A Loud Voice For Quiet Hearts - Chapter Twelve
2010
“Welcome back to tonight’s special presentation of VH1’s Behind the Music. Tonight we’re following the meteoric rise of Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment, and their tour with Your Heart and I, the winners of the original Opening Band contest. As a reminder, tonight’s episode is intended for mature audiences only; viewer discretion is advised.”
Taylor was sitting on the stage with Chris, Mike and Tom, discussing the beginnings of Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment and how that laid the groundwork for what later happened in 2009.
“When Ross joined the band, he joined up because Misha had hurt himself doing some stupid stunt, and we’d already paid the fee to complete in the battle of the bands at Singer’s. It was only luck that Ross was there that night, and agreed to play with us. The rest is kind of just history,” Mike explained, and Tom nodded.
“Things just happened really fast after that. We got regular gigs at Singer’s Salvage, and then Jeff came to see a show. We went to the Compound, recorded a shit ton of songs, and then started doing our road tour,” Tom said, gesturing with his hands as he spoke.
“We did try reaching out to Misha a few times before we got signed, but we didn’t know where he’d gone. His apartment in Reseda was cleaned out, his cell phone had been shut off, and none of us knew how to get in touch with any family he might have had. He basically just disappeared for almost a year, and only showed back up when we started getting airplay,” Chris said, a note of bitterness filling the words.
Taylor leaned forward in her chair, her brow creased as she spoke. “So, Misha disappears, you try to reach out to him but can’t find him, and sign a huge contract with a label and start to record your first album, which ended up going gold in a matter of six months. Misha then re-enters your life, what happened next?”
“Misha said that after he'd healed up from his injury, he took off to Arizona and worked at a yoga retreat for a few months. He'd gotten bored with the band, and when the opportunity came up to work at the retreat, he took it without a second thought,” Mike said bitterly, rolling his eyes.
“When we asked why he hadn’t called us back or left a forwarding address, he said that he’d had the idea of making a clean break in the hospital, and decided to go forward with it before we could talk him out of it. He knew we’d formed a new band after he left because he made a trip into town and saw us on the cover of Rolling Stone,” Tom said, gesturing to one of the magazines on the table in front of them.
“That seems pretty convenient,” Taylor offered.
“That’s what Ross said, but we were all so relieved that he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere, we didn’t think to question it at the time. Of course, by the time we started having problems with him, we’d made him a part of the road crew, and he’d taken over the merch stand,” Mike explained.
“And how did that go,” Taylor asked, taking a sip of water from a glass on the end table next to her.
The three of them exchanged looks, trying to decide how to continue. Chris nodded, and began to answer. “At first, we tried to re-integrate him into the band, even though we knew that was a bad idea from the beginning. He’d always been more of an experimental artist than a musician, but the guy knew how to bring a crowd to a show, so we rolled with it when we were still performing as Mischief Commandment.”
“Experimental,” Mike said, doing finger quotes before Tom elbowed him in the ribs. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Why didn’t it work out? Were the egos too big to handle so many stars on stage?” Taylor said, waving a hand dismissively.
“We tried to compromise by having him on stage with us for a few songs that we’d written since he’d left, but he’d always complain about how mainstream the music was, and that we were letting our loyal fan base down by not catering to their wishes when it came to allowing him to have more time on stage, and eventually started demanding that we not include Ross in things like meet and greets and other events we were scheduled to do,” Tom said angrily, and then it was Mike’s turn to elbow Tom in the ribs before he continued on his rant.
“So, following Misha’s attempt to rejoin the band, there was an interview with Misha that was posted online by Pitchfork. In it, he alleged that the rest of the band was trying to force him out, to silence his creative contributions to the band,” Taylor said, once Tom had stopped speaking. “Did he really say that?”
“Yeah, he said that. He also said that he was pissed that when he took the stage to perform one of his songs, people chose to use that time to go have a smoke, use the bathroom, get another beer, whatever. He was mad that the audience wasn’t giving him the proper attention due to someone of his caliber, and if people didn’t stop the disrespectful behavior, he was going to have the building security chain the doors shut so people would have no choice but to stay and listen to the genius of the only real musician in the band.” Mike leaned forward, resting an elbow on his knee while he took a sip from the water glass on the table in front of him.
Taylor sat still for a long moment, clearly at a loss for words as to how to respond to that.
