Back up! How did I end up in NC anyway?
Sep. 9th, 2023 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
just_cydI’ve talked about my trip to NC to see Darren Jessee perform, and then my follow up trip to NY to catch him on his summer tour, but I don’t think I ever quite got around to telling how that all came about.
First, last August, I re-discovered Ben Fold Five. I was still working in the office full time, and would play music when I wasn’t on calls. One day I decided I needed to hear BFF, and then it was off to the races with them. At home, I started digging up stuff on YouTube, first their Sessions at West 54th, recorded just after Whatever and Ever Amen was released, Then the painful-to-watch Ben Folds Freaking Out show in Japan, then the MySpace Reinhold Messner Front To Back reunion show. It’s at the very end of this last one that Ben introduces Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee, and says “Darren Jessee of Hotel Lights” and my ears perked up. Shift focused. I went back and re-watched the Sessions, reading the comments, which really are a Darren Jessee fan club. A few people mentioned his solo career. I found his stuff on youtube, and that was it – All Darren, All The Time.
No, really. Ben Folds/BFF/The Bens/Darren Jessee/Hotel Lights was all I listened to for months and months. Sometime in January, a playlist ended and BTE popped up, as did a couple other bands of that era, and BTE made this mix, occasionally, but otherwise it was all Darren Jessee and Those Other Guys.
By the end of the year, I knew that Ben Folds was returning to Cincinnati to play with the symphony, but the tickets were outrageously expensive. Too expensive for my friend to gift me one (and my friends are known to be generous!). Suckage, but such is adulting. Le sigh
Meanwhile, I’m obsessed enough with Darren that I’m hunting down and buying his music, both physical discs and downloads. Bandcamp was a huge help, but I’m having to dig deep for Hotel Lights’ stuff, since the band isn’t active and hasn’t been for a good while.
Perhaps I watched this video one too many times? I tried to find what I could about the town and the writing residency he did (very little - his instagram held the most info), and then my brain was off to the races!
I have, over the years, thought of what it might be like to just disappear and start over somewhere else, the way people do with varying degrees of success in fiction and in real life. This particular instance I wanted to head to Marfa, and be the cook/den mother to a large house of musicians-in-residence. My priority would be cooking and a bit of mother-hen-ing, but actual toilet-scrubbing would be done by someone else. I had a sourdough starter with a name (that I can’t remember), and I was giving container gardening a go (in the desert! In the mountains!), and cooking healthy meals to feed these guys (and it’s always guys, not girls) at least two meals a day, and making sure they have what they need to fend for themselves otherwise. I’m doing all the knitting and sewing and bread-baking and am otherwise the domestic goddess i’ve always dreamed of being. Miss Ajax did not make the trip with me, but I may have adopted a pibble once I got there. Of course, things like my multiple chronic health conditions or age or source of actual income ever came up. Pfft!
While all that was simmering, I decided I needed to move to NC. The triangle area/Durham, specifically, but Durham is super expensive. I DID look for jobs, briefly - “personal assistant” of all things, and found one that sounded OK, but the pay was about what I’m making now, and would not translate to any sort of quality of living. This morphed into me needing to be Darren’s assistant, running his life/career/band. Because I figured he was doing well enough that he’d need me, and my expertise and quality organizational skills would make me the ideal candidate. The job/apartment searching brought me back to reality a tiny bit, but not enough.
