Wednesday on Monday

Monday, June 15th. The band Wednesday is playing The National, an institution of a venue in the heart of Richmond, Virginia, a city that is on a meteoric rise to the top of my list of favorites, in no small part due to days like these…

The day started unlike a standard Monday. There was no last-minute springing from bed for a quick shower then shoving myself into the stitching of Joseph A. Bank before a day in the office. Instead, I woke up on the couch this morning, the reasoning of which is another story entirely, though I will sate your curiosity by saying it had everything to do with a very long day and night before, celebrating a work-free Monday. The day set forth with a leisurely cup of coffee, the first of many, and a long shower before the two-ish hour drive to Richmond, accompanied by coffee number two. The underpinning of this slow morning, one that I now think back on lustfully, was a several-month-long build-up of anticipation for the show with my long-time best friend and musical Sherpa who was flying home from his brother’s college graduation in California to accompany me.

It was about a year before that said Sherpa introduced me to “this weird alt-country rock thing from Asheville” when he played me the, at the time, new single “Elderberry Wine”. My mind was blown. Never had I longed for a place that I’ve never been or heard of as much as I now did - a common sentiment I now know to be shared amongst many of Wednesday’s cult-like followers, and just about anyone who hears Karly Hartzman’s hauntingly gorgeous vocals spinning tales of life in the North Carolina that only she knows, and so generously tells us about. Needless to say, when the rest of the album “Bleeds” came out, I was enraptured and having done a fairly deep dive into the band’s discography, knew that I must be in attendance should the band find themselves on a stage within reasonable driving distance of my Virginia home.

A few months passed and I was sitting in a local taproom with some other friends, waxing philosophical, as I often do, about how whatever latest band I had told them about was considerably better, more artistic, and generally cooler than whatever slop they were peddling. Yes, I unfortunately have that colossal douche in me that likes to show up occasionally when I stay a bit too long sipping craft beer. Fortunately, I have a very charitable group of friends that laugh at me, call me an idiot, and take it with a grain of salt as they were this night. However, as my preaching came to an end I saw on the local news hub that is Instagram that Wednesday had announced a tour and that they were coming to the staple Richmond venue, The National. With a head full of libation and the assistance of a recently paid-off credit card, Sherpa and I were going to the show, unbeknownst to him.

Hopped up on excitement and the dregs of coffee number two, I got a call from Sherpa. His flight from San Diego had been cancelled. Instead of landing in Richmond at 9am, spending the day with his Girlfriend (one I had only met a few times, but find lovely) and one of her local Richmond Friends (whom I had only met once), he was now landing at 5:30pm a mere hour before the show’s doors opened. Nonetheless, onwards to Richmond I went, only slightly dismayed by the absence of Sherpa, and maybe a little bit nervous to spend the day third wheeling these two lovely, yet relative strangers. As I drove I figured this was a great opportunity to get to know them both better as well as spend some time in Richmond with people who know it, both of them having lived there for years, I was in more than capable hands. My growing infatuation with Richmond began to blossom a few months ago. The rekindling of some old friendships partnered with the city’s districts, nature, and overall character has me generally smitten and growing more so with every visit. It feels like a city where the people want you to be what you are and are eager to meet you wherever you may be on that path. For a city with such a complex history, its pockets of embraced modernity are profoundly beautiful, and I was about to have that demonstrated to me firsthand.

So there I was, trucked up to Richmond having filled both my car’s gas tank and power steering fluid upon arrival… it’s a 2008 4Runner with 275,000 miles, so I harbor no anger when it springs a leak every once in a while, and left it parked on a side street in Carytown. Coffee number three, don’t judge me, was going down easy as I sat on a bench in the 80-degree June sun waiting for Girlfriend and Friend wondering if the day could get any better. As I was about to find out, of course it can, and it did, because moments and days like these are only enhanced when you share them with the people that you love. Even if you don’t know that you love them at the time or have not known them long enough to tell them that you do.

