OBSESSED!: Marah

I woke up this morning with the intention of sitting in a St. Paul coffee shop and writing all day long, purging my year in review piece that has been swarming in my mind, taking up space along side the English cream long haired miniature dachshund that I will someday own and the boys I crush on from afar. It would be the perfect cap to a weekend of live music and photography. The piece was going to flow out easily as I had already decided the format: take every song I had put on my Jonesie 2007 Obsessions Mix and tell its story. Lame and overdone, maybe, but it was also my perfect categorizing method. Like Nick Hornby’s Songbook that had become my best friend as I traveled around Barcelona, like Rob Sheffield's Love Is A Mix Tape that had become my relationship model and source of gut wrenching inspiration last week, like so many of my friends and family, music has defined my memories. For the past two weeks, I found myself staring off while at work, telling my stories over and over again in my head.

And then I woke up today and found out that one of my very favorite bands in the whole wide fucking world is falling apart.

Marah

Yeah, this all seems really dramatic. Yeah, these all could be ridiculous rumors that are a product of forum fuck fests. But make fun of me about this and I’ll lose my shit on you. And by that I of course mean I’ll brush it off like it’s okay, say some half-assed yeah it sucks, and then sit in my car and cry because that’s the one place that seems to beat the honesty out of me as I blare my music way too loud.

I’ve never been someone that can conceal how I feel. It instantaneously splatters across my face: disgust, ecstasy, boredom, love, etc. Maybe I’ll realize what’s happening and hide it because it’s even too inappropriate for me but it’s always there for at least a millisecond. I’m sitting in the coffee shop right now choking up next to some hippie dad bouncing his baby on his knee. All I can think about is what I could potentially lose by Marah breaking up. Now I don't need to simply write about the year that was 2007; it’s what I have become in the past five years since I discovered Marah.

I know I’m not the first person to experience this heartbreak, as bands have broken up since the dawn of time when Neanderthal Yoko first undid her bearskin skirt for Neanderthal John. Marah has undergone many line-up changes in its dozen odd years as a band. Some say that Marah is simply the Bielanko brothers. Others say that Marah is Dave B, Serge, Kirk, Adam, Dave P. I can't help but identify more with the second school because that’s all I’ve ever known. Just like my E Street is Max and not Mad Dog, this is my Marah.

Adam and Kirk were two people who welcomed me into the community first, hung around to really talk to me, the meek girl from Minnesota who would soon enough open her mouth to let out her rock'n'roll banshee scream. Kirk, Adam & Dave are hardcore rumored to be leaving the band. All at the same time. This doesn’t bode well. Trust me when I say that I wanna believe that this will be okay, that whatever changes happen, they’ll still be my rock’n’roll band. But Marah was never about just the two brothers who share the mic and sing the songs. It’s always been about this community of rock’n’roll rats. I will of course listen and watch whatever the next Marah could be but I have every right and every reason to be scared and skeptical for the future of this band. I'm not going to place blame on why half of the band members could potentially be gone. I’m not going to slander the band, slander the brothers because I love them and that would be slandering every single damn precious memory I have of this band, this community of people, and I can't do that. I'm just worried. But, you know, the internet is a big place full of lots of break-up or change-it-up rumors and they are just overwhelming me now. Maybe tomorrow the jokes on us and the full tour, including Adam & Dave's Bloodline, is still on. And I'll be all like hahaha sorry for that verbal avalanche yesterday guys and then continue on my merry way, surrounded by my miniature long-haired english cream dachshunds and crushes from afar, telling perverse jokes and laughing like a donkey cause today never really happened. Maybe.

Let me just say this once. I'm not naive. I'm not silly. I know I could be fretting about a lot worse. But this is my band, my original music family potentially ending and I have every right to own these emotions.

So it is, I still sit in this coffee shop seven hours after I first got here, five hours after my brunch dates left, still obsessively checking the Marah forum for some answers. A lot of the people in my life brush it off as just some funny news about this band I've traveled out east for many times, and I certainly don’t begrudge them that. They don’t really understand what it is for me, how much it means. Most of them haven't seen me with this family. And that's everything. So that's why I checked my phone and computer constantly today. I need the connection to people that are a part of that world.

In September, Tab, Kat, Tommy, Jesse & I were piled on top of each other in Tommy's truck, screaming and laughing on our way to the concert, winding through downtown Philly, a city I've visited several times because of Marah shows and have come to cherish in all its grimy drunken glory. Jesse played Josh Ritter on the stereo and in my one beer buzz I said a little too loudly, "God this is great." Yeah, I was talking about Josh Ritter, who I knew nothing about at that time, but it really applied to that one car ride. It seemed like such an insignificant time in comparison to the rest of the week which involved choking up on Chinatown buses, puking in alleyways, dancing drunkenly in pubs to our band, overflowing toilets and late night Ike Reilly pillow talk. No not all of that was me. But I was a part of it all. Well...we sat on each other, crammed into the truck, bubbling over with Marah excitement. These people, who range in age from mid 20s to late 40s, are all part of a family to me. We've basically seen the very best and the almost worst of each other. And, for me, all this connection is crammed into a couple weekends a year. Josh was our soundtrack for that exact moment.

