I was in that rest facility for eight months. San Diego’s finest. The rooms were light, airy, and I’m sure if I was allowed to have curtains, they would have blown so elegantly in the breeze from the Pacific coast just outside my window. Ocean waves swelling, seagulls squawking. For some odd reason, that would make me homesick – not for Lisa and Boone (in that specific instance, I should say; of course I missed them more than I can put into words. I absolutely trusted Lisa to take care of our son while I was away, and in many ways, I trust her more than I trust myself), but for home home… I wanted nothing more than to walk around Annapolis and smell the salty air of the docks, eating foil-wrapped steamed crab legs as the warm glow of the streetlights began to flicker on before the approaching blue dusk.
I have never been able to write a song that captures how I felt growing up there, in that city, in that time. The music scene was not even close to the scale of other cities, not even other college towns. I’m sure it comes as a big surprise that the United States Naval Academy didn’t seem to make plugging independent bands a top priority. But regardless of that, we were able to make a name for ourselves in the local dives that would allow us to perform. Half of The Davies met in grade school – that being me and Raz. We attended Carlton Public School together after I transferred from an even smaller school. I was amazed that there were actual classes devoted to music with actual instruments. I took up guitar and piano at a pretty young age there, and that’s how I met Rhody “Raz” Patel, with his brown skin and a head full of loose black curls that looked too big for his wiry body. We both still had crooked teeth and crooked grins, almost double digits in age, both eager to learn all about chords and whatever it meant to progress them.
Years later, in high school, I guess you could call us the closest thing central Maryland had to the White Stripes; we were a dynamic duo, but inconsistent in scheduling, performing, and missing the rest of what a band is supposed to sound like. Raz and I met JJ and Simon Denver at Bowie State a few months before our high school graduation, at some self-proclaimed “music fest,” which did not mention on the flyer would be held in some Agriculture grad student’s living room. Back then, they simply went as “The Denver Brothers.” Both juniors, I remember they had matching dark brown hair, parted, and just long enough to tuck behind their ears, tan skin for a pair of white dudes, and the same gray eyes that girls always called “soulful”, but that’s about where the similarities ended. I have to assume the soul patch that JJ sported while rapping melodically on the drums was only to distinguish him from his younger, rectangular-framed glasses-wearing brother Simon on keyboard. “Sporty” JJ and “Sensitive” Simon, as fans would later call them, joined our band as soon as we graduated from Carlton, both on the demands of Raz and I’s supportive yet concerned families, but also on our shared desire to at least have a high school diploma in case this thing tanked badly.
I say all that to say that those guys were and will forever be my brothers. They have always been there for me. When The Davies released our first EP, they were there for me, kept an eye on me when Mom and Dad were in the middle of their divorce that, if I’m being honest now, couldn’t have come any sooner, even though it was still a shock at the time. I drank more than I probably should have. And that’s how I ended up writing a lot of the songs on Town to Town. I was half conscious, fully faded, and terribly whiny when I wrote the stuff that the student writers from The Spectrum at Bowie State praised us for. The spotlight article was two or three paragraphs supposedly about us, but it was more about the Denver brothers, former Bowie students, which was fair enough. Despite never graduating from there, the “rising indie music stars” of Bowie were lumped in with shout-outs to famous Bowie alumni, like Francis Scott Key (they never seemed to shut up about that guy whenever Raz and I would visit campus and overhear a tour guide’s enthusiastic pitch of interesting factoids). Regardless, I kept that article folded up tightly in my wallet for years, until it found its permanent residence on the wall of my current home office, in a gold-leaf frame.
If you care enough to be reading this, then I don’t need to explain to you the entire success story of The Davies, how we got to the point where we are tonight, but looking back at the early days does calm my nerves a bit as I’m sitting at the vanity mirror, not realizing I’ve been staring into its rounded lightbulbs for too long until my eyes start to burn. It takes my mind off of things. Reminds me why we might deserve the honor of this induction after all – they definitely do. The guys, I mean. Twenty-something years after that first release, they’ve never let me down. I just wish I could say the same for myself.
