“You feel like going to see Molly Sullivan tomorrow night?” It was Thursday morning and I was calling Paul from the hotel shuttle queue at the Atlanta airport.
“Who’s Molly Sullivan?”
“We used to be neighbors. She’s a musician.” I threw in “musician” to subtly signal I wasn’t trying to trick him into attending a poetry reading. “She’s really good.”
(Insert pregnant pause here.)
“I’ll check her out and let you know.” This was Paul slow-rolling a “no.” His improvisational nature usually has him coming out of the gate with a “yes” for this kind of thing, but sometimes he’s in a mood.
“Cool. Let me know and I’ll get the tickets.”
“Sure.” Click.
Two hours later, safely ensconced in a training session at one of the airport hotel meeting rooms, I received a text.
“Checked her out. I’m in.”
(Insert thumbs up emoji here.)
Pretending to pay attention to the gripping, round-table discussion of Excel pivot-tables, I surreptitiously ordered the tickets online. I’d also invited Beth, my friend and editor. But she promptly prevaricated on my invitation, telling me she would think about it and, if she decided she wanted to go, would meet us there.
24 hours later and training complete, I hopped the shuttle back to the airport. I had four hours to kill before the flight, and spent that time productively drinking beer whilst “researching” flights to Spain and other various overseas destinations.
I’d let Paul and Beth know my estimated time of neighborhood arrival (ETNA) was seven-thirty, and that the show started at eight o’clock. Lucky for me the pilots were in a bit of a rush, and we were in the air for, maybe, 18 minutes or so before hitting the tarmac at the Cincinnati airport. The flight was so speedy, in fact, that I barely had time to watch a full episode of Downton Abbey. On the bright side, the short flight left me with plenty of time to pick up my dog before meeting Paul for pre-show cheeseburgers at MOTR.
(Author’s Note: Beth deigned to show up at MOTR, and arrived just as we were finishing. She spent the remaining time scamming our excess tots.)
The three of us left MOTR and crossed the street to the Woodward, where we grabbed beers and gave our attention to the two opening acts.
Finally, Mol and her band took the stage.
Hmmm…how do I describe her music? Short answer is her songs could be considered a record of her battles, won and lost, with her own demons. A record of loves lost and found. A chronicle of desires fulfilled or abandoned. It is difficult to have had the human experience and not feel the brutally honest accounting she gives of her own life. And none of it with a “poor me” inflection. She owns it. All of it.
Molly’s trip through life thus far is full of material worth singing about, as is Paul’s. And though she’s certainly more in touch with her feelings than is my best friend, on this night their spirits were aligned. Paul felt Mol’s music in a way I’d never witnessed. Mesmerized. Transfixed. He couldn’t turn away from the stage except to look over his shoulder at Beth and me, his eyes expressing joy and surprise. He’d clearly fallen in love.
So had the audience. And the love was two-directional—in waves it rolled toward the stage, crashed over the band, and then rolled back to her fans. Indeed, other than a few chatty bastards behind me, the entire crowd was as engaged as Paul, as a group unable to focus on anything other than what was happening with Mol and the band. Unlike the chatty bastards, they’d come for the show and were going to absorb as much of it as possible.
Now, I’m not sure how long Mol was on stage. An hour? A day? A week? Personally, I believe we entered an alternate dimension the moment she started playing. Time stopped passing in any discernable way. Mol, however, gently kept us attached to reality, keeping the cadence and taking time between songs to introduce her band and others that have helped her along the way.
Of course, all good things must come to an end and, in preparation of that eventuality, Mol laid out the rules. Instead of following standard encore procedure, the band would do the encore without ever actually leaving the stage, thereby relieving the audience of the need to openly beg for more.
(Insert rabid applause here.)
And what an encore. Cheryl Crow’s Every Day is a Winding Road couldn’t have been more apropos as a summary of Mol’s life or, indeed, anyone’s. She pulled musicians on stage until there was no room for them to move, the expanded entourage creating a wall of sound of which Phil Spector would have been proud. (Look it up)
Applause still echoing, the crowd dispersed. Paul, however, remained still, staring at the now-empty stage, perhaps hoping Molly was joking about the lack of a formal encore.
“Do you guys want to go get a drink?” Beth’s voice rose from below. I heard the question but it seemed to bounce off Paul.
I advanced Beth’s effort and spoke to the back of his head. “Paul, do you want to get a drink?”
(Insert another pregnant pause here.)
“No…no. I’m good. I think I’m good.”
Beth and I looked on in wonder.
“What about Liberty’s?” Beth coaxed. Usually, Paul found Liberty’s Wall of Wine irresistible.
“No. I’m good. I just want to savor this moment.” I don’t recall Paul ever saying these exact words, unless he was talking about a cocktail.
We went our separate ways and, as I walked, I imagined Paul ambling to his house, tripping over uneven concrete and running into street signs, attention turned inward.
I smiled at the thought and made a mental note to remind him, or rather, torture him, of the fact that he almost said no.
(Insert convenient link here: http://molsullivan.com)
Very complimentry of Paul!