A Family Band Listens To The Radio Together

Merciless Damnation and The Set List

“Can you play Gila Monster?”

“What?!?”  Two audiophile parents freeze with shocked faces in the front seat and exchange worried looks.

“Gila. Monster. THE SONG.”

Eric Heywood and I stare blankly forward and at each other.  With a bit of research, he discovers Gila Monster is by a band called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, from the album PetroDragonic Apocalypse or Dawn of Eternal Night:  An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. 

“Where did you hear about this song, Jean?”  Eric asks.

“It’s not religious, is it?” I ask Eric, whispering. 

“Sarah played it for me on the way to the festival!!!!”  Sarah — our beloved friend, our adored studio project manager, our sweet babysitter, our red-headed angel — has festival hype music called Gila Monster. 

Metal tone blares.   We’ve just missed the on-ramp to our child’s musical education. Someone else has led her astray and it is too late to turn around.

“At least it isn’t religious,” I offer.  

 “I think we are going to need some Beach Boys, stat.” 

We are on the way home from a festival gig. Eric is leaning into the air-conditioning.  North Carolina July heat drives him crazy; he’s much come comfortable in the Montana cool, where he lives. Earlier today, turning onto the festival dirt road to the stage he told me, “If the stage is in the sun, I’m going to vomit.”  The band lost a collective twenty pounds of water weight during the show, no matter how much fun we had.  A thunderstorm closed down our after-show beers, and as much as we all want to be rained on, we’ve made it to our car and into the fleeing traffic. 

“Can we listen to 22 next? By Taylor Swift! Then, Roar. And Complicated.” There is silence. “OK, Mom?” 

“You got it, sweetie!” I manage.

Jean wears short jean shorts, high-tops, a hot-pink plastic necklace she has made out of tiny rubber bands.  Her face is painted. She’s eaten her dream menu — two slushies, a corn dog, french fries, cookies plucked from artist hospitality. Her strawberry-shaped shoulder bag and her Polaroid camera still hang on her shoulder in her kid booster.  She documents our gigs now; playing is a family affair.  Sarah, our “tour manager,” helped her get her hair and outfit just right as we loaded up this morning.  We are a band.  Bands don’t discuss everything. Apparently, there’s a pre-gig playlist.

Jean sings along to about half the words to all the songs, festival fairy hair sparkling. Sarah is following in another car, unable to defend herself because we are too full up with amps and instruments. 

Whatever my life is or isn’t, Eric Heywood is my long-haul companion.  He’s my family, my dear friend, my musical partner.  He gave me my daughter. I trust his opinions deeply; I’m grateful we are tied.  We are kind and kindred even if we are unorthodox. Like a band, we move in and out of intense things without words.  We talk around things, above and below things, like men on a fishing trip. We are of an age when pronouncements about big feelings pale to day-to-day nitpicking. We express our care for each other by giving each other a hard time.   I love to watch Eric with Jean; I love to play music with Eric.  I also love to watch Eric wrestle with technology and experience new music, both of which ruffle his feathers. He is making a face beyond words to the sound of mid-range coming out of the speakers.

“Good for them.”  he declares. “Let those fuckers have it. They should use AI for streaming all the songs they want.  Pop is already computers. Processed beyond recognition. It might as well be robots. Who cares?”  

“I like it!”  Jean chimes in from the back.  

Eric is unfettered, passionate.  “Real music will go right back where it’s always been. On the fringes and in the hands!”

“Can we listen to Gila Monster again?” asks the child who looks like both of us.

The inevitable future announces itself often and clearly to small audiences who take no notice, just like this moment in our car.  Musicians like me and Heywood are relics of the past. (Clearly, Eric is a relic of a much more ancient past than I am).  We fight treble and worship warm tones.  We believe in whole albums, whole takes.  We aspire to deeper pockets, less takes, fewer words.   We are students for life, perfectionists, often grumpy with the limitations of own noise.  We don’t even consider the advent of pitch correction because it is a lie and why would you?

“I don’t understand why this band is popular,” I once said, years ago, standing beside Eric at a show, confounded by the other band on the bill. 

“Welcome to the rest of your life,” he replied without even a side-eye.  

Eric began fixing up an old house in Montana during the pandemic.  He seems happy.  We are both glad to be on the road less than we used to be.  Our family band feels like a wonderful reason to make noise, to go on adventures, to show Jean new places, to eat good things. It’s a sweet, healthy way to participate in the cafeteria cacophony of making music in the modern world.

“Why didn’t you play Dusty Old Man today?”  Jean asks.  It’s her favorite.  We don’t acknowledge her request.  We both find it a second-tier song and not a full-band tune. And that account of our own bruises, storms and comforts has settled into a deeper, calmer river of friendship.

“Do you think I should be using a pedal or something to make my guitar tone better? It was driving me crazy in the monitor.”

“Do you have a lifetime to go looking for that?” He isn’t kidding. He is a tone fanatic. “But you sang great,” he nods. 

I give him a punch.

He rustles through his pocket, thumb picks spill out.  “Look at this.”  He shakes his phone and proudly beams, the screen in my face.  

“I can’t look now!  I’m driving.  I don’t have my glasses.”  

“Two hands on the wheel,” hollers Jean.

“It’s my new Instagram account,” grins Heywood.

This information is shocking in the same way that saying the polar caps melted, aliens have arrived, Santa is canceled, and we all have to stay isolated for the next year and Clorox our vegetables is shocking. But clearly, anything is possible.

 “Beyonce wants to be my friend!! Look at that!”

“What are you doing with an Instagram account?” The horrific image of Eric on TikTok flashes across my brain; I shake the image away.

“MAKING FRIENDS! And you can pay me to play on your record.” Eric has his studio set up out west. He’s mastered his overdubbing recording rig. His laughter reminds me of how he described his epic tours with Richard Buckner in a pick-up truck. “We were millionaires without the millions.”  They ate oysters every night.

“Play 22 again!”  Jean calls from the backseat. “And I want a special drink when we get to the afterparty too!!!”

Richard Buckner has somehow crashed into the same thought space as Taylor Swift and special drinks. Has it always been this way?  Us, them, the past, the end of the world and the future all flying by at unpredictable angles and seventy miles per hour with cringy lyrics in the background.

I roll the windows down for the at-last rain. “Will you call Sarah?”

“What do I say?” Eric is ready.

“Gila Monster, Complicated, Twenty Two. BUSTED.”  

Sarah blames the algorithm, laughing.  She never imaged Jean would remember any of the songs, let alone request them later.  She never figured anything would stick in Jean’s mind. But Jean is part elephant, part eagle, in addition to whatever else she is. She collects every word, forgets nothing. The world around her marks her memory with a startling imprint. I honestly can’t count the times she has turned to me in disbelief and said, “You don’t remember that?”

“I knew Jean would already be acquainted with the classics!” Sarah offers up.

“That’s code for old, E.  Will you play God Only Knows?”  

“NO! Play Raining Tacos!” shouts Jean.

On these last miles home, Jean turns Johnny Be Good into “No, Johnny, no — Don’t cut my bangs,” shaking tangled curls into her eyes. Whatever the song, we turn it up, sing the wrong words, laugh at each other. It doesn’t really matter, not any of it, beyond remembering the right now exactly, just like Jean.

July 1 Set List, Thanks to Eric Heywood, Matt McCaughan, Alex Bingham, Luc Suer, Sarah Uzzell, Jean and everyone backstage and out front at the Enofest.