Give Me the Beat, Boys. Free My Soul.

“It’s funny how some people don’t come into the foreground of your life until the exact right moment - that moment when you need them to the most, and may not even realize it. That’s how I met Katie Mikesell, the newest contributor to the Sonder Blog. Katie and I went to high school together at Holy Family High School (which seems to be becoming a theme here), but were separated by a year. We didn’t really talk then; We knew of each other, but ran in different circles with different interests. As time pased, I couldn’t help feeling a growing connection with this semi-stranger, one built on parallel lives separated by hundreds of miles. One day a few years ago, and thank goodness for this, Katie reached out to see if we could grab a drink. We met up at Union Station and the rest is history. Katie is a sister of my soul - who values self-love, the beauty and passion of music, and finding the human connection in everyone. I love going to shows with her and experiencing music with her - and I am so beyond thrilled to bring her on as a contributor to the Sonder Blog. Without further ado, please enjoy Katie’s first piece.” - Sarah Shuel, Owner, Sonder Music Management

I didn’t realize how much live music stoked my soul until I lost it. 

Photo courtesy of Katie Mikesell

It was a muggy evening at the end of June in 2017 and standing on an amphitheater lawn in Indianapolis, I was already sweating. Had been for hours. Maybe even for days. Indiana summers bring a different type of heat. 

It was worth it though. After a year that had watched my marriage crumble and my life generally devolve into chaos, I was ready to see Dispatch take the stage. It was a tour to promote the band’s latest studio album, the first one they’d put out after five years. I was ready to jam out with a bunch of 35-year-old white dudes as they re-lived the glory of their college days with a joint they’d smuggled in the pocket of their khaki shorts. 

I was ready to get a little buzzed, to let the world slip away. I was ready to not care at all. 

As the opening notes for Only the Wild Ones floated on a summer breeze, the tears started to fall. They took me by surprise - I’d heard the song so many times before that it felt seared into my consciousness. I hummed the melody as I wiped a towel across the bar where I worked. I belted out the chorus while driving through a rainstorm with the windows down. I played it on a loop during all the lonely nights my partner snored next to me. 

That song had shown up during a lot of life moments up to that point - big and small - but it had never moved me to tears.  

Not until that summer night, around all those strangers, was I safe enough to feel again.

“Only the wild ones give you something and never want it back,” the boys in the band crooned. The words had always mattered, but hearing the notes, alive, raw, swirling around me, it was like receiving CPR.

It was like coming back from the dead. 

2020 is a year punctured by loss. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. 

There is the broad, aching loss of life - those souls who were taken by a pandemic that ravaged every corner of this nation, including geniuses across the arts who told authentic stories and brought us just a little closer to our humanness. 

There is the loss of normalcy, of routine, of jobs, of income streams, of homes, of stability, of dreams. In some sense, the loss of decency. I imagine for a good number of people, there might even be a loss of hope.

And while I can’t speak from inside the music industry, I can speak from the audience’s point of view. 

There is the loss of the promise that a live show holds.  

The promise of a moment where something goes wrong and all the moments where everything goes right. The promise when the drummer counts down and the music rips through the soul of the audience and stirs our collective

awe. The promise when the singer gives a wink and our hearts all swell, waiting for the instant when the band plays just what we need to hear and we feel young and unstoppable and like we aren’t all alone. 

All of that loss, all at one time, has the potential to turn a person numb.

I think that’s why I keep returning to YouTube, searching for live shows and I’m grateful for the ability to do so. I want to see the lyrics in motion, want to experience the bassist jump around in bare feet. I want to watch hair swing wildly over a keyboard. I want to notice the eye wrinkles around the closed eyes of a violinist, bow gliding across the strings. 

I want to feel the music move through them before it moves through me. I want to believe the magic is still real. Anything to keep that connection. To hear the music as it’s meant to be heard - full of breath. Very much alive. 

It’s not the same. Not at all. But there is something about watching a group of musicians come together and play in the moment - with all the imperfection that comes along when our humanity is shared through song - that keeps me looking forward. 

It helps me believe in what’s ahead. 

I’ve been reflecting on that Dispatch show recently, thinking how it revived my love of live music. In hindsight, it did so much more than just that. Being at that show, gathered around strangers who shared the common thread of loving this band, gave me a sense of community that I craved. 

That’s one thing 2020 has given me through all it has taken away: a reminder to me that while the world might feel like it’s crashing down, music and the community I’ve found because of it will be there to hold me up, to restore my spirit, to remind me to dance. 

I know that there will be a day, maybe even a day not too far away, where I will be singing loudly with strangers and laughing with new friends and paying too much for a Coors while I lean against a poster covered wall as the band plays on stage. And maybe, just maybe, a song will take me by surprise and move me to tears. 

Maybe, just maybe, that’s how we find the life again.