I don’t need to explain the happiness and surprise we felt when someone would recognize us from one of our shows across Maryland and ask for autographs. We even had our first devoted groupie who followed us from (brace for it) town to town – but it doesn’t really count because it was Raz’s long-term girlfriend, now at that point in time fiancée, Evelyn. Evelyn for long, Evie for short. I liked Evie and Raz a lot together, and the five of us got along pretty well. As far as Raz is concerned, however, I know it mattered more to him how the three of us got along. I don’t need to explain how we felt like a big deal when we were starting to get paid cash, not just in overnight housing and lukewarm burgers and unseasoned fries from the kitchen at the end of a long set. When we went on our first “big tour” and couldn’t control our laughter when we crossed exactly two bordering state lines for two different venues we begged over the phone to book us. I remember Simon cussing at us from the steering wheel to sit down and stop leaning out the windows to look at the “WELCOME TO…” signs. We were so young. JJ, the oldest of us, had just turned twenty-three. Simon, twenty-two. Raz and I, freshly twenty. Everything was new and shiny. Things were going great.
When Evie was killed in the car crash, everything just… halted. Much of that time is painful for me to look back on, so I can’t imagine what Raz experiences when he does so. She never rode in the van with us, even though we always offered. She was a half-hour’s drive behind us when it happened, already nighttime. We had the second leg of our tour left, but we realized we physically could not bring ourselves to do it. When we made it back to Annapolis after calling the remaining venues, Raz was out of commission for months. He went back to his parents’ house with the chipped, sunbaked blue panels, picked up a couple of three-hour shifts shelving at a grocery store, but only a couple of shifts until he quit soon after. He made it clear to us he still wanted to be in the band, but he needed time.
If any of us had bigger egos, we’d probably move on without him. But we didn’t. We loved each other like brothers, and knew we had to respect his wishes. So, we waited, and we wrote. Waited and wrote, waited and wrote. We wrote here and there – together, on the floor of my ramshackle apartment, alone, on city buses, hummed melodies on long, cold walks down Main Street, where the towering steeple of the Episcopal church at the end of the square watched over us, cutting shadows across the pavement. Raz was depressed. Simon soon became that way, JJ following suit. As for me, I drank. Deep down, we hated to admit it, but we knew we were losing precious time: the indie scene was young. No one had to tell us that. We worshipped The Strokes and their new magnum opus, Is This It. When it was released, that was the first time in weeks all four of us had been in the same room together. We deemed all bands on similar paths to be holy. To be taken seriously when we inevitably got older, we had to make it when we were young.
I’m terrified of getting older. Although I’ve reached some milestones that only ever seemed like two numbers that looked strange smushed together (thirty and nine), I’m scared to death of the ones ahead. That fear has always lived inside of me. It was such a strong force I felt back in the days following our canceled tour. My piano, which I had scarcely touched since high school, was now a source of comfort and release from the dusty corner of the living room it sat in. Lyrics occupied my mind far more than ideas for melodies did, but just letting myself close my eyes and listen to the keys, humming whatever came to mind, jotting down whatever words flashed across my mind in a college-ruled notebook was the most freeing thing I’d felt in months. Looking back now, that halted time was probably the best thing for us.
College stations still played The Davies, even during our premature hiatus. Even though none of us were in college anymore. Eventually, Raz would ease out of his depression, inches at a time. The four of us got back to jamming. When we had our first true rehearsal, at the end of it, we showed each other all the things we’d been working on individually. We were so shocked at Simon’s venture away from keyboard-driven twang (a.k.a. the lovechild of Ben Folds Five and Wilco) into the blatant comedy of original pieces such as “Kmart Syphilis” that we busted out laughing until we tears ran down our cheeks.
I think we all had time to stop, pause, and grow during that (retrospectively short) break. My writing, singing and guitar-playing was still something that only a twenty-year-old could’ve conjured up, but there was something that felt more grownup about it than Town to Town. The same goes for the rest of us on the album. Sure, we kept a good number of the “fun” songs that we liked for their electronic beats, kept the audio of us totally butchering the acapella outro to “Wine, Dine” (we’d been listening to a little too much A Night at the Opera). But the undertones of the first album were about the emotions we were feeling together, even when we were apart. Scared of getting older, of losing the ones we love, of everything losing meaning, nothing mattering, scared of forgetting what it was like to be twenty, twenty-one, twenty-three. I was sober when writing for more songs on this album versus the EP, but that’s not saying much.
Have We Lost You Yet? was symbolic of a lot of things – losing our fans, our futures, Evie, fill in the blank with whatever you want. Released exactly one year and eleven months after our very last performance, another surprise came to us by how quickly we went from our local recording label to the Trickster Records. It’s no Columbia, but for the rock and indie scene, it’s still a massive honor.
