Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

The first act started, and they both turned their attention to the stage. An elderly black woman stood there on her own, wielding a sleek burgundy electric bass twice as long as she was tall. She wore cowboy boots, jeans, and a fringed red and black shirt. How old was she? Seventies, maybe even eighties, her hair a silver cloud around a lined face. She looked familiar.

From the clothing, Rosemary expected country, but from the first notes she realized her impression was wrong. The woman had some sort of effects station. She started a bass loop, sinuous and funky. Put down the bass, the loop continuing, and picked up an electric guitar. She attacked it in the same way she had the bass, echoing the line and embellishing it in a higher range.

When she sang, her voice had the same rich timbre as the bass. She shaped notes in her mouth, pushed them out from somewhere deeper, drawing out vowels and then clipping them off. She layered and looped the vocals as well, harmonizing with herself, making sounds that were words and not words. Each time Rosemary thought the song was as full as it could get, another part came in. Her ear followed the layers, seeking specific sounds, delighting when they appeared, reaching a strange and thrilling completeness when certain phrases resolved.

When a solid wall of harmony and guitar had built, the musician hit her foot pedal. Everything stopped.

“This is the sentence we brought on ourselves,” she whisper-sang. Her guitar echoed the melody, then punctuated the line like a challenge. “We did nothing to stop it / We shaped it / We bought it / We gave it a home and a name.” She hit the foot pedal again and the loop wall rushed back in to fill the silence. She took off the guitar, laid it strings-down against her amp, where a growl of feedback began to form beneath the music. She looped that noise, too. Noise on top of noise. She hit one more foot trigger and walked away, leaving the layers to loop and loop and then stop. The room stayed silent for a moment, then erupted in cheers.

“Who. Was. That?” Rosemary asked Joni, eyes still on the empty stage.

“Mary Hastings. She’s been playing in Baltimore for decades. She’s not in any rotation, though. She plays when she feels like it. Sometimes it’s six months, sometimes it’s two weeks. We always make room for her. Amazing, isn’t she?”

“Completely amazing.” Rosemary tried to figure out why the woman looked familiar. “Wait—does she work at the diner up the street?”

“Yeah, she and her sister and brother own it. She gives us all discounts on the nights we play.”

“Does she always play one long song?”

“She plays whatever she wants. One song or three, ten minutes or an hour. I’ve never heard her do a song the same way twice. I’ve never seen her do one song with no verse or chorus before, either, but that was badass.”

Somebody—not Mary Hastings—started putting her guitars into cases. The performer stood chatting in a corner. Rosemary wandered over to the merchandise table, but there wasn’t anything labeled “Mary Hastings.”

She tried to picture the woman on an SHL stage. She could command a room, that was for sure; Rosemary still had goose bumps. She had the charisma, the presence, the musical chops, but Rosemary wasn’t sure about that mainstream appeal factor she was supposed to consider. Nothing too political, they’d said, and this had felt political even if the only lyrics were five whispered lines.

Her biggest concern was Joni’s comment that Mary Hastings never played the same song the same way twice. She remembered what had happened when Magritte had gone off script. SHL wanted musicians to bring something special, but maybe there was a different kind of control to their brand of special. In any case, now she had four very different bands to tell them about.

And perhaps she would have a fifth? The next band looked more conventional than any she had seen here. Drums, bass, two guitars. The lead singer was a good-looking guy, blond and tall enough to touch the ceiling without straightening his arm. The bassist had heavy pox scars on every visible patch of skin. The drummer looked older than the others, around fifty, maybe, bald. The second guitarist leaned over and whispered to him, and he barked a laugh.

They tested their instruments, then started playing. It was the closest sound to Patent Medicine she’d heard since arriving, enough so that she realized she’d been wondering for a while now how a band that conventional had come from this scene. Their first song was a love song, three minutes of catchy, straightforward pop. Rosemary waited for some trick, some hint they were making a comment on politics or taxes or art, but the next song didn’t have any deeper meaning, either. Pure candy.

Joni leaned toward Rosemary. “The bassist and drummer are the rhythm section your buddy Aran left behind.”

Rosemary appraised them again with the knowledge that this was the original Patent Medicine. The SHL version was much better looking, and their moves were more polished, but underneath they had similar blueprints.

She actually preferred this singer’s voice to Aran’s. It held a bluesy richness, a worn quality. She would have recommended this band based on their sound, but she wasn’t sure if that was wise if they had already refused to go audition for StageHolo when Aran stormed the gates.

“They’re better than Patent Medicine,” Rosemary whispered into Joni’s ear. “This guy is better than Aran.”

Joni stayed silent for a moment, then turned to her again with a sly look. “I probably shouldn’t say this and spoil your impression, but there’s this game I play watching some of these bands. It’s a friend’s theory she told me a long time ago, that musicians make love the way they play their instruments. When I see certain people play, I can’t help but—” She pointed at the drummer, partially obscured by the singer. Rosemary hadn’t taken a good look at him before, but his movement was oddly loose and frenetic, like he was playing with more limbs than could be seen.

“He’s an octopus. I don’t think I want to picture…”

“Exactly.” They both laughed. Rosemary looked at the others in the band using that same lens, then considered the other bands she had seen so far. The frantic players, the intense ones. Joni and her cello, her warm, sure hands. She looked away in case Joni could read her thoughts on her face.

The people in front of her started dancing. Rosemary felt the urge to join them, but she remembered the other night and knew she’d be better off taking baby steps. Get through one full night on the room’s edge before venturing into the middle. She tapped her toe and stayed put. The band—the Handsome Mosquitoes, by their own introduction—played a ten-song set, crisp and punchy. Ten perfect pop songs, all exuding mainstream appeal.

Rosemary pictured the Bloom Bar crowd leaping to buy all their merchandise as they finished a show. Their T-shirts looked like they had been hand silk-screened, and the art on the download card was amateur at best, a juvenile pun on a juvenile album name. Nothing like their polished songs. Hopefully the album’s production quality was as good as their show, but if not, SHL producers could help, and their professional graphics people would design a better logo for the merchandise. If. If she recommended them, and if SHL was willing to look past the rougher aspects.

Luce’s band took the stage. They started with a song they hadn’t played at the previous show. It launched from nothing: no audible count, no instrumental intro. Drums, bass, guitar, and straight into a chorus, zero to sixty with no warning, the sonic opposite of Mary Hastings’s slow build, hooky without being poppy, loud and loose and ragged.