Upon Girlfriend and Friend’s arrival we wandered aimlessly around Carytown. An onigiri lunch at Scuffletown park was a delightful respite from the concrete in the most “there’s a park here solely because we couldn’t fit more houses and the street architects left a weird space” kind of way. Yet another charming staple to The Fan. The two showed me around their old stomping grounds where they got popsicles at the local bodega, where they left their bikes in racks or chained to stop signs all the while swapping stories of drunken mishaps and romantic escapades gone awry. As the afternoon ticked on, they banished any semblance of nerves that I may have felt earlier to the same faraway place that the keys to their bike locks reside. These two let me into their city and worlds. They shared themselves with me openly and unapologetically and I basked in it gratefully. It was yet another demonstration of the beauty that Richmond, and the people who belong to her contribute to the world. In the blink of an eye, it was time to pick Sherpa up from the airport. Girlfriend and I bid farewell to Friend though he did offer his home as a place to sleep for the night should we need it after the show. One final demonstration of the loving hospitality of the city, and with an optimistic ‘see you later’ and one final coffee for the day, we left to get Sherpa from the airport.

The day was already worth far more than the price of the tickets, gas, and power steering fluid, but now my best friend was finally arriving, and the show a mere few hours away. It was time for the main event with the very guy who made it all possible over a year ago, when he played me one simple song about pickled eggs.  We picked up Sherpa, even as long-winded and dramatic as I tend to be I can’t make airport traffic sound very romantic, and with him in tow and some time to kill, we went to drink beers and eat tomato pies and Philly cheesesteaks at Stanley’s. I will only take a minute to point out how excellent of an establishment Stanley’s is. Sherpa was the envy of us all getting a beer, shot, and massive slice of tomato pie for a mere ten dollars. Every dive-y establishment like Stanley’s needs to offer such a deal. It is truly a masterclass in culture and cool. However, the dinner was far more than cool. In fact, it was over the course of this dinner that I stumbled across what I think this whole trip was trying to show me. You see, as someone who both studied philosophy and has taken writing (especially long-windedly as I’m certain you’ve come to realize) as a hobby, I tend to try to find an emotional anchor in the things that I do. I think this is because it helps me look back on the things in my life and the things that I’ve done, and be able to tap into the feelings of a memory more clearly.

I have a tendency towards romanticism, as I’m sure you can tell. I have always joked that I fall in love very easily with lots of people and lots of things. I don’t know what the root cause of this sentiment is, but it’s one that I have historically struggled to make sense of. Being drawn to such intense bouts of the positive emotions: joy, love, excitement, and the like, however, opens you up to the equally intense and sometimes more alluring counterparts: anger, sadness, and hurt. I say all this not to dwell on the emotions of anything in particular, but instead because emotions are something I think about a lot. In particular, love is something that I think a lot about. When I was a younger man, I often told my friends that I loved them. It was easy for me then. I don’t know what has changed, perhaps I have spent too much time dwelling on the negative side of my propensity towards intense emotions, but I find that it has been a very long time since I told a friend outright that I loved them. This isn’t due to a lack of love, but because something in me, somewhere has unknown reservations about doing so. Maybe it’s from heartbreak or maybe it’s from uncertainty. Truthfully, I don’t know the source, but I do know that on this day in Richmond I was surrounded by love. Pure, unmistakable love. The morning was spent with two old friends who, while being strangers to me, shared their love for each other and their love for their city with me so charitably. Then, for some 90 minutes or so between the airport and the show Sherpa and Girlfriend, each of whom I adore, allowed me to bear witness to the love they have for each other. It had only been a couple of days since they had seen one another, so they were willing to let me sit in the back seat of the Subaru third-wheeling as they caught up on the relatively mundane set of affairs that had passed. However, despite the seeming normalcy, the moment was romantic. I don’t know if it was as romantic for them as it was for me. In fact, I’m quite certain it wasn’t because after all, I was in the back seat third-wheeling and it was a pretty normal and short amount of time since they’d seen each other, but in letting me be there, I got to glimpse into the world of two people who are obviously in love, and I’m not sure there’s anything more beautiful than getting to see people who mean so much to you be in love.

