Ye Olde Onion Soup, Please
I walked into Dargan’s on Main Street, bent on ordering a French onion soup and an Arnie. Years since I’ve been in there, and it’s a loaded place. A young lover’s long (ago) time place of employment. “So many nights in here” says the young wiseman, all of 24 years. I had to fight to not use my once-formidable commitment to the Irish accent. Mahm, thu Frehn Choynin please! Hard to imagine that juvenile still lives in me, but there he was, a little worse for the wear but largely as I left him, shitty grin and all.
We had a line out the door and up the street one night, sometime in the thick of our Ventura era. Shades of Day live at Dargan’s! An event, as we saw it. As the owners and (allegedly) the regulars saw it, a total nuisance. Nearly 20 years removed now, that night lives in a certain cabinet of glory in my mind. We were never invited back, and I couldn’t have been more proud. “Too Big For Dargan’s”. In a do-over, those shirts would be pressed and making the rounds the next day. It was petrol on the fire.
One of the owners is a Brendan too. We’re different kinds of Brendan, probably in most every way, but still the acknowledging nod of that exclusive club prevailed. It bonded us, barely. He, of the owner/swinger set. Me, the allergy-prone/emotional/musician set. Always that little extra sparkle in his eye towards my girl. But no, it was definitely the regulars complaining that they couldn’t get a beer one night.
There’s always a story about Dad when it comes to music. In this case, it’s just the soup. The story was that he ate so much French onion soup while on tour that he really never wanted to eat it again. Which is understandable I guess. It’s a rich soup, and onions can get to anybody, given enough time. I don’t foresee ever getting tired of melted cheese on toast though. It’s a funny memory, and always gives the soup a nice complexity.
The butterflies attacked around 6pm, and by 10 to 9 I was sitting in the truck in silence, my longtime ritual of warming up my voice to Keith Urban’s “Golden Road” stopped early, as productive as it was going to get. I closed my eyes and concentrated on people I love for those last ten minutes in the pressure cooker. Those still here, and those already gone. I wanted to feel the reassuring weight of that deeply interwoven existence. I wanted to be wide open to the possibility of magic, and there’s an elusive type of self-courage believing in that state requires. I want that around, and I had a prime opportunity on Friday night to suspend the persisting disbelief.
Feels a little grandiose as I write it out. Whatevs. Grandiosity in moderation is something to be encouraged, I think.
The nature of this performance was largely experimental, and in the spirit of science, a lot of useful data was gleaned. It’s a little odd to speak about music this way, but the methodical path is really serving me right now. A lot of what I wrote “stuck to the wall”, so to speak, and I’m going to process for a bit and then try another “something” relatively soon. Springtime, perhaps. Speaking with a writer friend this morning at the gym, I was pleased to hear his feedback refer to this first piece as a “musical memoir”. I suppose that’s exactly what it was/is. Reflections welcome and encouraged during this process. From here, I see bits of the process appearing in the distance, many of them shimmying like mirages. Vestiges of vehicles in the distance along a hot desert road. I’m grateful for the clues, the signs, and the hints.
I was quite relieved when the set was through, but just a little later that night I felt that once familiar hunger for more. Speaking of signs, I think that’s a solid one. Perhaps we’ll try somewhere a little quieter for the next experiment. My nervousness felt grateful for the chatter of a bar, at first. I could almost make out someone ordering the soup.