“I heard him say it, and had to beg the Pitchfork writer not to include that in the emailed notes he was going to submit for publishing that night. I had to promise him a one-on-one interview with the rest of the band, so he could get the full story, and backstage passes to any show on the tour he wanted, just to get him to not print the fact that Misha was an egomaniacal asshole,” Chris told her, the Texas coming out in his voice. “The asshole agreed to everything, got it all in writing from our manager, then still turned around and posted the interview with Misha in full a few months later.”
“Which turned out to be catastrophic for everyone, to be honest,” Mike muttered, and Tom rolled his eyes.
“All of the magazines were saying that Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment was about to break up, that we were going to go down in flames before we ever really got a chance to take off,” Tom said, shaking his head at the memory. “We had to figure out something, and fast- Our fan club message board was going through the beginning stages of a flame war between our new fans and the ‘Kale Girls', as Misha’s fans called themselves. Every music blog and magazine was tearing apart our album and looking for clues to the ‘internal strife of a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom.’ It was spiraling out of control, and there was no clear way to fix it,” Chris said, raking his fingers through his hair in remembered annoyance.
“So, how did it get fixed? How did the band manage to resolve the problem Misha’s re-appearance had created?” Taylor asked, looking from one face to another.
“We decided it would be best for him to be in charge of our merch and run the table at shows. He’d still get to meet and talk to fans, which was the part of performing he liked the most. We’d be able to actually play the music we enjoyed playing, and since he’d already started kind of taking over the street team and fan club, we figured we’d let him have at it. Eventually, he also started doing more roadie work, since he had such a great ear for making sure the instruments were turned before the show started,” Mike said, talking with his hands.
“Of course, he agreed to all of that before he realized he’d be held accountable for what he posted online about the band,” Tom pointed out, and the other two nodded. “Then started the bitching on his personal social media, about how we were shutting him out of the band, discarding him again. Never mind the fact that there were fans buying tickets to the shows just to come and see him at the merch stand, or watch him help set up before the shows started.”
“So, why keep him around, then? It sounds like you all thought it was a pretty bad idea at the time, especially after that interview with the reporter,” Taylor said, making a sweeping gesture with her hands. “If he bashed you every chance he got, why keep him around?”
“Because none of us knew he was the one leaking the info to the press,” Tom said quietly. Mike and Chris nodded their agreement. “We had no idea that he was the one spreading the rumors, or calling up the gossip rags with fake scoops and behind the scenes info about what was going on during the tour.”
“Speaking of rumors, is there any truth to the 2007 rumor that OLoPA was going to break up, before it was revealed that you would be the main act featured in Opening Band? Was Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment on the verge of breaking up?” Taylor asked, sitting back in her chair.
“In some ways, yeah. Before we were approached about doing the show, we were in the process of figuring out what a hiatus or even break-up would look like. We each wanted to work on our own thing, try working with other people for a bit. Plus, when you think about it, we’d been living in each other’s orbits for the past 8 years. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have gotten back together eventually, just… we were ready for a break.” Chris shrugged.
Leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees, Taylor rested her chin on a hand while speaking. “And how do you think that contributed to what happened in Seattle?”
“We were all exhausted, and while working with Jared and Your Heart and I had been a breath of fresh air, it didn’t change the fact that we were caught in this sort of endless cycle of album then tour, live album then album then tour. We wanted to step away while we all still liked each other, and after the Infinity Tour seemed like the best time to do it,” Chris explained, brushing a stray lock of hair behind his ear and smiling.
“So, tell me about the last few shows before Seattle,” Taylor said, gesturing to the LCD screen behind the couch. It was showing fan videos and photos of the shows, and Ross and Chris could be seen smiling in many of them, singing together into a microphone and playing back to back when they weren’t singing.
Chris turned from watching the screen to face Taylor, a sad smile on his face. “I think that, had any of us known what was going to happen, we would have taken more time to savor that week, spend more time together, you know?” Turning back to the screen, he watched for a few more moments before speaking again. “There are a lot of things I wish I would have said then.”
***
2009
Buzz started to grow after Ross convinced Jared to sing a duet with him at the show in San Francisco; it was one of their smaller venue shows, and Ross figured it was a good way for them to find out if Jared could ever sing by himself, instead of mouthing the words as he played. They ended up singing a song Ross had started somewhere between Las Vegas and LA. One he’d been hesitant to show Jared when they stopped in Fresno a few nights before the show in San Francisco, though he had a feeling Jared would love it.
