Cheer up, honey - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Having a chance conversation at Massey Hall in Toronto last week led to a bit of reminiscing and the feeling that I am not, in fact, immune to the unstoppable wheels of time as I once thought I was.

 

My dear friend Scott and I went to see the Chicago band Wilco for what we figured was about the 10th or 12th time over the last 20 years. A lovely and excited woman sitting next to me asked if I had seen the band before, as it was her first time. Wilco has become, in recent years, the face of “Dad Rock”, music enjoyed almost exclusively by, frankly, people like me - men of a certain age. (I always remember an anecdote on social media of a man wearing a Wilco shirt readying to present his I.D. to buy liquor, only to be told by the young cashier that there was no need - his t-shirt said it all.)

 

Wilco has spun back into the mainstream’s orbit recently. As the resident “Chicago” band, Wilco has become the unofficial soundtrack for The Bear, the award-winning show about a restaurant in, you guessed it, Chicago. Having said that, while the show’s audience had its fair share of men who needn’t pull their I.D. when buying booze, there were a lot of young folks there as well, which was really nice to see.

 

After our conversation, I checked to see when it was that Scott and I saw our first Wilco show. It was on Aug. 3, 2004 at The Mod Club in Toronto. (We headed east to see them in Ottawa the next night as well.) That’s exactly one month short of the 20-year mark to seeing them at Massey Hall on Wednesday, July 3.

 

Of course that realization came with a short-lived bout of depression at the passage of time, but it quickly gave way to having some fun walking down Memory Lane. There were the first two shows and meeting the band out back of the venue in Ottawa as they all enjoyed one last cigarette before going out on stage. There was the time we both got tattoos and capped the night off with Wilco at Massey Hall. The time they finished with an absurdly obscure cover song, again at Massey Hall, that we had a feeling was coming - much to the delight of two very loud, celebrating people, who those men were, I’ll leave up to you to figure out. 

 

There were the times we’ve seen the band without each other. Scott saw lead singer Jeff Tweedy play solo at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto, while I went with Jess to the London Music Hall to see Tweedy solo for myself. I took Jess to see the band at Centennial Hall during the days when she was getting up very, very early in the morning and slept through much of the show, raucous and loud as it was. At Massey Hall with my friend Brett, we saw them and sat next to a woman who had never seen them. She knew one song and was excited to hear it. She did, within the first few songs performed, and then wanted to chat for the rest of the show. Not interested.

 

When Scott and I went to those first two shows 19 years and 11 months ago, we were young men - 23 and 22 years old, respectively. Neither of us had yet met the women who would become our wives and having children couldn’t have been further from our minds. We worked at Rogers together, helping the fine people of Pickering, Ontario rent the movies of their dreams on either VHS or DVD and selling the occasional flip phone or cable box.

 

My - 20 years can certainly change things.

 

Lately, of course, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the passage of time, but more through the lens of my kids, watching them grow up, month after month and year after year and turn into these amazing little people I can’t wait to get to know even better. This was a different walk down Memory Lane, but a good one.