When he announced his show at the end of April in Durham, i became laser-focused on that. I WOULD be at that show. The web searches began. First thing I did was buy a ticket for the show - $12!! - knowing at the very least, if I couldn’t make it work, I’d only be out that little bit. I found an airbnb for cheap in Durham after all of my hotel searches came up too expensive, too scary, or too far away. I scoured his music for references and pored over google maps to locate Taqueria La Vaquita, the Lantern, Cat’s Cradle, and any other thing that would connect me to him. I located the Isley Street Shithouse in Chapel Hill, in which BFF recorded Whatever and Ever Amen. I created a huge list of places to visit, most of them food. Then I booked it all, requested the time off, and waited for my first solo road trip
First, last August, I re-discovered Ben Fold Five. I was still working in the office full time, and would play music when I wasn’t on calls. One day I decided I needed to hear BFF, and then it was off to the races with them. At home, I started digging up stuff on YouTube, first their Sessions at West 54th, recorded just after Whatever and Ever Amen was released, Then the painful-to-watch Ben Folds Freaking Out show in Japan, then the MySpace Reinhold Messner Front To Back reunion show. It’s at the very end of this last one that Ben introduces Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee, and says “Darren Jessee of Hotel Lights” and my ears perked up. Shift focused. I went back and re-watched the Sessions, reading the comments, which really are a Darren Jessee fan club. A few people mentioned his solo career. I found his stuff on youtube, and that was it – All Darren, All The Time.
No, really. Ben Folds/BFF/The Bens/Darren Jessee/Hotel Lights was all I listened to for months and months. Sometime in January, a playlist ended and BTE popped up, as did a couple other bands of that era, and BTE made this mix, occasionally, but otherwise it was all Darren Jessee and Those Other Guys.
By the end of the year, I knew that Ben Folds was returning to Cincinnati to play with the symphony, but the tickets were outrageously expensive. Too expensive for my friend to gift me one (and my friends are known to be generous!). Suckage, but such is adulting. Le sigh
Meanwhile, I’m obsessed enough with Darren that I’m hunting down and buying his music, both physical discs and downloads. Bandcamp was a huge help, but I’m having to dig deep for Hotel Lights’ stuff, since the band isn’t active and hasn’t been for a good while.
Perhaps I watched this video one too many times? I tried to find what I could about the town and the writing residency he did (very little - his instagram held the most info), and then my brain was off to the races!
I have, over the years, thought of what it might be like to just disappear and start over somewhere else, the way people do with varying degrees of success in fiction and in real life. This particular instance I wanted to head to Marfa, and be the cook/den mother to a large house of musicians-in-residence. My priority would be cooking and a bit of mother-hen-ing, but actual toilet-scrubbing would be done by someone else. I had a sourdough starter with a name (that I can’t remember), and I was giving container gardening a go (in the desert! In the mountains!), and cooking healthy meals to feed these guys (and it’s always guys, not girls) at least two meals a day, and making sure they have what they need to fend for themselves otherwise. I’m doing all the knitting and sewing and bread-baking and am otherwise the domestic goddess i’ve always dreamed of being. Miss Ajax did not make the trip with me, but I may have adopted a pibble once I got there. Of course, things like my multiple chronic health conditions or age or source of actual income ever came up. Pfft!
While all that was simmering, I decided I needed to move to NC. The triangle area/Durham, specifically, but Durham is super expensive. I DID look for jobs, briefly - “personal assistant” of all things, and found one that sounded OK, but the pay was about what I’m making now, and would not translate to any sort of quality of living. This morphed into me needing to be Darren’s assistant, running his life/career/band. Because I figured he was doing well enough that he’d need me, and my expertise and quality organizational skills would make me the ideal candidate. The job/apartment searching brought me back to reality a tiny bit, but not enough.
When he announced his show at the end of April in Durham, i became laser-focused on that. I WOULD be at that show. The web searches began. First thing I did was buy a ticket for the show - $12!! - knowing at the very least, if I couldn’t make it work, I’d only be out that little bit. I found an airbnb for cheap in Durham after all of my hotel searches came up too expensive, too scary, or too far away. I scoured his music for references and pored over google maps to locate Taqueria La Vaquita, the Lantern, Cat’s Cradle, and any other thing that would connect me to him. I located the Isley Street Shithouse in Chapel Hill, in which BFF recorded Whatever and Ever Amen. I created a huge list of places to visit, most of them food. Then I booked it all, requested the time off, and waited for my first solo road trip