Again, if you’re reading this, then I don’t need to explain what the album meant to us. Meant to the world of indie rock, apparently. They always have that scene in movies where one day the band is basically a glorified novelty act, and the next, their records are flying off the shelves. Amazingly, that came true for us. Now, our press wasn’t only a few blurbs in local newspapers, but from places like The Baltimore Sun, and more Tribunes, Heralds, and Registers than we knew what to do with. The one from the Sun, in fact, was written by a friend of Evie’s family who’d heard about us. Reading that review for the first time made me cry. I waited until I was alone, like I’m positive the rest of the guys did as well:
“…a preamble to a very bright future for the Maryland natives, like former Bowie State students JJ and Simon Denver on punchy, dream-driven drums and keyboard. Raz Patel delivers deep, mournful sounds on bass that exist in harmony with Danny Foster-Bryant’s vocals that echo similarly to Thom Yorke. Have We Lost You Yet? is always good and entirely enjoyable (the intentionally grainy audio quality on a select few tracks only adds to the boyish charm of The Davies’ first full-length album), but I’m inclined to believe that there is a time and place where it is most effective at delivering its bittersweet messages, its lyrics that masterfully walk the line between emotionally-charged drunken ramblings and sobritious acceptance of a fate that must be met in the morning: walk at night to the nearest bar (any bar will do), and wait. Wait until four in the morning, when nothing and everything makes sense. That is where you will find The Davies.”
Before you ask, yes, that is also hanging on the wall of my office. This will be the fifth week since I’ve come home from rehab and I’m still getting myself re-used to what my home looks like – what pots go where, letting our dogs welcome me back after a homecoming full of wagging tails but also wary sniffing, etc.
My hands are shaky. For a split second I almost stood from the padded wooden chair to get myself a drink from the mini refrigerator reflecting in the vanity light. The voice in my head reminding me that the guys had all gone out for a quick bite to eat, (they invited me as well, but I turned it down due to nerves) that no one would know, mortifies me. I would know. And somehow, I don’t know how she does it, but Lisa would know. Lisa, the love of my adult life, who was initially against agreeing to go on a date with me after we met in Cincinatti at the hotel she worked at as a housekeeper. I don’t think she cared for some of our songs, but that’s okay; I was just glad she said yes. I trusted her opinions on the ideas I had for songs.
You know, sometimes when I’m especially hard on myself, I wonder if it would be better for everyone if I just left. If I packed up and went away. Not for another woman, just to let her have the freedom to do what she wants, even if that means leaving me behind. I’ve often confessed to my doctors that I feel like a burden to her and Boone when I get like that; the way I was right before…you know. Needy. Unreliable. Undependable. Unpredictable. Unresponsive.
It’s not until I glance again at the glass door of the mini refrigerator that I realize the beverage holders that were once fully stocked before the guys left are now empty…and I thank God for my friends.
It meant the world to us to be able to go back on tour, this time across the whole country, and actually finish it out. To play at festivals, on TV. To break records, be invited to awards shows as the newcomers that many whispered to their plus-ones about, asking confusedly who we were. The places we went, the people we met – it can’t be understated. New studios, new equipment for some of us (others refused to put their original instruments into retirement, me included). In many ways, that was both one of the best and worst times of my life: the best, because it told me that all of our hard work had paid off; the worst, because I feared it could never be matched. That we’d never reach this level again. That I was an impostor, and one day everyone in my life would find out whatever it was I was hiding from them, and they would leave. I was getting older. And I was terrified.
The second album, 2003’s When It Happens, as you very well know, did not drop us off the face of the earth. More awards – ones we were winning, for a change (our being snubbed of awards for Have We Lost You Yet? had been highly covered in celebrity, gossip, and music magazines)! Music videos, album signings, press panels, terrace pool parties in Tokyo, alcohol tastings, the works. Recording in that great big studio for the first time with my best friends was great. Of course, we still kept snippets of some of our goofy takes. At this point, I was now twenty-three; Lisa and I married, and a lightning flash later, she gave birth to our baby boy, Boone. Seven pounds, ten ounces. I was the first in the group to marry, much less the first to be a father. Raz and Simon both had steady girlfriends, and JJ – well, you never knew who’d meet with him from weekend to weekend. But they all loved Lisa and Boone to death.
