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“Please, oh please,” Emily chimed in.
“You’ve just got to,” Hank said, right before he blew out another note, then giggled at his new power.
How could I possibly refuse?
“Fine, but don’t expect much,” I told them, as I reluctantly left to retrieve my violin or rather, my fiddle, as Annie liked to call it.
Boone 9
I tried my best to hold back my sappy emotions but watching all the smiling faces and enjoying the look on Annie’s face when she finally learned how to hold her child-sized fiddle was more than I could handle. Before Hank came into my life, I didn’t think I could ever feel love like other people did. Hank more than corrected that emotion in me and over the past few years, he’d brought me to my knees more times than I’d like to admit.
When Hank’s mom left with my best friend and my dog, my first instinct was to find someone else to raise Hank. I never thought I could handle a kid, let alone a fussy baby who cried if you looked at him wrong. Hank had been a crier… a loud, ornery crier that caused me to want to run away from everything, even my music. But I didn’t. Austin helped me with that. He was already raising Emily on his own and doing a damn good job of it, so when he invited me to move in with him, I jumped at the chance.
Everything came into focus after that, even Hank. He loved watching Emily, and when Annie and Kasey joined us, life settled into a rhythm we didn’t want to disrupt. We’d gone on the road for a couple of months, taking the kids with us, along with a nanny. That proved to be a shit show. Next, we tried it without the kids, and we weren’t on the road one week when we were flying back home when one of the kids got sick.
About eighteen months ago, we, as a band, decided to take a break from all of that and had to part with our agent because of conflicting principles. We were still looking to sign with an agency, but not one that wanted to push us into anything we didn’t want to do.
For now, we were content playing at Dirty Coyote and releasing a new album every six months.
Liberty patiently instructed Annie on exactly how to place the fiddle under her chin and cheek, then taught her how to balance the bow, mostly using her pinky finger. When a real note came out, we all yelled and clapped so loud, Lucy hid under a table.
Austin taught Emily how to play her first chord on the ukulele, and Hank… well, my Hank stole the show as usual. I’d known how to play the harmonica since I was a kid and played it hundreds of times during our performances and on our recordings. I taught him that each hole or reed chamber, which he liked better, on the harmonica made a different sound and if he slid his mouth over all of them while he blew, or sucked in air, his entire face might vibrate. That caused him to belly laugh and giggle each time he tried it, which caused me to laugh and cry at the same time.
We’d stupidly kept the kids away from music, thinking we didn’t want to impose our obsessions on our kids. We’d decided a few years ago that if they found music on their own, then we’d bring them in. If they didn’t, we’d honor that as well. As new dads, we tended to overthink some stuff and ignore stuff that ended up being important. Still, we never stopped learning and adapting whenever we could.
Once we saw how enthusiastic our kids were, I for one, knew there was no putting that bird back in the cage. Plus, Hank wasn’t dragging his blanket around while he was holding onto his harmonica. I didn’t know why, but whatever the reason, it made me feel as though my boy was finally moving past his “blanky.”
These were the first days of Hank’s emersion into what I loved, and for that, I would be forever indebted to Liberty, who, by the way, ended up playing a mean fiddle. Even though she thought she sounded rough and couldn’t quite get it, we all knew this could be the start of something good. Mighty good. So good that Austin sent me over to her cottage to try to convince her to stay longer than two weeks to see where this might go with our band.
We could use a good fiddle player. We’d been thinking about it for a long time, but they were hard to come by and even harder to keep for some reason. Whenever we recorded, we had to hire a fiddle player especially for that recording session. When we performed, we’d either drop those songs or once again, hire someone for that gig.
Even though Austin still had some doubts about her, it was my job to try to convince Liberty to consider the possibility of staying longer. Austin never went into the specifics of those lingering doubts, but it had something to do with why he’d given Liberty the nickname of Camera Girl.
I felt up for the task, mostly because of Hank. He seemed to mesh with Liberty, and I wanted that to last longer than two damn weeks. My boy deserved someone who he got along with, rather than someone he felt he had to torment just to get them to leave him alone.
The kids hadworkedso hard, they could barely keep their eyes open when it came time for brushing teeth and bedtime stories. Once they were tucked in, I grabbed a bottle of white wine, and with my fellow band members cheering me on, like a soldier going off to conquer new lands, I headed out for unchartered territory.
When I walked up to the front door of the cottage, I couldn’t help but stop and listen. At first, I thought I was listening to streamed violin music, but when it stopped and started again, playing the same notes, I realized I was listening to Liberty. She sounded incredible. Talk about bringing me to tears, her music caused my eyes to water.
“What the fuck?” I mumbled, as I stood there, helpless at the sound of her incredible talent. That was the second time I’d cried in one day. This shit had to stop, or I’d be crying over stupid stuff without giving it much thought. Yeah, ever since Hank came into my life, I’d turned into an emotional guy, but this was getting out of hand.
When I first walked up to the door, she was playing something soulful and sad. Now, she was into a faster piece, and my tears dried up and turned to chuckles. She’d told Kasey that she didn’t play anymore, yet she obviously lied or changed her mind. Either way, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt her. I leaned against the door for a few moments, captivated by what I heard, and wondered why she would ever want to play country when she could play that soulful stuff so well, that listening to her had brought me to tears.
As I lost myself in her music, she suddenly stopped and played the opening riff fromThe Devil Went Down To Georgia,by the Charlie Daniels Band… possibly the toughest fiddle riff ever written… at least for me.
She tried, stumbled, tried again, stumbled again… but kept trying.
I knew this was the time to interrupt her before she decided playing our kind of music would be impossible.
As soon as I rang the bell, everything stopped, like she wanted to hide what had been going on behind her door.
“Just a minute!” she yelled.
More evidence that she didn’t want me to know what she’d been doing.
She finally opened the door a crack. “Boone. Hi. Is something wrong? Are the kids okay?”
Her eyes were red and puffy as if she’d been crying. I had to make a split decision to address that, or let it go.