I can’t listen to Marah's music right now. I can’t do it, not one damn song or kickass youtube video. Instead I listen to Josh Ritter because his song on my 2007 Jonesie Obsession Mix was the impetus for my what would have been the year in reflection piece. Like all the hand holding high fives and screaming sobs of recognition that was the November Bruce Springsteen concert at Xcel, this memory in the truck somehow floated above practically everything else from this year as one of my most treasured moments. Josh Ritter is the easiest music for me to listen to right now, consoling me, connecting me to the memories I have of that family, that truck ride in downtown Philly when we had the entire night, the entire record, the entire tour and future ahead of us. It's that bond that runs rampant amongst us Marah fans.

Thus you see it’s not just a band, it’s my east coast rock’n’roll family and we are texting and calling each other like mad right now. They get it. I called Tab, my doppleganger, this morning. I texted with several other east coasters this afternoon. I stood outside this evening, without my coat (cause it was saving my coffee shop table), to talk to Texas Kat about what we thought would have been a rad rock’n’roll party on January 26th. As my teeth chattered incessantly, we talked about the future of Marah.

Some may listen to Marah and say what’s the big fucking deal; I don't get it; they are too this or not enough that. I still believe they aren’t really a studio band; that's not their strength at all. They’re a live force. I recognize all their flaws but I love them FOR those flaws, not in spite of them. When I made my first trip out east for the Philly Holiday show of 2005, at one point I literally grabbed my gut and had the thought “This is perfect. This is exactly what my life is about.” People that I had just met were giving me air high fives from across the crowded venue, buying me drinks, cheering with me. To all of them out there, I’m Lexy. I never corrected them and told them that I actually never have gone by Lexy, that it was just a stupid screen name I had used online since I had been in middle school. It wouldn’t be right if they called me Alexa. It’s Lexy. Out there, I love it so much. I feel like a different person, someone who really is pretty and brave and full of confidence.

And that dual personality is something I am trying almost everyday to reconcile. This year in particular, because of the arts I have explored and the people I have become close to in my own city, I have felt closer to owning it than ever before. I guess in short that’s what Marah has given me: a real glimpse into the person I know I can be. All the joy and madness and honesty and love and flirt I am capable of has come out time and again at those shows. All of that is beginning to spill over into my everyday life here and wherever else I end up.

In 2007, I sold and gave or threw away most everything I owned and left my apartment of three years. I’m sleeping on a couch in a living room right now because of the money that I’ve spent on rock’n’roll. It’s not a difficult sacrifice cause my roommate is like a sister to me but it’s a sacrifice nonetheless, one that will lead to real options for my future. I could have boatloads of camera equipment, nice clothes, nice furniture, a nice room all to myself, but I don’t. I have boatloads of rock’n’roll memories all over this nation instead. I have a Bruce Springsteen obsession that has birthed this drive in me to seek out connection.

Over and over again, I have said or referred to my fellow Marah devotees as my East Coast concert family. My sporatically overwhelming sense of sadness is based on this very real fear that this family is falling apart. I don't want to be pessimistic and I'm usually not. It's just that when all else seemed to be over or failing in my life, these people and these future adventures were there for me. If Marah ends, when will I see my Doppleganger again, or Kat, Tommy, Jesse, Chris, Matt, Larry, Bridgid, Andrea, Leonora, Cline, Richelle, Liz, Billie Jo, Starsky, Ktristi, Adam, Kirk, Dave or anyone else I didn't list who I have connected with so strongly at those shows? When I met my Minnesota music family and hung out with most of them that first night at the CC Club, talking about music and life and pouring my heart out about Bruce Springsteen until 2am, the first thing I told some friends was “Something happened tonight. I felt in Minneapolis what I feel on the east coast with my Marah family over and over and over again.”

So, if this really is the end, thank you endlessly to Marah and every single person that involves...

I'm broke. Broker than I've ever been broke. Without the help of my friends, I'd be fucked. But I am slowly fixing it. And dreaming extra big for the end of this suffocating journey.

Seriously, hatred for one's job can lead to a reckless denial (I'm not talking about lines of gold laced coke off of a Puerto Rican hooker or anything, just too many expensive trips, camera lenses and meals out.) But I don't hate my job any more. Cause I got a new one. The Department Store can kiss my ass-as-big-as-a-muthafucka goodbye.

As I was walking down University Ave after my new job last Wednesday, enjoying the sunlight and looking forward to a night of home cooked meals, awesomely shitty television and editing photos, I thought about how great it would be if I were in a position to be financial free. At that moment, I would get a scoop of sorbet from the Crema Cafe and sit in their quaint Italian garden that overlooks Lyndale. But I need real food and the occasional cup of coffee (I've stopped drinking lattes cause they are just too expensive). I have seven dollars to get me through the week. I've got seven dollars to my name.

OH MY GOD

I just stopped dead in my tracks and mouthed the phrase "oh my god."

SEVEN DOLLARS TO MY NAME

That one phrase sparked the memory of song to me, my Marah song.
Smiling, I started singing softly to myself and moved forward again.

Got seven dollars to my name
Got sixteen cigarettes somehow I just ain't smoked yet
Got two shoelaces and two shoes
I should toss ‘em on the telephone wire as a monument to my blues

I'm goin' down to get a coffee
Gonna mean one less buck
Maybe six will bring me luck
Got a little shake I kept in the fridge
Gonna drink my bean and walk out smoking on the Walt Whitman Bridge

Faraway from these winter streets
On a cloudless day
Your memory
Blows away

Got a leather wallet on a chain
Got a picture of my lover's lips before they dried up under my kiss
A prayer in my heart I'm too scared to recite
Oughtta toss that stale loaf of words to the birds as a monument to my whole life.

I felt the connection in my gut. For that moment, for that seven seconds maybe, Marah made okay. I was so good.