I was at the Rae Spoon / Geoff Berner concert on Thursday night, and I wanted to write something special for the loud, bearded group of guys sitting in the middle of the room.
Drinking red wine? I like it. I expected Scraggly Beard to be more of a royal reserve kind of guy. It’s a bold choice to chase the dozen or so pornstars on the table with a big ol’ glass of five dollar merlot. Scraggly raises another shot, and cheers his much burlier friend, Scruffy beard. They drink the shot, and wipe the red and blue spittle out of their beards.
Geoff Berner leaps into “My Heart is a Piece of Garbage Fight Seagulls Fight.” He’s covering a song from my favourite Rae Spoon album. I’m trying to remember when the accordion sounded so damn sexy.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Blinkie
I met and listened to Geoff for the first time at a Wordfest event last year. It was a random meeting. The description called the event a “melding of words and lyrics with Festival Man.” We are always looking for opportunities to enlighten and get some culture to Jasmine, our daughter, so we brought her to the event. She swayed to his “That’s what keeps the Rent down Low,” and she fiddled with the cuffs of her shirt when he read passages from “Festival Man” (she was only 10 after all). Though, she knows all the lyrics to “Higher Ground.”
Scraggly and Scruffy Beard are singing along with Geoff. No. My mistake. They’re just talking as loud as the speakers. I want to warn them to listen; the best part of the song is about to come on, but I’m too far away to let them know. I look around my table for something to throw to get their attention: a candle? Maybe. A bowl of soup? No, our daughter is still sipping on it. My pint of Granville Island Lager? It’s just warmed up to an edible temperature, besides, a shard of glass might hit one them in the eye and that would be a shame.
The song ends to a roaring applause. A young lady bumps into our table. “Sorry,” she says. “Am I standing in your way?”
“Of course not,” I respond. You’re welcome to sit with us if you’d like.”
“Sit? For this show? No way.”
I smile.
The inside of the bar is dressed in Christmas ornaments. Geoff has mentioned that Friday is a Christmas party at the bar—it’s why they couldn’t get the Friday show. Red, blue, and green inauthentic lights shine down on the stage. They flicker against Geoff’s dapper, black suit. Geoff stops telling his story, and looks out into the crowd towards Scraggly and Scruffy. He shouts a dozen or so expletives into the mic, and kindly tells Scragglies table their a tad too loud. They don’t even look up. I think, calm down, Geoff they’re just trying to include the rest of the bar that, “work is going to suck tomorrow,” and “I can’t believe they don’t have bitters in this bar,” and “I tried to order an Old Fashioned.” See Geoff, Scruffy is all class. Don’t worry about connecting with the crowd, don’t worry about having a mutual transcending experience. Entertain the people.
Rae makes a joke to ease the tension and plays a song from Loveisahunter. My partner took our daughter to get Rae’s signature during the break. She referenced Rae with the feminine pronoun and was terribly embarrassed by it. We try not to but sometimes gender is still binary for us. It’s even harder with the lack of gender neutral pronouns. This is how far removed from Rae’s community that I am. I’m still worried about the oppression of language from an academic standpoint while Rae lives it. I empathize that Rae used to make a living playing country music in country bars in Calgary as a transgender musician, but I can only speculate how hard that must have been.
I look around the bar, and this crowd looks so different from my first Rae show at the Uptown Cinema. It doesn’t feel that long ago, but I remember I drank Heineken and brought my own bearded friends. It was a strange time in my life. I was going through a Hootie and the Blowfish phase, and Rae helped pull me out of those dark days.
I met my partner over Rae. Well, more like on our first “date” I introduced her to Rae’s music and she fell in love (with my great taste in music). If we break up, she told me, it would have been worth it to have heard Rae’s music.
That’s the thing about good music. It can split your lip but you’re still happy to have had it.
The red, blue, and green lights are fading off of Geoff’s white collar. Maybe my eyes have adjusted, and the lights just look softer. Scruffy Beard’s table left in the middle of Rae’s set, and the crowd looks relieved, relaxed, and happy, but I can only think that I should have thrown my glass and stopped them—listen, this is the best part.