Sometime between Texas and California, Ross started to realize that he hadn’t really thought of Gil since they started the tour, and maybe even before that. He found himself looking for Jared when he entered the dressing room after a show, when he was getting on the tour bus, when they were doing an interview with a radio station or doing a photo shoot promo for a magazine. Jared and his hyperactivity had become such a fixture in Ross’s life that it felt weird to not have him around, and he realized one morning while running through chords on his guitar that Jared had become more of a touchstone for him than the fleeting moments he had with Gil could have ever been. He grabbed a pen and one of his ever-present journals and started to jot down the beginning of a song, the way he was feeling and wanted to feel sometime in the future. He knew now that Gil was never meant to be a permanent thing, that while the relationship was fun at first, Ross was still there and the idea of what Gil could have been was gone. Ross had to find happiness for himself, whatever that ended up being, and only then would he be able to start the kind of life he knew he wanted to live.
They performed “I’m Still Here” for the first time in San Francisco, and when the tour stopped in Eugene, it was called as a request during the Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment set. Ross obliged and brought Jared out to play the song together again, and the two of them brought down the house.
The press the next morning focused on their performance, noting the fact that the other members of OLoPA had done side projects in the past, but Ross had never publicly been a part of anything other than OLoPA since his first band. Blogs started to question if Ross had finally found a side-project worth working on, as well as commenting on the convenient timing of YHI winning the competition and Ross working with their song writer.
Jeff and Ruth took the buzz in stride, working with their respective marketing and PR teams to make the most of the bands being in the news the way they had been. Their street team was utilized more than ever, taking candid shots of the two bands on their buses and when they were hanging out together between shows, crafting a careful narrative of OLoPA teaching and guiding the fledgling Your Heart and I to deal with the stardom they’d been thrust into so suddenly.
Jared was offended by that at first, but realized that it was his ego talking, and not the way things actually were- OLoPA really were making things easier for YHI on the road, making sure they were happy and comfortable and didn't get taken advantage of by groupies and the press. The OLoPA bus had become something of a hub for the two bands; Ross and Jared wrote late at night at the little dinette table in the center of the bus, and Chad and Alex often joined them for card games or movie nights. The members of OLoPA were taught how to play the card game Chad and Alex had created years earlier, and even helped come up with a new version involving a lot of the rules from War.
Misha asked if he could join them one night; he’d kept his distance since Los Angeles, but Ross was willing to let it go if Misha behaved himself. It didn’t take long, however, before he started making comments about OLoPA losing valuable time they could be spending working on their own things to babysit YH&I. Everyone ignored the barbs, and when the bus pulled over at a rest stop, Misha announced that he was going to finish the ride to Portland with the rest of the help, since that was clearly how the band saw him now. Almost immediately, the mood on the bus improved, and his presence wasn’t missed.
When the bus turned west again and headed towards the ocean, Jared realized they had three shows to go before the end of their US tour, and that almost six months had gone by since he first climbed on to the tour bus. He decided to mark the occasion with, what else, a song about the moment, and sat down and wrote “Here’s to the Night”.
It was an immediate hit on the bus, and Chris, Chad and Ross had harmonies charted out for it within an hour. Alona started figuring out the fiddle part, and Alexander and Mike collaborated on the best way to do drums for it before realizing it would work best with both drums and bohran for the quieter sections. Jared just sat in wonder at the front of the bus, watching the two bands come together to work on a song in a way they really hadn't before. Neither was wondering which band is ultimately going to have possession of the song, and no one was fighting to change their part to something more, something bigger in the song- The lyrics and the overall feel of the song lent themselves to the camaraderie and sense that this grand adventure was coming to an end, and no one wanted to be the one to admit it first.
They debuted the song in Eugene, and it’s an immediate hit- The bands played it together between sets, and bootleg videos started cropping up almost immediately, fans asking if it was a new song for one band or the other.
The label decided it was best to play coy about the whole thing until it was decided whose song it was ultimately going to be; when pressed about it later, Jared admitted that it ended up not going to either band- It was still his song, arrangements and everything. It had been decided after they got together to work on the song that since it had been a collaborative effort between both bands, neither one should claim it.
Portland was a blast, and they spent the day before the show wandering the city and visiting places they’d heard about from other bands- Kenny & Zukes Deli, Powells Books, Japanese Gardens- They explored them all, and had a lot of fun spending a day together.
The night of the show, both bands were in high spirits, OLoPA playing their biggest hits spanning a decade of albums, and YHI playing songs that were on their way to becoming hits, despite only having one album and a handful of singles out at the time.