Riding the high from the beer, the philly cheesesteak, and the love it was showtime. Girlfriend dropped Sherpa and I off at the venue before going back to hang out with Friend until after the show. Even the best days are made a bit better by a 24-ounce Pabst Blue Ribbon, so The National held up its end of the bargain as Sherpa and I added a few of those delicacies to our concert-watching experience. It was about two-thirds through Tombstone Poetry’s opening set, an energetic experience during which the pedal steel player broke his primary instrument and switched to a shaker for the remainder of the set, that another one of my Richmond friends, a girl Sherpa and I went to high school with, showed up with a half dozen of her friends. We caught up briefly and made introductions and they made their way into the sea of people. Sherpa and I, after another PBR, set out to find them and a few rows back from stage left we were parked when Wednesday shook the room by launching into “Reality TV Argument Bleeds”.

The energy was electric as the packed house screamed along with every word and thrashed to the shoegaze-inspired country noise rock. It was a few songs in when frontwoman Karly Hartzman invited the crowd to properly put a pit together. Feeling the energy and the handful of beers, Sherpa and I made our way in. I’ve never really considered myself to be much of a mosh-pit kind of guy, especially after hearing the story of Sherpa getting sucker punched in the solar plexus and having to go vomit at a Turnstile show. However tonight I knew that in order to get the best experience I belonged in the pit thrashing and jumping with the sweaty collective, and boy was I right. As the night moved on the energy in the room never faltered. The ever-cognizant Karly kept the pit respectful while still letting those of us who needed to be in there have our fun, that being a particularly “penile” bunch she noted. It was somewhere around the time they played “Wound Up Here (By Holding On)” that I realized my bright green bug-eye inspired goodr sunglasses and silver hoop earring had fallen victim to the pit. However, at the time this felt like more of a divine sacrifice to the gods of live music than it did a real personal loss. I only grew more convinced of this this newfound theology when a few songs later a mountain of a man, clearly the champion of the rock god, held aloft my hideous green sunglasses to ask who lost them. In a moment of divine revelry that has forced me to suddenly be more charitable to the Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues, I jumped over to this mythological figure, put my sunglasses back on, embraced him in the sweatiest man hug that I could muster, and told him that I loved him. I suppose it is a bit easier for me to tell it to strangers after a few beers than friends after some real emotional connection. Needless to say, this was all compelled by the power of the music gods, of course. I may be misremembering but I think he even swept me off the ground in his big strong arms…

The energy continued for the night crescendoing to the very last note of “Wasp”, the band leaving it all out there and the crowd unable to ask for anything more. A quick Coors Banquet for Sherpa and me saw us back with our old and new concert friends and we quickly elected to keep the energy rolling on to a local dive outside the neighborhood they all live in. The very same one that Girlfriend’s friend invited us to stay. The night ticked on at the dive bar. Girlfriend joined us and we all took some Irish Car Bombs – a delicacy that has become a trademark of mine over the last few years for better or worse. As the late-night hours turned into the early morning there was no room tonight for the drunken music douche at the table. Maybe it’s because we all shared the same beautiful musical experience tonight, or maybe because the city of Richmond and all her lovely keepers opened their hearts to me, letting me for a moment be embraced by their love. They met me where I was, embracing that romantic, long-winded, and dramatic person to the accompaniment of the hard rock tones from a band that is long going to hold a special place in my heart. As I reflect on the experience, the people, and the city as a whole, a few things can be said with certainty. Richmond, Virginia is a magical place, full of the best, most charitable, and loving people; I need to tell those people and those closest to me that I love them more, and if you ever get the chance to see Wednesday on Monday, you take it.