Backstage at Music Hall Of Williamsburg I collapsed into the couch. The headliner’s green room was quiet for about forty five seconds before the rest of band and the horde of our New York friends descended into the space. Kansas ex-pats, fashionistas, hard core kids from back in the day and the east coast emo elite all conversing around but rarely with me.
In my exhaustion I assume I was giving off “don’t fuck with me” vibes even though that wasn’t my intent. Inevitably, there would be at least one normie, maybe a family member or a friend with a “real job” who would attempt to chat with the sweaty heap that I was on that couch. I guess other artists take a few minutes to compose themselves before letting anyone backstage but that’s not how we roll. The show is really just foreplay for the hang, at least that’s how everyone else seems to interpret things.
Not me. My default introvert takes over as soon as I walk off the stage. I need to take that time for composure regardless of whether there is a party going on around me or not. So, I keep to myself, not because I don’t like the people backstage but just because I’m emotionally and physically spent. In these situations people might think I’m a dick but I’m really just tired.
Word came through the grapevine that an old friend from back home was in attendance. Someone I hadn’t seen in well over a decade but had played an oversized role in my early life. Back in high school, when I was in noise rock outfit that wore ill fitting matching thrift store suits. We were the Kansas City Temu Nation Of Ulysses or maybe the sale rack Reservoir Dogs and we made quite a racket. I have to admit I was kind of excited for my old friend to see what I had made of myself. Here I was, the lead singer of the headlining band playing a sold out show in the hipster capital of Brooklyn. Not bad for that sixteen year old Catholic School kid who really couldn’t play guitar.
My friend from back home slid into the dressing room and made eye contact with me on the couch. He gave me a respectful head nod that indicated he had clocked my presence. He then proceeded to look around the room like the T-1000, pausing on each concert goer as if scanning some internal database. It was weird to watch and I doubt I would have even noticed it if I hadn’t been anxiously awaiting our chance to converse. My breathing had evened out, my heart rate coming down as I nursed a clear plastic solo cup and just waited for what seemed like an eternity. It felt like I was on some sort of a stakeout, clocking every interaction and waiting for the deal to go down.
After a full fifteen minutes when, to my estimation he had exhausted all other attendees he finally made his way over to my couch. He put his hand out for a fist bump and casually said “good show, I gotta get back to the city” and then promptly disappeared. The teenage part of me was gutted, the adult part of me was furious. What the fuck had just happened? With nowhere to put these feelings I decided to drown them. I walked to the the mini fridge and grabbed a beer, borrowed a lighter from one of my coworkers, popped the cap and the proceeded to push all that hurt into the bottle.
In the hungover light of the next morning I was still irritated but somehow impressed with the previous night’s display. My friend from back home had cased the room like he was planning to rob the place. He’d done it with a surgical precision that separated the “important” people form the civilians. I was a little annoyed that in their revelry no-one else had noticed this behavior. I felt like the detective in a crime show observing that this shooting was no accident, this was a professional hit.
As the next day wore on and my headache subsided I was struck that this had happened before. As bizarre as the backstage pageantry had been I was essentially being blown off as “just a kid” by one of the senior class-men. It was like high school all over again. I wrote down the phrase “like a professional” in my spiral notebook that I carried for when inspiration struck. That felt like a good title for a song about this particular experience but then I realized that I had already written it.
The song “Holiday” is often misinterpreted as being about a romantic relationship but it’s not. In as much as the song is “about” anything, once the record is in the universe it can be about whatever you want it to be. The lyrics I had written way back when were about this same friend, how he had blown me off when he moved away all those years ago. How when we reconnected for the first time he’d treated me the same way, like I was just some nobody that he used to know. All the adventures we’d had and the conversations we’d shared were disregarded like an estranged cousin that you only see at Christmas. Hence the title of that song.
So, I’ve always thought of “Like A Professional” as the lyrical sequel to “Holiday” though I’ve never told anyone that before. There is, however, what I thought would be a pretty obvious Easter egg in the lyrics of what would become the fourth track of my second solo album. “What became of everyone I used to know, I wrote that song for you and I meant every word at the time”.
In hindsight, I guess it’s not that weird to feel disregarded by someone from your past. It does feel strange that it happened twice and ten years apart. I could be over reacting or misinterpreting things or being too “emotional” about the whole thing. I be like that sometimes. That is why I always give my self a lyrical trap door to escape from. … “your words don’t match the stories that your actions show … but what do I know?”
