1,2 … 1,2 … Alan Soresby, Alan Soresby … is this thing on?
Here’s where Alan would yell, “WHAT!!?!?!!”
… and we’d all laugh.
Looks like I finally got the issues with the ‘Wrangler sorted out. I should be ashamed for not being a very good geek, but I tried to swap the hosting and I screwed up the whole thing. As I might have mentioned long ago, I know SQUAT about web design and code and whatnot. I’ve often said, I didn’t build this megaphone, I just holler into it. This is a place for me to talk, vent, think out loud, and tell stories. So, a very short story about the first sentence of this post.
Long, long ago, I worked in a bar that had a little bit of live music. West Texas is great for that, and a lot of the music that Austin considers it’s own was actually born out in those lonely flat spaces. I had a friend by the name of Wade Parks who wrote songs and played raucous country music in bars and even let me sing with him a little, now and then. Wade and I knew a fellow named Alan Soresby, who owned one of the few things in life I have ever truly envied, as far as possessions go. Alan had a black t-shirt that read, “In a perfect world, Steve Earle would Rule Nashville,” written in white letters over a white outline of the state of Tennessee. Wade used to sound check his microphone with just that sentence, “Check 1,2 … 1,2 … Alan Soresby, ” because of course it has a lot of the right syllables for sound checking. “Sibilance” and “Alan Soresby” aren’t all that phonetically different, after all. The thing was, Alan was almost always hanging around the bar somewhere during these sound checks, and could never resist acting as though Wade were speaking directly to him.
I really miss those guys, those days, that life sometimes. I was a much simpler person then than I became, and I am simple now in a way that doesn’t have that kind of purity. I don’t want to go back to that world, because it wouldn’t mean as much if I tried it again. Lubbock was a part of my all important heroes training, it made me very much what I am, and I was meant to be there, I know it. But I always yearn to hear Wade say it again and then do his off-beat cover of “Big Wheels”, and I never approach a microphone without thinking about it. Sarah Beth recently asked me what Cloudwrangler meant, and I told her the original idea, the concept that writing is like trying to grab something ethereal and other-wordly and make it real, hold onto it and show it to others. It does mean that, but it also has a little to do with me, coming out of those lonely flat spaces, spaces sometimes filled with clouds that stretch forever, and trying to make something of myself from them. Now that the ‘Wrangler is back, it seems right to test it with those words, words that to me always meant a friend was going to try and wrangle a cloud or two of his own, with music that made us all smile and sing along and wish for that perfect world. So, let’s make sure from now on, in this space, we do our best to get things right by starting from a good place.
Check 1,2 … 1,2 … Alan Soresby, Alan Soresby … 1,2.