(Oh. Hi everybody. Sorry I haven't been around in a while. You see, I've been a little busy. Head Busy. Heart Busy. Body... well, Body feels busy.)
This band I've loved for a while now... a Boston band... well, they're great. And their co-frontman, well, through my years in Boston, well, he's become something of a friend of mine. Beautiful guy. Writes great songs. And his band - well, I was there. For most of the shows, at least. I wasn't there "behind the scenes" or nothin'. But we did get drunk and play and sing Neutral Milk Hotel songs off our friend's balcony once.
But his band - well, I was there. To see 'em. Stood in the front. Shouted for them. It was nice - no, it was resurrecturally liberating - to see a band that I respect and who is so capable of doing things only the Luckiest and Most Driven get to do. You know, come up through the ranks and build an audience - build a following. They had a vision. They had guitars. And a wisely-used Moog.
They DID the dream, as opposed to merely dreaming it. They recorded albums - fantastically great albums, mind you. Toured the country, they did. Rocked some unsuspecting asses, they did.
I love this band as if they were my own.
And, of course, now that I've moved out of Boston and back to, well, the place I want to be -- they want a keyboard player.
Dammit! I wanted to be their keyboard player since the first time I saw 'em! And that was... well... a year and a half ago. Two years come November.
My chance missed me by three weeks. (Well, that and the fact that Mr.Xls has my keyboard...)
But hell, y'all better get to know this band. They're called The Stairs - you can get their music at www.thestairs.com , and they're pretty gosh-durn good. Do it. Now. You won't regret the fact that you did.
Now, like I said before, The Stairs feature a co-frontman that I have gotten to know through the years. And Ryan, well, damn. I think I first met him through my ol' friend Paul once... then we used to run into each other at a phenomenon in Allston at a place called Common Ground known as "Mod Night". I remember us getting' wasted and tryin' to dance our ways into unsuspecting faux-hipster girls' hearts and beds with varying degrees of success.
Ryan also writes beautiful songs. Both what he's accomplished with The Stairs and what he's recorded on his own. Beautiful and broken. Starving and well-fed. Whole and partial. Loving and smashing. Heart, Soul, and Head. Busted, Broke, yet still Alive.
But most of all - beautiful.
I hear what you're sayin'. "Yeah, Honky. They're beautiful. But that's such a wide-reaching, general, and let's face it, cliché word... what does beautiful mean?"
Consider me guilty.
Those songs... They're beautiful in the same way that you can't describe the first time you smoked a cigarette and drank a beer looking over the highest cliff in the town you grew up in. They're beautiful in the same way you can't describe the moment when you first loved someone and realized that they can never love you back the way you want them to. They're beautiful in the same way that you can't explain to anyone else why you are the way you are and like what you like and love what you love and believe what you want to believe.
I can't describe The Stairs, nor can I describe Ryan's songs, in the same way that I can't describe what the word "beautiful" means to me.
And if that makes me a sucker, well God damn it. (You can find Ryan's work with The Stairs on www.thestairs.com . Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom for a link to his side project, The Motel Candlewasters. I also have a bunch of his solo work, which, if it's OK with him, I'd be glad to share with all y'all.)