Jared was keeping a list of songs that seemed to have the best crowd reactions, eager to start working on the actual album that was to follow the US part of the tour.
They end the show with “Warning,” a song Jared had recently been noodling with after one of his and Ross’s late night conversations. Chris and Ross’s voices were perfect for the song, and the mood in the club was high after the show.
Later that night, Ross and Jared were sitting at the dinette table on the OLoPA bus, surreptitiously laughing at the scene playing out before them: Chris had been pursuing Alona like a lovesick teenager since the show in Baltimore, and while Alona wasn’t actively encouraging it, she wasn’t exactly discouraging it either. She’d finally agreed to hang out with him that night, and then proceeded to fall asleep curled up on the couch with Chris while they were watching his favorite movie. Chris was starting to nod off as well, but was startled awake each time Alona snored loudly, and Jared almost felt bad for the guy- He knew firsthand how hard it could be to sleep, once Alona got comfortable and fell asleep on him.
Turning back to his notebook, he gestured to the lyrics Ross had written in his. “That’s really good, so far. Do you think you’re going to do a song out of it?”
Ross took a sip of coffee from the mug in front of him and stared at the lyrics for a long moment before shrugging. “I don’t know. I like what I have so far, but I have no idea where it’s going right now.” Ross hummed a melody to the rhythm of the lyrics in his head, and Jared nodded.
“The years go by, they’re adding up. She clicks her heels, but she’s still stuck…” Jared paused, tapping his fingers on the table. “I like it- Depending on how you build the rest of it, this could be a fun kind of call and response song to do with the audience.”
“That’s kind of what I was thinking. It’s been a while since we did one of those, and Seattle would be a good place to launch something like that, if we want to get it nailed in time for the European Tour.” Turning to look out the window, Ross sighed heavily. “Man, it’s going to be nice to sleep in my own bed again, even if it’s just for a few nights.”
“What made you decide to put down roots in Seattle, by the way? Why not move back to Texas after Our Lady made it big?” Jared asked, tapping his pen on his notebook absentmindedly, staring at the way the passing lights of the highway reflected in Ross’s eyes.
Ross smiled, knowing Jared was staring at him but not minding. “A few reasons, really. Texas stopped feeling like home soon after I left for Europe, and every time I came home for a bit between tours or recording sessions, it became more obvious that I really didn’t belong there anymore. I always figured I’d buy a house out in LA eventually, maybe in the Canyon by Jeff’s place, but then Eddie called and said there was a house for sale not far from where he was living at the time. He knew the realtor and the seller, could get me a pretty sweet deal for the house, it was perfect for me, it just needed a little love, whatever. I finally agreed to fly out and look at it just to shut him up, and I was tired of crashing with Chris or Mike and Tom every time we were home for any length of time, so I went up to see the house. I ended up making an offer that day, after walking the property with Eddie. And the rest is history.” Ross turned to Jared, shrugging and smiling widely. “I think you’re really going to dig it, man.”
“Wait, hang on a minute. You said Eddie- Eddie who?” Jared asked, confused.
“Eddie,” Ross repeated, as if that explained everything. Seeing Jared’s confusion, he rolled his eyes. “Eddie Vedder, Jared.”
“Hold on, Eddie Fucking Vedder not only had your phone number, he actually called you up and told you about a house that was for sale down the street from where he lived? Are you hearing yourself right now?”
“It’s not that big of a deal, man. We met at some charity thing in New Orleans a few years ago, and exchanged numbers.”
“Oh? Does Eddie Fucking Vedder call you often?” Jared asked, laughing and trying to make sense of the absolute rock star bullshit that just came out of Ross’s mouth.
“Eh, not too often. Maybe once every few months? Usually only when he’s trying to get me to come help with some charity thing he’s doing. One time, he needed his deck re-stained and offered notes on my songs if I’d come to help him.” Ross chuckled, getting up to make another pot of coffee. “You’d like him.”
Jared just shook his head, once again astounded and more than a little anxious about the company he was now keeping. Settling into the dinette bench, he rested his head on the back of the seat and yawned widely, listening to Ross talking about the house he bought in Magnolia, the rough condition it had been in from years of being uninhabited, and the pains he'd been taking to restore it over the years when he was home from tour.
Jared fell asleep that night listening to Ross complaining about how hard it was to restore a century-old house when he was never home, but hearing underneath how proud he was about doing most of the work himself.
