Post by james on Aug 1, 2024 18:18:06 GMT -5
I mentioned this story that Colin Meloy of the Decemberists posted on Threads in the daily. I thought I'd post it here after doing a bit of cutting and pasting.
From www.threads.net/@dullandwitlessboy/post/C-IupkOPFT9
"Something really extraordinary happened the other night at our show in Spokane and I'm kinda busting to tell someone about it
From www.threads.net/@dullandwitlessboy/post/C-IupkOPFT9
"Something really extraordinary happened the other night at our show in Spokane and I'm kinda busting to tell someone about it
We've been playing 'I Was Meant For the Stage' off and on during this tour. We have a new arrangement for it, where I'm off guitar and just singing and Jenny plays piano. It's sweet, it's a little more over the top than usual. It's an over the top song, though, and we're really leaning into it. Somewhere during an earlier show on the tour, I started going out into the crowd and interacting with folks: reaching out for hands, singing to people, hugging them, etc. It's fun, it's silly.
Recently I started doing a thing where I find a couple audience members and I single them out for the "Mother please be proud" and "Father be forgiving" lines. In some ways, it's like making them proxies for my parents, reimagining the conversation that I might have with them. I sing the lines to them, I hold their hands. I hug them. It's fun and kind of funny but can also be touching. I'd be lying if there wasn't a bit of catharsis in it for myself each time I do it.
So there's that. Now, let's back up *three weeks ago*, (stick with me) at our VIP event in Oakland (a preshow thing we do where we play a couple songs and do a Q&A), there's a woman there who raises her hand during the Q&A. She's a drama teacher and she had a student who loved the song "I Was Meant for the Stage." His name was Milo. He loved theater; he loved the stage.
She explained that Milo had died recently; his family was bereft. So was his drama teacher. Her only question for us was that we all say "MILO WAS MEANT FOR STAGE" so she could record it and send it to their parents. Of course, we were happy to do it. The Q&A went on from there; we played our show, the tour moved on.
Flash forward three weeks later. We are in Spokane, Washington. We are playing at the Pavilion there in Riverside Park. I'm doing my dumb thing where I'm throwing picks out to the audience (you have to have *some* rock star indulgences, you know) when I see this family up against the barricade, a dad and a mom and a kid. The dad is smiling and gesturing to the kid, like, "throw him a pick." I try a couple times, but I'm a bad aim. The picks keep caroming elsewhere.
I decide I'll make it up to them by singling them out as the proxy "mother and father" when I Was Meant for the Stage comes around
"Stage" is the last song of the show. Jenny's playing her sweet, plaintive piano arrangement. On that verse, I hop off the front of the stage and I sing "Mother please be proud," to the mom. Now: usually when I do this, people are laughing and smiling. This woman is smiling but she is smiling through streams of tears, tears that are gushing down her cheeks. I turn to the dad and sing "Father be forgiving / Even though you told me, son, you'll never make a living." HE'S bawling too.
Their kid is leaning in and he's hugging them both and that's when I see the mother is holding a framed picture of a kid. A teenaged kid. I don't put much stock in it though, I've got to get to the next verse. I kiss the dad on the forehead, something I've been doing, and I move on. I don't spend too much time thinking about what just happened -- I've got another verse to sing, a song to finish, an audience to connect with.
We finish the song, we take our bows, we leave the stage. As soon as we're backstage, Funk grabs me and says: "THOSE WERE MILO'S PARENTS" and it all clicks for me. I remember, now, seeing the same woman from the Oakland show, the drama teacher, down there in the pit with them. Of course they were his parents -- but I did not put it together in that moment. I'm sure if I had, I would've fucking lost it. I would not have been able to finish that song.
So now we're all bawling, backstage, all of us, as we're piecing together what just happened. What an extraordinary coincidence, what an extraordinary moment. Never in my life would I have thought that these people that we only heard about from a Q&A in Oakland three weeks ago would be the two people in Spokane, Washington, that I happened to single out for this one song, that I would sing to directly.
Their kid's favorite song. The kid they lost. Milo was meant for the stage.
Funk went out and found them at the barricade before they left; I'm not sure if he got their names. I was too floored, too overwhelmed by the whole thing. Seriously, I just sat in my dressing room and cried. It's so heartbreaking. I was thinking of my own Milo, I was thinking of what losing a kid must do to you.
I’ve been playing music for people live on stage for the better part of my life. That is the most wild and powerful thing that has ever happened to me, I think. I’ve since connected with Milo’s family. Mario and Denise: I hope that that wasn't too intense for you or somehow difficult. It was a total accident. But I am so floored by this coincidence; there must be something that drew me to you guys.
Know that this song has a totally new meaning and depth to me now. I will never not think of Milo when I sing it. 💔 "
There's a website with a bit more about Milo -
