by Katia Rose
I scrunch up my nose, another one of Tipsy Kay’s habits.
“I know that. We’re just using the staircase, anyways. Come on.”
I set my beer down a few stairs up and duck under the sign. Everything’s going fine until I try to straighten up on the other side and start to tip backwards down the stairs again.
“Easy there, ninja.”
One of Matt’s hands comes to rest on the small of my back while the other grabs my arm, holding me upright until I can catch my balance.
“Real stealthy,” he jokes.
His hand’s still pressing into my back.
“I’m good now,” I tell him, reaching for my bottle and then continuing up the stairs. “You coming?”
We take a seat on a step about halfway up. Our faces are masked by shadow, with only the dim glow at the foot of the stairs shedding any light on us. The metal in Matt’s eyebrow glints, and the sudden intimacy of the moment strikes me. I can hear him breathing, feel the vibrations of his knee bouncing up and down just an inch away from mine on the narrow step.
“So,” he begins, voice pitched low, “what do you want to know?”
I try to speak, and end up having to swallow and clear my throat before I do.
“Let’s start with how you got your name.”
“Well that’s an easy one. On the day I was born—”
“The band’s name.”
He laughs, and away from all the noise downstairs, I realize how deep and full the sound is.
“I know. Just thought you might be curious.”
“I’m curious about how fast we can finish this interview so I can finally get home to bed. Also, do you mind if I start recording now?”
“Be my guest.”
I pull my phone out and fidget with it for a minute until I get the recording going, then set it down on the step between us.
“So, the band’s name?” I prompt.
“Right. JP, our keyboardist, has an uncle who runs a big realty firm out of a house next to Sherbrooke Station. Back when we were students living with a million roommates and needed somewhere to practice, JP snagged us the house’s basement as a spot. We could do whatever we wanted with the place, as long as we didn’t make noise when the firm was working. We all sent each other so many ‘I’ll meet you at Sherbrooke Station’ texts that it just seemed to fit.”
“Very DIY,” I comment. “So tell me more about the rest of the band. JP’s the only French Canadian, right?”
Matt chuckles. “Oh yeah, very much so. He’s about as francophone as they come. His full name is Jean-Paul Marc Joseph Bouchard-Guindon. I said he’s our keyboardist, but really he’s also our xylophonist slash harmonica-ist slash whatever new instrument he just found in a yard sale-ist. He can play pretty much anything that makes noise.”
“And your bassist is Cole Byrne?”
“Our resident Man of Mystery. You’re lucky you didn’t have to end up interviewing him. He lets his bass do most of his talking for him.”
I nod. “And then there’s Ace Turner.”
Matt’s knee stops bouncing and the tendons in his forearms stand out as he squeezes his hands into fists.
“Yeah,” he replies, his voice flat, “and then there’s Ace.”
My journalist senses are tingling.
“Nothing to say about him?”
He glances away from me and lets out a breath.
“He’s my friend. My best friend. We started the band together. He’s very talented.”
There’s a finality in his tone I recognize as the sign of a source shutting down. I switch tactics.
“Your deal with Atlas Records seems to have made a big difference for you guys. Let’s discuss that.”
He bobs his head, ready to open up again.
“Everything kind of changed overnight once the record deal came through. We went from surviving on Ramen and prayers to watching our YouTube hits shoot up into the millions.” He stops and laughs to himself. “I mean, we’re still not living on much more than Ramen, but for weeks it was almost impossible to keep up with all the phone calls. I think things started getting real for me when I saw three different people wearing Sherbrooke Station shirts on the metro one day.”
For a moment he looks nothing like the suave, fast-talking rock star I walked up to at the bar. There’s something almost childish in his excitement as he tells me about the band’s success. He’s like a kid presenting a science project it took most of the school year to make.
I can’t help flashing him a grin. “And now you guys are on all the Billboard hit lists and heading off to tour Europe this summer.”
He smiles back and shrugs. “The shows in Europe aren’t going to be anywhere near as big as what we play in Canada. We’re only just breaking out there, but still, it’s all kind of unreal.”
“Has it been a hard transition, working with a huge label like Atlas?”
A few lines form in his forehead, just deep enough for me to notice.
“It’s had its ups and downs. Atlas is...” He glances at my phone and shakes his head before continuing. “Atlas is a huge label, just like you said. We’re not used to that.”
Even through the lingering haze of the alcohol, my reporter’s intuition can pick up on the fact that there’s a story here. If I was one beer closer to sober I know I could get the answers I want without him even realizing it, but right now my journalist skills are about as ninja-like as my stair climbing ones. Matt dodges every question I throw at him.
“Tell me about ‘Sofia,’” I prompt, after I’ve decided to let the subject of Atlas go. “It’s your biggest hit so far. Do you ever get tired of playing it night after night?”
He scratches his stubble for a moment and then thumbs his bottom lip while he thinks. My own bottom lip starts to drop open as I watch. I snap my head away to stare at the bottom of the staircase instead, before I literally start drooling over him.
“Back when I was a kid and first started playing,” he answers, “I used to wonder how bands managed not to go insane playing the same songs every night. After my first gig back in high school though, I got it.”
He sits there, contemplating for long enough that I’m about to ask him to continue before he does it himself.
“I don’t know if I should be saying this on record, but when I was sixteen me and some of my buddies formed a garage band we called...uh...Well, it was called Chained Souls.”
