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When I’d woken that morning, it had taken me a moment to realize anything was strange. After all, I rarely woke up with anyone, and I hadn’t woken up in my own bed in long enough that it was discombobulating in and of itself. But when the night had come drifting back to me and I’d turned over, hoping to burrow back into the warmth of Caleb’s body and finding nothing…I’d deflated, the promise of something taken away.
On tour, I hadn’t been able to get him out of my head, even in sleep. I’d wake from dreams of him, turned on and aching, and stay that way all day. Finally, when it was clear I wasn’t just going to stop thinking about him, I googled him, looking up “Caleb” and every keyword about music I could, until I found him.
Caleb Blake Whitman, age thirty-five, originally from Norwood, in upstate New York, nearly at the Canadian border. He’d been a session musician, and toured with other acts starting from when he was eighteen or nineteen, then recorded an album at twenty-one, and toured behind it. After that, he’d toured half the year and lived the other half in a lot of different places. It looked like he’d made New York City his home base for a while, then spent time in New Orleans, then bounced back and forth between the two.
His third album had been successful, in terms of independent labels, and had been well received across the board. He hadn’t been rock star famous, but he’d certainly made a living as a musician, and probably a good one. He’d been featured in music magazines and even one documentary about the post-Katrina music culture in New Orleans.
After the release of his fourth album, I’d begun to see more and more mentions of missed shows, gigs cut short, murmurs about drugs and alcohol and strife. Still, reviews of shows praised the music, and descriptions of him highlighted his chops, his energy as a performer, and his unique musical influences.
Then, a little over a year ago, his website stopped updating, and he seemed to disappear.
One night, after our show in Helsinki, everyone else went out dancing, and I went back to the hotel and watched videos of Caleb performing live. I lay in bed with the lights out, my iPad propped up on my stomach and my earbuds in, so I could get his voice as close to my ear as it had been the night we’d spent together.
I downloaded all his albums. His music was as amazing as I’d imagined it would be from the song that brought me in from the street in Brooklyn. Gritty blues, with influences from country, jazz, rock, bluegrass, and folk. He was a storyteller—not just with his lyrics, but with his voice. Fuck, his voice. It was strong and broken, mournful and teasing, sensual and mocking. And when he performed—usually seated on a stool or a rickety wooden chair, guitar propped on a knee, a glass of whiskey on the stage at his side—he tore the music out of himself and gave it to the audience.
There was a video of a show I found, at a Memphis blues club, where he sang so hard he lost his voice halfway through. He sang with his eyes closed and his throat bared, the tendons of his neck standing out, the veins in his hands thick. Midway through a chorus that had him howling, “Strip away my desire / dismantle the star / I’ll drag this bare body wherever you are,” his voice broke like dry wood. He sang a soft ballad after that, but it came through like pebbles and ash.
He apologized, walked offstage, and after the band did two songs without him, he came back onstage, looking sheepish. Holding up a mug, he said, “They made me this concoction with honey and…”
He glanced at the bartender, who started to laugh, and called out, “Tea, dude!”
“Yeah, that’s right, tea.” Caleb’s sudden smile was for the bartender, but it ripped through me. He got through two more songs interspersed with sips of the honeyed tea (to which he liberally applied the whiskey he had onstage) before his voice was just a scratch.
“Thanks, y’all,” he croaked to the crowd. “Gotta take a couple days with a little more, uh, tea”—he toasted them with the mug—“and a little less whiskey, I guess.” Then he winked, and the camera caught it at an angle like he was winking at me.
It was outrageous how much I wanted him.
The thing was, I was pretty sure he’d wanted me, too. I might not have been great at small talk or pleasantries, but I’d always been good at sensing a vibe, and every signal Caleb had sent me felt like he did.
With that in mind, one night when I’d stumbled offstage shaky and dripping sweat, but high from the crowd, I grabbed my phone and tapped off a quick email to my agent, Lewis, before we rushed back out for the encore. An email that I forgot about until I was in the lobby of the Stockholm airport two nights later, spacing out at the wall of fluorescent light pulsing in ¾ time, and got a response from Lewis with a note and an address. I had to scroll down to the sent email beneath it to see that I had asked him if he could find me an address or phone number for Caleb Blake Whitman, formerly of Neutral Ground Records.
