Hooked Together

The first time I remember being in downtown Minneapolis was when I was around twelve years old. My dad scored some tickets to a Ska concert and decided to take me. This was the first concert I’d been to that wasn’t one of his gigs or some picnic in the park affair. It was my first “dirty, downtown, three bands, waiting outside for the doors to open” event.

My dad chain-smoked leaning against the smooth black bricks of First Avenue, the paint reflected the sun like a fourth layer of shellac that repels all the rain, snow, dirt, spit, and piss of downtown. I inspected the ticket my dad had handed to me as we waited. It read “All Ages” but looking around, I had my doubts that they’d ever let a little girl into a club with a bunch of rad looking teenagers. I worried my dad might be told to leave as well for being too old.

A half hour later when the line began to move, my fears were extinguished, along with my dad’s smoke. Outside the sun was shining, but once through the doors I felt nearly blind. I walked through the darkness wishing I wasn’t too old to reach out for my father’s hand.

Dad found us a spot on the wall near stage right. He told me to wait there while he went to get us sodas. I watched random cartoons flicker on the screen behind which people hustled about setting up the instruments on stage. Overhead, music ran through the room: a classic First Ave pre-show medley, though I didn’t know it at the time.

My dad returned with our drinks just as a crowd was gathering near my ankles. The overhead music stopped mid-song and the silver screen lifted. The band started before it had gone up completely. I took a deep breath and felt electricity surge through my body. The floor below us erupted with movement. The bass drum pounded through my core.  I was hooked. It was my first drug. I looked at my dad with my eyebrows lifted, he smiled, and I knew it was his too.

Later he would take me to music festivals, and acoustic coffee shop sessions. As I got older and started going to shows with my friends, he never said no. I stayed home from school the day Ross called me to go to Nine Inch Nails, and my dad still let me go. I could have been grounded for smoking, or staying out too late, but he never took away the music.

A couple of years ago I decided it was time for me to give him an experience. I bought two tickets to see Wanda Jackson and Justin Townes Earle, and took my dad. It was at the Minnesota Zoo, and it wasn’t a “dirty, downtown, three bands, waiting outside for the doors to open” event. But when Justin played, I felt the electricity in my body, the twang and thump of his guitar lifted my arm-hairs, the bow of the fiddle slid across my spine, I looked at my dad, and knew it was the same for him.