today’s ride 🚋
midwestern haikus: no one’s doing it like these folks 🎶
deep dish with nish: avoiding the spiral 🌀
keeping on track: an example of one of these incredible artists
thanks for being here!
— nish ✍🏽
to hold a microphone, to hold the stage
i've been thinking about being a front person in a band lately, mainly because i'm always studying other ones no matter where i go.
not studying as in "stealing moves" (although i have borrowed something here and there…), more like studying as in "trying to understand what i'm actually doing up there, and who i'm trying to become while i do it."
a person at the front of the stage, with only a microphone in hand, has the power to hold an entire room with their presence. and somewhere in the last few months, i finally landed on three people who've become my current syllabus.
first, there's dan "soupy" campbell, vocalist of The Wonder Years. watching soupy is like watching a preacher at work — the show a sermon, the crowd a congregation, and his lyrics don't feel like lyrics so much as they feel like prayers, like understanding, handed to a room full of strangers who all suddenly are not strangers to each other anymore.
then there's kyle kinney, vocalist and lyricist of Excuse Me, Who Are You? — a local, DIY band out of madison, wisconsin, who i will fight tooth and nail for to laude their greatness. kyle is pure energy! pure power! pure movement! watching them onstage is like watching a tornado that learned how to swallow thunder. of the three i am admiring today, kyle and emway? are the ones that i have seen/known about the least in my time with music, but perhaps the outfit that has compelled me the most. there are not a lot of bands out there moving the way they do, literally and figuratively.
and finally there's pete wentz, bassist and lyricist of Fall Out Boy, one of the biggest bands to ever come out of this scene and (nish says for the 1000th time…) one of my biggest influences without a doubt. he's slowed down some now, given that the band's existed for two decades at this point, but there's a different kind of command that comes from knowing your words are going to be screamed back at you by thousands of people every single night, whether you feel like performing that night or not. i’ve seen this band too many times, and as a passive observer, i’ve seen him and that band go from being a tremor of anxiety and nerve, unsure of if their place in the world was important, to people telling pete constantly that his words saved their lives. i wonder, sometimes, how many of them know they saved his, too.
all three of them are doing the same thing: standing in front of a crowd and making the loneliest parts of themselves legible to a room full of strangers.
a person at the front of the stage, with only a microphone in hand, has the power to hold an entire room with their presence.
that's what i think i'm actually chasing, when i'm being honest about it.
i don't think i'm any of these three people yet, not really. i think i'm still somewhere in the practice room, learning and mimicking the best i can.
but i'll tell you this — when even just one single person in the crowd sings a line back to me, something in me that's been lonely for a long, long time gets to feel, for three and a half minutes, a little bit saved. and i think that's the whole secret nobody tells you about being a front person: we’re not up there to be looked at. we’re there because like you, we don’t want to be alone either.
deep dish with nish:
from our last haiku, one of you asked: “if nothing matters, how do you not spiral?”
that’s a tough one. i’m not sure i’ve cracked it, but i try my best to find meaning in the mundane and the little stuff. it makes the big stuff seem even bigger! if it isn’t abundantly clear, i’m a bit* (read as “very”) neurodivergent. if coping mechanisms like holding ice cubes or counting doesn’t work, then i just have to try and ground myself at the bottom of the spiral.
eventually when you get down to “why should i bother with anything? nothing matters and all of this is inconsequential!!!” you can take one more step and say “why not do it?” then you kinda just… do it. it’s not easy. sometimes i’m paralyzed by it but by doing things i love with people i care about, it makes milling about this wet rock a bit more fruitful.
(send in your questions to [email protected] and maybe your question will be the star of the next newsletter!)
keeping on track:
this week’s song is "cardinals” by the wonder years, swinging straight out of philadelphia.
it’s a simple line i’ve picked for today, but i remember driving up to philly from virginia when i was there for grad school. will, my best friend and a philly native, ushered me into a venue he knew well, and we pressed ourselves against the bodies of every other person there that night to see them perform the record this song was from front-to-back to celebrate the album’s release.
we survived the sweat and mosh pits of the opening acts and took in the sweet reprieve of air conditioning and standing still, waiting for the wonder years to make their appearance.
and then, and i’ll never forget this, someone starts shouting this line on repeat.
“WE’RE NO SAVIORS! IF WE CAN’T SAVE OUR BROTHERS!”
and at first, he was alone, garnering dozens of wayward looks.
but then there were two more voices joining, then seven more, then maybe twenty, and within a few repeats of the line, just about every throat in the room was uttering this line like a prayer over, and over again.
run the song, imagine hundreds of people screaming it.
yeah. chills.
lyrics i love:
we're no saviors if we can't save our brothers.
this must be my exit
not every front-person needs to be in music, but i think it’s important we can name the people who teach us something about how to take up space, or how to be lonely a little better. without them, who knows who we’d be. they deserve some of the credit.
if you don’t want to send in a question for deep dish with nish but still have thoughts, comments, concerns for my mental well-being after seeing this existential spiral caught on keyboard, talk to me! i love mail, even when it’s ‘e’.
liked what you read? tell someone about it! that beats me vageuposting into the void trying to fight an algorithm! 🤖
as always though, thanks for being here. 🙏
warmly,
nish
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