“micheal”
“I’ve got no taste for God, and that makes this harder. There’s no one left to blame... ”
For one year during junior high, my brother and I were in the school jazz band together. He played trumpet, and I played trombone. We were super nerds. We played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, went to sci-fi conventions, and acted out episodes from Space: 1999 in our backyard. We were blissfully unselfconscious. Then life happened.
Mastering engineer Kevin Tuffy says the ending of “micheal”—with those wonderful wild brass takes by Kelly O’Donohue—is my “Sgt. Pepper’s” moment. He’s not wrong. But mostly I just hear me and Micheal, super nerds, back together in middle school jazz band, playing music with total abandon, blissfully unselfconscious.
I think that may have been the last time I felt really close to him.
“micheal” by The Ellis Court
