Boonton, New Jersey anyone? Yeah, thats what I thought... Seven and a half hours later, I'm just thawing out and would do it all over again in a second. What is it that I did? Oh ladies and gentleman you're in for a treat...
Africa contacted me about a week ago about a pianist he met who was playing in Jersey on a Friday night. I HAPPENED to have tonight off (a very rare occasion) so we decided to go for it.
Taking the 5:20 NJ Transit... An hour later we're on another track- possibly Broad Street? To board another train... to then get off in Boonton. Oh Dear Sweet Booton. It's about -20 out, we're walking up the steps to an abandoned building that I'm sure the Boogeyman lives in and is going to jump out and take me, because Africa is too skinny, with little meat to munch on. So I walk up the steps to the street quickly, ahead of Africa and WHAM!!! AIR RAID, REOREOREORREOEROEORE.... AFRICA!! They saw us coming and they are warning the civilians... I'm not kidding you. The moment we set foot on the sidewalk an insane siren goes of for about 45 seconds. We stand there, not sure what to make of this Atomic Bomb like alarm, waiting for an ambulance, a police car, a mini van, a person on a bicycle, ANYONE to show us this town has some life!!! No one. Not a soul.
We start to walk up towards the understood direction of the concert hall. It's about 7pm at this point, and the concert starts at 8pm. What to do... well there's Bob's Gifts and Doodads (not kidding) The Men's Shop (closed), Video Games and Such, Vicky's Vintage, The Second Hand shop, a used book shop. All closed, but quite charming. Then we see it. A store front with a good dozen people inside, eating and drinking wine! Done. We were sold.
We go in, we sit down, and we ask to see the wine list.
More specifically:
Waiter- "What would you like to drink?"
me- "Alcohol!"
Waiter- "We're actually a BYOB"
Africa- "Great, is there a liquor store nearby i can go to?"
Waiter- "Sure, if you go down the street, make a left after the bridge, I think there's one there."
"Right, so if I jumped in my car..."
Waiter- "Oh... well there might be one in walking distance, I can go ask someone."
Africa- "No it's ok. The town is about the size of my foot and we didn't walk past one on our way here, so I doubt it."
Thus we order food, barely eat half of it and head to the performance.
An old movie theater transformed into a concert all, the Darress Theatre is incredibly unique. The entryway is warm and cozy, even with a little fire going in the fireplace. You walk into the hall under the stage, at the front. The seats are seemingly original and very comfortable. The hall, in contrast, was FREEZING. And that was even after two glasses of red wine from the cocktail hour that we were stupidly late for. Did I mention they had WINE? and it was FREE?
The performance was incredible. Is that pathetic to use that word again? Quentin has a talent I've seen few times. He has a way of drawing you into a song by a constant pattern at the beginning, to then change it the moment you're starting to wonder if you'd heard those chords before. He moves with a grace that is second nature to a true composer, and his hands dance with every note. Captivated, I didn't clap until almost the end. I couldn't move. His movement entranced me.
Towards the end he played a song called "Save Us" that he wrote in high school that brought me to tears. I'm not kidding. This silly little teenage song brought so much to the surface for me. I remember my friends writing music in high school and the innocence behind their music is what was always and still is so intriguing. We were young as teenagers, having experienced little of the world in our small town, and yet these kids had written a whole other world upon their guitars and ivory keys. Quentin did this as well, accept he's still playing this song.
I believe that with every song a musician writes, and the longer they play, the more it grows, changes, becomes anew. Like us, music transforms with time. It begins to mean different things as the years begin to bring new challenges and new adventures. I could sense that with this song. And how differently he played it.
Seven and a half hours later, I'm sitting in bed, finally thawed out, in long underwear and Navy sweatpants, with "Save Us" on repeat. It's energy contains me. This is what music is about. This is why it is created. For us to travel to the end of the world (which is Boo-'in, New Jersey if you're from Manhattan), sit in an old theater with a plethora of small town, middle America-like townsfolk and fall in love with a young man's fingertips, and allow ourselves to forget about what lies outside the front doors, in the bigger scarier world. For just one night, even only for a couple of hours, we were in a place we didn't need saving from. We were safe, we were being entertained, but most of all we were captivated by the music that shot straight from this man's soul. I'd do it again if you asked. Just give me some time to warm up first:)
adieu, friends.
www.quentinfielding.com (photo courtesy of Quentin via facebook)
