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Huck tilts his head to the side. “Pretty sure there’s beer.” I frown and he laughs. “Too good for beer these days. Okay, I think there’s some tequila we got from some fancy exec type. It’s for sipping, though. Which is why we ain’t opened it… ever.”
I find the bottle in question and spin around, waving it at him.
“Get drunk with me, Huckleberry, and let’s write something good.”
An hour later, we’re sauced and the bottle is three-quarters empty. Turns out, Huck and I suck at sipping.
But we’re not half-bad lyricists.
Our knees are practically touching as we sit cross-legged across from each other, our guitars cradled in our laps. Huck’s working through a bridge of one of those merry “this is my hometown dive bar” kind of country songs everyone loves and Drake is known for. I’m trying to power through the third stanza of an emotional ballad about my parents’ divorce. It’s not my usual fare, but this is my second album and I’m hopeful I’ll get a little more rein to write something with some emotional heft.
We work perfectly together, swinging back and forth between his song and mine, flipping the switch flawlessly. It’s always been like this with Huck. I saidmagicand I wasn’t exaggerating. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced with someone else. His creativity is the other half to mine.
Or something like that. Tequila always makes me feel…more.
So does Huck.
“Hmm?” he says, looking up from his notebook.
“Hmm?”
He grins, and it’s a loose, happy-filled kind of thing. Like I said,more. “You said ‘so does Huck.’ What do I do?”
I sink back, startled. “Oh. I forgot already. I think the tequila is getting to me.”
He lifts his own tumbler and takes a long sip and I’m drawn to the way his tongue reaches out to lick his lips as he puts down his glass.
“I was actually just thinking that this is my favorite,” I tell him half honestly.
“The sipping tequila?”
“Ha. No. You were right about that. It’d be better in a margarita with some salt around the rim.” I push my hair behind my ear, feeling flush, but also brave and more than a little fond of the man in front of me. “I mean writing with you. Sitting around getting drunk and writing songs. It’s magical, you know?”
Huck’s head dips to the side and his blue eyes crinkle in the corners as he takes me in. He nods slowly. “Yeah, it is.”
“I don’t have this with anyone else. It’s special.”
Something flashes in Huck’s gaze and he continues to meet my eyes. Eventually he says, “It is.”
From somewhere, my familiar text notification chirps out and I straighten with a blink. I clear my throat, feeling uncertain. Something just happened, but I don’t know what it was. “That’s probably Drake.”
Huck nods, returning to his paper. “Probably.”
I bite my lip, watching him, but he’s focused on his notes, and I give up. The moment is broken. The magic is gone.
24CRAIG
LIKE A WRECKING BALL
Drake never understood that the key to creating good music is to listen to everything. The man refuses to listen to anything but contemporary country, out of fear of contaminating the creative well or whatever. But that, along with so much else Colter subscribes to, is such bullshit. You go stale and lose your sense of what culture is reacting to in the moment. What’s hitting the hardest. What is striking the proverbial chord. Whatever is making people feel. Not to mention, the history of the thing. Decades of hard-won wisdom and creativity all lost because you don’t want to come off sounding “too folksy.”
Clichéd as it may sound, I’ve always used music to get in touch with my emotions. I don’t have a name for something until I hear it. The more I listen, the more feelings I have. The more feelings I have, the better a songwriter I become.
Sometimes it’s the words, but not always. That’s whycover songs are so impactful. Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor wrote the song “Hurt” and it was fucking genius. But I didn’t weep until I heard Johnny Cash’s wizened baritone sing the lyrics. Eddie Vedder’s “Just Breathe” is grunge perfection. It defines an era of grimy ballads. Still, it wasn’t until Miley Cyrus sang the chorus that I fully felt the gutting pain of holding back.
Drake never understood any of this. It’s like he sees making music as a multiple choice quiz when it’s actually been an essay test the entire time.
Multidimensional, multifaceted, nuanced. Open to interpretation.
