I'm Just Going for the Music

Live music sparks joy

One of the things I’m looking forward to most about moving to Tennessee is the music scene. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a great music scene in the D.C. area. But live music is harder to come by in a sprawling metropolis. 

Let me give you an example. There’s a great band from suburban Maryland called the Moran Tripp Band. These guys play amazing music driven by guitar masters Ryan Moran and Shane Tripp every Tuesday night at the venerable Madam’s Organ in D.C. 

I love the band, but I rarely see them live. 

Even though the venue is just five miles from my home, getting there is expensive. If I drive, it’ll take 30 minutes to get there and potentially 20 more to find parking. If I pay to be driven, I’ll spend $25 to $45, depending on whatever random events are affecting pricing at the moment. If I take public transportation, it’ll take 60 to 90 minutes and cost about $10. 

So, going there and back will cost me two to three hours and up to $90. Plus, the time I spend at the show and whatever I spend on cover charges and drinks. 

Frankly, it’s not worth it. I’m too old and too busy to put that much time and effort into seeing a great band perform one set. 

I expect Tennessee to be different. I’ll admit that expectation is based on flimsy evidence, but I’m counting on it. It’s just easier to get around smaller cities like Knoxville and Nashville. 

I know the locals complain about traffic in those towns, and I know it can be bad, but it’s really only terrible at certain times. The rest of the time, everything runs smoothly. 

Here in D.C., even if everything is smoothest, it takes me half an hour and $25 to go the five miles from my house to the venue. And while traffic is worse at certain times, it can be terrible almost any time for reasons you’ll never know, so there’s always a 50-50 chance the trip will take twice as long and cost twice as much. 

But I digress. 

Perhaps saying I expect Tennessee to be different is placing too much responsibility on the state and not enough on myself. Better to say I hope it will be different. 

If we end up near Nashville, the music scene will certainly be different than in D.C., and I would be pleased about that. When we moved here from Austin more than 20 years ago, one of the hardest changes to bear was the lack of constant high-quality, low-cost live music. Wherever we end up in Tennessee, I feel we’ll be closer to that than we have been here. 

Live music is essential to me, though I’ve recently discovered that I can be a bit of a snob about it. 

A couple of months ago, Karen and I had the opportunity to see Bruce Springsteen perform. Neither of us is a huge fan, but we both respect his work. And when a good friend and neighbor urged us to go (“You never know if you’ll have another chance!”), we decided to splurge on the costly tickets. 

I was a teenager in the 1980s, and his songs from the 1970s fueled our youthful angst. “Blinded by the Light,” “Rosalita,” and everything on Born To Run could be heard blaring out of car speakers in the school parking lot every morning and afternoon. 

But by the time the more pop-like Born in the U.S.A. came out in ’84, I wasn’t into pop, so I mostly forgot about Springsteen until this concert came up.

The concert venue was packed with people of our generation, folks in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, and the E Street Band kept everyone on their feet through the entire show. It was a fantastic performance to a loving crowd deep in the throes of nostalgia. 

But through it all, I knew it was an act — a performance of pure semantic satiation. It all felt so rehearsed, even the seemingly spontaneous walking into the crowd.

The songs, many of which are anthems to escaping from poverty and lower-middle-class drudgery, had lost all meaning to a crowd of mostly white people who had paid $300-plus for tickets to the show. 

As I listened to tens of thousands of people singing “Baby, this town rips the bones from your back…” from the middle of Washington, DC, without a shred of irony, I realized the performers had lost all sense of the song’s meaning, too. 

In other words, while music brought everyone together in that arena, listening to the music took a back seat to the experience of BEING THERE, in that place, with all those other people, seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform. That’s what really mattered to most of the people in the room. 

This is not a criticism. It is merely an observation. 

In contrast to this observation is another concert I attended recently. We joined good friends to see Dead & Co. at a venue in Virginia.

Honestly, we weren’t thrilled about going to this concert. We’re very busy with the move; it’s a long way away, and, really, Dead & Co. is just a very talented semi-cover band of a band we once loved. But, we decided, what the hell. We love our friends, and we knew it would be fun. So we went. 

In some ways, the crowd was similar; lots of older folks who have been listening to the music for decades. Of course, the audience for any Grateful Dead-related or -adjacent show has a unique culture that can’t be compared to other audiences.

But my observation is about the music, not the audience. 

For the members of Dead & Co., the only reason to be on that stage is to play music. While Springsteen spoke directly to the audience constantly, the Grateful Dead and its offspring acts are famous for lacking verbal audience engagement while on stage. 

I watched Bruce and guitarist Steven van Zandt mugging for the camera, knowing their faces were on giant screens for everyone to see. And I watched John Mayer, lead guitarist for Dead & Co., on a big screen, too, his face cycling through a bizarre mix of sometimes comical, sometimes scary expressions, his eyes closed as he put everything he had into the notes he was playing. 

Because, at that moment, nothing mattered more to him than the music he was making. 

Again, I’m not criticizing Springsteen or his fans. All of these artists are incredibly talented, and they know how to deliver what their fans want. 

What I’ve realized is that what I want as a fan of live music is to see and hear artists who care about the music more than the show. 

And that’s what I’m hoping to find more of in Tennessee.