – so good that a blogger for the City Pages asked me to text her my iPhone pics. Check out my first published pics in Natalie Gallagher’s great interview here.

Dawes is such a good band – beautiful musicianship and lyrics that get you right in the gut. Watching and listening from five feet away is so intimate it’s almost awkward. Taylor Goldsmith doesn’t make it easy – he’s not showy, and peacocky and flamboyant – he’s humble, soulful and unbearably honest. He is extending a piece of his heart every time he opens his mouth and you feel like you need to accept it with some modicum of care. I found myself staring at his beat up buttercream confection of a guitar, wondering if it had a name, to keep myself from welling up.

My favorite thing was watching them through Supergirl’s eyes. She was leaning up against an amp, her head at Goldsmith’s chest level, still as a stone. The kid who always has one eye on my Instagram and one eye on iTunes and her hands busy doodling and her mouth going a mile a minute was quite literally frozen in her tracks. She got to feel the magic that is a live performance, where the love and energy is flying in both directions, where you feel something shift in your insides and walk away just a little bit different.

And if I played my cards right, she’ll be hooked for life. Stories Don’t End.