David Bazan - The Fleecing (Live, somewhere in Nebraska on I-80)

From ‘94 through '01 I was among the world’s biggest weezer fans. The local radio station dubbed me “weezersteve.” I was one of under 250 people who were original members of an elite message board called the Rivers Correspondence Board (RCB) where Rivers Cuomo himself would frequently post (username: Ace) and leak demos of new songs. Much of the production for their Maladroit album was quite honestly performed by members of this board as Rivers bounced ideas off us and we provided brutally candid feedback.

By late in 2000 my friend Brent was spending every day wearing the same hoodie. It was blue and had an orange and brown lion on the front. He extolled the virtues of the band Pedro The Lion to me, but I was too obsessed with weezer to pay much attention. Then one day in 2001, at a now-defunct independent record store (Fantastic Records) where I used to spend, quite literally, hours browsing through the used CDs, I stumbled across a promotional Pedro The Lion CD that had both their first two releases combined on one disc. I bought it for $1.

In 2002 I was in the beginning stages of what would be a 6-year relationship (that would not end well) and we’d spend hours driving around listening to the CD on repeat. We soon invested in more PTL albums and eventually made our way to Buffalo to see the band play several shows over the course of the relationship. One night we even spent time with the “front man” after the show outside the venue, where he proceeded to pull ou this MacBook and show us the ultrasound pictures his wife had just sent him that day. He was positively beaming and it was clear that this man was someone to be respected and admired.

Flash forward to 2009. By that point I was a full blown worshiper at The Church of David Bazan. Even though PTL’s original primary fanbase was of the devout Christian rock variety, that was never my thing. I’d always appreciated his ability to write songs that, while obviously Christian in nature, were never overtly praise songs. Then Bazan dropped the bomb that shook his fanbase to the core and finally convinced me that I could now, without any hesitation, describe him as my favorite musician of all time. With brutal honesty, his first solo album, Curse Your Branches, describes his loss of faith and the repercussions of that experience. I immediately identified with what he was saying and drew many parallels between his words and the emotions I’d felt in my own life as I lost faith (though I never had it to the extent that he did) and struggled with how to deal with that while not completely breaking my mother’s heart. Only one album has ever had such an impact on my life before, weezer’s Pinkerton.

And so finally, we arrive at today. David Bazan is on the road somewhere right now, driving towards Rochester. In a few short hours he’ll be pulling his van into my driveway. He’ll enter my home to find ~35 fans, nay friends. He’ll pull out his guitar and perform an acoustic set of his music - just his voice and his guitar, maybe some foot stomping, and a room full of friends quietly whispering the songs along to themselves. I’ve had little success in my life when it comes to love, I don't necessarily enjoy what I do for a living, friendships have come and weakened and disappeared through the years, and my own music career never took off in the way that I always dreamed it would, but tonight, if even for just one night, I will feel like the most successful man on Earth. Nothing could mean more to me right now than to invite David into my home to celebrate love, and loss, and life - and above all - music.