I was hyper-aware of the magazines giving their opinions on my young age for living a musician’s life and having a family, not to mention the unflattering photos they loved taking. There were a few fights I almost got into with paparazzi, one especially rough time being while I was leaving a club for Raz’s birthday after only a few drinks. I think at the time I knew there was something wrong with my behavior, but I remember “laying off” – in my eyes, at least – for the first part of parenthood. When Boone started taking first steps, running around hotel lobbies, started saying words Lisa and I could identify, when his jet-black hair that matched Lisa’s grew, and when his first little teeth came in, I think that’s when I stopped keeping up with some of my responsibilities. I can’t stand to watch myself in interviews from the time between When It Happens and The Pendulum, our third album. I’m ashamed of myself, how I acted, and I know the guys had to be as well. I was erratic, cracking awkward jokes that only got a few forced chuckles from the guys and interviewers, and I don’t remember any of it. Save for the looks of disappointment from Raz.
The Pendulum did well – not quite as big of a breakthrough as our first, not as recognized as our second, but well. We were still winning awards. Still getting older.
The night of the VMA’s that year I had an incredibly hard time; there I was, next to my beautiful wife and bandmates, Boone at home with a babysitter, and all I could think about were the rock acts on stage. Younger than us, even by a few years, but the crowd was wild. It’s silly to think that way now, but I was incredibly jealous and scorned by them. It was the first album we hadn’t been asked to perform a song from, and in my eyes, we were back to being a novelty act. Someone whose records you keep in a forgotten box in your garage.
It feels really weird to think back on those thoughts I had – and here we are now, less than an hour away from accepting our induction into the Hall of Fame. There I go again, ruining something good and perfect.
We don’t have to talk about it, you know. Because contrary to popular belief, I was not trying to kill myself last year when they found me blacked out in the kitchen. When years pass and you sort of fade into the background of the music that raised you, depressive episodes typically follow, or so I imagine. Truth be told, San Diego wasn’t my first rehab center. Not by a long shot. I’ve been in three others over the span of twelve years, very temporarily. Always well intentioned, but I couldn’t make it worthwhile. Albums four, five and six were rocky, to say the least. But we had our fans, and somehow, they were able to look past all the arguments and fighting behind the scenes and still appreciate us for what we would always have in common – each other, and the music.
I put poor Lisa and Boone through more than they deserved. I’m not sure when Boone first caught onto what was wrong with me. Me forgetting his ninth birthday had to take the cake, but picking him up from school when he was fourteen in the family Rolls Royce was also a dandy; me wearing sunglasses and popping a few Tic-tac’s in my mouth so he wouldn’t smell the liquor on my breath, as if Simon being the designated driver wasn’t any indication enough. I could hear his friends ask from the curb, “Dude, what’s wrong with your dad?” His cheeks were flushed and he kept his head down when he got in the car. That moment reminded me of my own dad when I was growing up. I sobbed that night. And there was Lisa, forced to be both parents and pick up the pieces.
The Davies haven’t released an album, haven’t performed together in five years. We’re not broken up, we just…needed some time apart to figure things out. Of course, we still hang out. We’d have a lot more records under our belt if we were open to swapping out or firing members, but that hasn’t happened. No matter how many times I tell Raz on the phone – already awake at three in the morning to rock his newborn back to sleep – that I’d understand if they didn’t want to keep me.
So, if you’re still reading this, I don’t need to tell you how honored we were to hear about our nomination, that people weren’t tired of us. Of me. Lisa will be in the crowd with us tonight, Boone too. His hair is starting to get shaggy, just like mine was when I was sixteen. When I was allowed to video call from San Diego, they both would always tell me they missed me and they loved me, and I swear he got bigger every time I saw him.
All that the media wants to talk about more than our induction is whether I’ll be “ready” to attend in-person. I hate that it undermines the success of the other guys, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel ready – to do a lot of things, to give up on others. But I want to try. I know that I have to try. I have too many people that for some reason, despite my best efforts, won’t stop loving me.
Laughter on the other side. Someone raps at the door. They wait a moment before poking their head in. There’s Raz, JJ, and Simon, grins on their faces, carrying a to-go order for me from my favorite fast-food joint…stuffed inside a plastic Kmart bag.
They’ve all got creases around the corners of their eyes – heck, I’ve got the worst. JJ’s been shaving his head for years to fight the thinning hair. Simon’s beady eyes can’t hide the gray that have always been there. Raz and I have put on a couple of pounds, only slightly fluffier in the stomach area. Our faces aren’t as bright or lifted as they used to be. We’re not wearing eye makeup like we would sport on rare occasions, full of high testosterone. I look on proudly at my crew of indie rock brothers. Because guess what? They’re not nominating the young ones for an award like this…and that’s an honor. We made it. And tonight, I think I’ll be having too much of a good time to want a drink.
