I Am So Popular: The Music Man Child

This my son did, successful in his second attempt, adding another chapter to his book of Austin Music Adventures, one that began when he was, literally, just a baby.

It’s going on nineteen years now since we moved to this, the Holy Land of the Church of Music, when Hen was just ten months old. The move did not feel calculated at the time, prompted more by a desire to get the hell out of St. Louis than some vision that this town was our destiny. But like so many people I meet, who originally thought they moved here on a whim, we came to believe Austin had been our fate all along.

The Catholics have Confirmation, when young believers testify they buy into the religion splashed coercively upon them as infants during baptism. The Jews have their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, the marking of passage into adulthood. My child announced the other day that he is about to partake in a similar threshold-crossing event. His band, You and Me, got a late invitation to play an official SXSW showcase. I about peed my pants.

Say what you will about SXSW—it’s overblown, overhyped, etc. I’ve been alternately observing, participating and avoiding the hullabaloo since my first SXSW (1992) waiting on tables at the Magnolia. Years I have surrendered and just floated along from event to event, from the sanctioned monster gigs at Stubbs to the spontaneous unofficial street performances, I have had a shit ton of fun. And some of this fun has included watching the kid play day gig parties, like last year’s gigs at Momo’s and Emerald City Press. But this year marks his first official foray into the thick of it.

My excitement at this official status is not born of some competitive pride or sense of validation. I’m just digging how the announcement of this coming rite of passage has prompted a montage of so many music moments in the kid’s life. From the time he was very little, thanks to both my job as a writer and our musician friends, Henry’s idea of attending shows often involved arriving at the door to find our names on the guest list and, later in the evening, a trip to the Green Room to chat with the band. This did not foster some sense of entitlement, some hipper-than-thou dismissive attitude. It was just the way things were, and I was taking him to work much like I used to take him to the Mag.

I remember one night, when he was very little, and we showed up at the Saxon Pub to hear James McMurtry. The woman at the door took one look at us, said it was sold out, then pointed to the kid and said something to the effect that his presence meant they were especially sold out, as if she found children utterly despicable and questioned my parenting skills. I gently asked her to please check the list, which she did, and when she found Henry’s name (I was just a plus one) she changed her tune fast, and ushered us to a reserved table. (Henry grew up with James’ son, Curtis, an excellent musician in his own right, which is how he became friends with James.)

Memories of other shows drift in. Liberty Lunch when he was just one, still in a car seat, for a night of Jonathan Richman. We’ve seen JR countless times since. Another show, at the Electric Lounge, I brought brownies to thank the door guy for slipping us in. Some brownies worked their way to JR, who sought us out at the pool table, and inquired if we had anymore to share. A couple of weeks ago, we saw JR again, at the Continental, and I cannot go into that club without recalling one of my very favorite Henry-as-musician moments ever. Jon Dee Graham had invited Hen to join him onstage for a tune, giving notice only a few hours in advance. The kid practiced and practiced and practiced the guitar part. Backstage, a few minutes before show time, he pulled me aside to tell me he’d practiced in the wrong key. What are you going to do? I asked What could he do, he said. He was going to figure it out as he went. And he did and, okay, I sound like his mother, but he ripped it up pretty good that night. He was fifteen.

Then there was the Polyphonic Spree’s Stubbs gig. We’re friends with front man Tim DeLaughter, who, upon hearing Henry’s shy request to play with the band (he brought a little percussion egg to shake), called him up and to our surprise, invited him to sing. I have never seen so much bliss emanate from one human as I did that night. (Being a worrier, I actually thought that Henry might have a heart attack, so happy was he, and that this could ruin the show for everyone.) That goes down in our shared music history as one of our Highest Holiest Days.

Spotlight moments with established acts is just a small piece of it all, though. I have watched my son transition from elementary school violin to acoustic and electric guitar. I have grown weary of hearing the same Jimi Hendrix licks over and over, back when he was learning. I have watched him nearly fall over at the gift of a Gibson SG, and later other instruments: theremin, piano, 45 year-old cello, all of which he taught himself, along with drums. He and his buddy Max started out, at 13, in a band called Max and Henry, playing covers, first out back behind Moxie and the Compound and later at venues around town as part of a Teen Rock series we co-produced so the kids could learn the business side of music. They even released a CD.

He now plays in several groups—Horses with Horns, You and Me, Best Fwends, Sea Fields of Elephants, and an utterly obscene side project called Metal Bunniez that just got a super hilarious review in The Onion. (I’ll never forget the night the girls in the band dedicated the song Transylpussy Fucksylvania to “Henry’s mom.”) He also has a solo act, Popular Culture, where he steps out of his comfort zone in the shadows and transforms into a beat-mad DJ demanding that his audience perform ridiculous stunts. (They happily comply.) These sundry acts have performed guerilla style around town, from the Jack-in-the-Box on the Drag to a laundrymat on Duval (where they discovered it’s best not to turn a gas-powered generator on inside of a small space.)

When Henry was very little, we used to live around the corner from Jovita’s, and every Tuesday night we’d head on over to hear Don Walser yodel. Henry had a toy guitar then, strings long gone, and he used to wander up to the stage and stand next to the big guy and pretend to strum along. Don even played at Henry’s third birthday, a benefit for Children’s Hospital, and I have a video of them together, totally priceless. Less than a year after that Modest Mouse crash, Don died and I picked Hen up from school midday to go to the funeral, which Henry noted was his first such event. The place was packed with musicians of all stripes, and Ray Benson sang Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.

It was another High Holy Day for us, a sad chapter in that book my child has been compiling since before he could walk. Maybe geography is destiny. One could argue that Henry wound up a musician because he’s been drinking the KoolAid of live music for nearly two decades, that if we’d moved to Canada he’d be playing hockey, not guitar. In my version of the story though, he was born with a drum for a heart, and fingers that knew, in utero, how to work six strings, and that Austin was part of the picture from the get-go, that the call of the music here pulled my child to the place he belongs.

Spike Gillespie I so damn proud of her kid. She blogs for JetBlue, KnitBuzz, herself and—brand new—ICantGetInsurance.com where she invites you to share your ridiculous “healthcare” stories.