Brightest Young Things

Dear Summer,

I know it’s been a while since we talked, but seeing as I heard how you’re coming back to town sometime I was thinking we should get in touch before you get here. I was at a concert at DC9 the other night, a couple of bands--Donny Hue and the Colors and Floating Action, and their music made me think of you and the experiences we’ve shared and how I always feel, once you’re gone again, like we should have done so much more, how we should have been so much better together. So now I’m writing you this now, in hopes that when you come to visit, we can get started on the right foot, you know? To really make the most of it. Let me explain.

Donny Hue isn’t a guy, it’s the whole band, but the whole band is anchored by this guy, Ed, who has a fantastic mustache at the moment. Remember when I grew that ‘stache as a joke couple years back and dressed up in tan suits and bowties and you made fun of me because I was so literally hot all the time? This was totally unlike that mustache because it sticks out at the ends and makes Ed look like either a gypsy or a 19^th century boxer. It looked good when he closed his eyes and sang like an enunciating Dylan or Connor Oberst covering Dead Milkmen songs. The drummer was amazing at playing gently and making his big snare rattle like a deadly Phil Spector reverb wall effect and his tiny bass drum would POP rather than THUMP on the more uptempo folky songs. The bass player I’m almost certain used to be in that awesome garage band the Carlsonics, but oh, she’s mellowed so much—her vocals blended, Baez-like, with his, allowing him to step back from the mic and move his acoustic back and walk around and…oh no wait it’s Olivia from the Housemates.

They were really chill you know? They whispered. The crowd was quiet. Last year when you were in town, all we did was travel and party, drinking third world beer with ex-pats in ex-pat lounges, gambling with Laotian pirates, scouring the eastern shore for the weirdest truck stop crab shack. It was amazing, but overwhelming…We barely got to relax and catch-up before you slipped away again suddenly. This summer, I promise, we’re going to chill, hard. Like really deep chillin', on lawn chairs, on a lawn as deep as the silence in the club when the musicians stepped back from the mics and sang into the air and the drummer just brushed the face of the drum to keep the rhythm and they sang Sonny and Cher and the Everly Brothers with intense sincerity and I could feel myself drifting to sleep in your arms, wet from the pool, at noon.

Donny Hue and the Colors - Good Time Happening from The Kora Records on Vimeo.

Or we should go to a music festival. Hear me out. I know you had your fill of those in the 90s, but I’m hoping that you can broker a truce between warring tribes, hippies and punks and indie-rockers, centered around a series of outdoor music festivals all headlining Floating Action. This idea comes from trying to go to Urban Outfitters on Tuesday to buy a t-shirt and running into a wave of Dead fans going to see the Dead at the MCI Center, and while dodging dirty dreads and didgeridoos I realized that these bros weren't so bad, that I don't need to hate them anymore, and that we should totally all get together and love one another and stuff.

Absolute Sway - Seth Kauffman from justin plakas on Vimeo.

How long has it been since we’ve seen an honest to god Hippie in these parts huh? We used to hang out with them all the time in college, but it seems like you knew way more than I ever did…in fact I only ever knew them through you. So I thought you could help me spread the word. There are some bands doing it already: My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Anomoanon, Cat Power, various Arthur Magazine love-children…but no single champion for cross cultural healing of the divergence that began sometime in the late 80s, where everyone got stuck in these roles: Hippies had to listen to shitty music, punks couldn’t not mosh, and heepsters refused to take off their clunky shoes and spin around in the sunshine.

Before they even started playing I loved this band, mainly because they tested the mics with instant perfect four part harmony. Then I took a look at singer Seth Kaufman’s hat. It was almost identical to the one Tim Heidecker’s father wears on vacation. It said, wordlessly: “Hey man, I’m not fishing right now, but given the opportunity, I would go fishing. Also if I were one of the Outer Banks, I would be Ocracoke, not Nags Head. I’m not into all that windsurfing shit.” Then the harmonic warm-up became the song Don’t Stop Loving Me Now, which somehow merges Elephant 6 modpop, Archers of Loaf indiejams, and a Motown beat. That’s when I knew you and I had to have a serious talk.

Summer, throughout the rest of the set I was making a list of all the ways that we’re going to treat each other better this year when you come to DC. When the bass player made silly scrunched-up faces during “Diggin” I swore to take myself less seriously, wear shorts and oversized sunglasses, maybe a floppy women’s straw hat. When the drummer battered the rim of that same big snare in a reggae intro I thought about how we could listen to more Bob Marley like you always want to and how even though I never choose to listen to early 70s reggae when I actually do it fills my heart with niceness. And when Seth switched to a crazy sitar sounding guitar and plugged his curly white telephone cable cord into it and started pulling out sinewy psychedelic lines  that could come from late Deep Purple or the Three O’Clock or Roky Ericson, but shot through with warm harmonies and powerpop chords, I tried to think of what you could do in return and I just couldn’t come up with anything except please be here, with me, down the ocean, up a mountain trail, on the avenue, on a road trip in a rented convertible, eating funnel cake and flavor ice and fried chicken, stacking 40s in the yard and passing out in the park under a tree to noises of dogs playing and children screaming. Just be here soon, I miss you so much, and I'm trying not to forget.

Hurry hurry hurry!

Previously in Live DC:

• 5/24: LiveDC: The Adicts @ RNR Hotel
• 5/24: LiveDC: The Donkeys @ Black Cat
• 5/23: LiveDC: The Barr Brothers w/ Kishi Bashi @ The Hamilton
• 5/23: LiveDC: Damien Jurado @ Black Cat
• 5/23: Report: Soundbites 2012
• 5/22: LiveDC: Spirit Animal @ Red Palace
• 5/22: LiveDC: Astra Via @ Black Cat
• 5/22: LiveDC: Father John Misty @ Rock & Roll Hotel
• 5/22: LiveDC: Drive-By Truckers and Lucinda Williams @ Merriweather
• 5/22: Photos: Summer Camp takes the "Ladies of Town" Drag Show