“Chained Souls?” I cut in, a snort escaping me.
“Chained Souls,” he repeats, feigning solemnity before he laughs. “Our songs were as shit as our name, to be honest, but we thought we were going to be the voice of our generation. We went in the local Battle of the Bands. We didn’t make it any farther than the second round and broke up pretty soon after that, but I’ll never forget the feeling of the MC announcing our set. It was totally different from playing Nirvana covers at school talent shows. We were filling silence with a combination of sounds no one else had ever made before.”
He leans forward and his eyes find mine.
“Even then, I knew there was a power in that. I knew my voice would never be so loud or so strong as when...when I let it move through my fingers and make itself heard on my drums.”
Great. He’s a fucking poet.
Something stirs in me as we spend the next few seconds staring at each other. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the long hours and rushing around, I forget why I ever wanted to be a journalist in the first place. Right now the answer is clear, though. That power he’s talking about—I can feel it too. For me, it flows through a pen instead of an instrument, but when I write about a band or a song I really love, I feel like my words have the power to change things.
I wrap the interview up soon after that. Staring into Matt’s eyes has also put my drool reflexes past the point of control, and I don’t want to embarrass myself any further. Thankfully, the alcohol is waning and it’s not too hard to put a bit of frost in my tone to cover up how entranced I was getting
.
“Sure you don’t want to know how I got my name?” Matt asks. “Off the record?”
“We can leave that one a mystery. I really do have to get home.”
I straighten up, tucking my phone into my pocket.
“Wait, let me see that.”
He reaches a hand out towards me and I pass him the phone, wondering what he’s up to.
“There,” he says, handing it back after a moment. “That’s my number, in case you come up with any more questions. Or if you plan on climbing any more stairs tonight. It seems like it might be dangerous for you to do that alone.”
“Ha ha. Hilarious.”
I blink as my eyes adjust to the bar lighting once we’ve climbed back down the stairs.
“Hey, isn’t that the beach boy you were talking to when I came in?”
Matt steps up beside me and points to where Eric’s chatting up another girl a few feet away.
I turn to face him. “You noticed me when you came in?”
I’m surprised to see him look embarrassed for a second. “Yeah. I did.” He glances at the floor, fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm on his thigh. “Anyways, sure you don’t want to go say hi?”
He lifts the remainder of his beer and drains it, nodding towards Eric as he does.
“I don’t think that would go well. I told him you were my sperm donor.”
He splutters for a moment before managing to swallow the beer down, thumping a fist against his chest.
“It was a joke,” I hurry to add.
“Thanks for clarifying,” he wheezes.
“I gotta go now. Thanks for showing up. My boss would have killed me if I didn’t get this story.”
I give him a small smile, turning away as he continues to recover from choking.
“Kay, wait!”
I’m halfway across the room when his hand brushes my arm. I turn around and find him staring down at me.
“Look, I know you’ve got work tomorrow, but do you want to just stay for a—”
“Excuse me?” We both look over Matt’s shoulder to see the brunette girl with the Sherbrooke Station shirt standing behind him. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but are you Matt Pearson?”
“Yeah,” he answers distractedly, “I am.”
“I know I’m being like, super annoying right now, but I love Sherbrooke Station. Do you think we could maybe get a picture? If you’re not busy?”
Matt turns back to me, his eyes searching.
“Like I said,” I tell him, “I’ve gotta go.”
3 My Body || Young the Giant
MATT
I shouldn’t answer the phone.
I’m late enough as it is, and I’m sure whatever Kyle has to say can wait, but I hit the ‘Accept call’ button and flop down on the spongy second-hand couch in the living room anyways.
JP, my band mate and co-resident of our two bedroom apartment, left his latest restoration project sitting on one of the cushions and I almost knock it over. I grab the edges of the plastic sheet spread underneath the metal odds and ends and shift them over to the coffee table. From the looks of things, he’s trying to solder an antique pencil sharpener to a piece of copper pipe. Our whole apartment is full of half-finished shit like this.
“Sup, LB?” I ask, as Kyle comes on the line.
“Not much, BB.”
LB and BB. Our parents used to make us wear shirts with those letters printed across the chests. They gave me mine the day they brought Kyle home from the hospital, red and screaming and wrapped up in so many blankets you could barely find his wrinkled face in all the fabric.
“BB stands for big brother,” my mom had explained. She showed me Kyle’s LB shirt. “He’ll grow into this one day and then you can wear them together!”
And wear them together we did. At every fucking family gathering and photo shoot and summer trip to Florida, we were the dipshits in the matching shirts. I was ten when Kyle was born, so by the time he was old enough to fit in his t-shirt I was well aware that all our cousins were laughing at us, but I still grudgingly pulled the thing on every time my mom tossed it at me and got her camera out.
Deep down I kind of liked wearing them. Something in me woke up the first time Kyle wrapped his tiny baby fingers around my thumb. He needed me, and I swore I’d always be there for him. Even if it meant giving up on things I wanted, or forgiving things I didn’t want to forgive. I’d always pick him up when he fell. I’d always answer the phone when he called. I’d wear a stupid t-shirt all day at Disneyland if it showed him how much he meant to me.
That’s what being a brother is.
I do draw the line at my mom’s request that we haul the shirts out again and recreate some old photos. They’d be crop tops on us now, and I’m not standing outside the fucking park and holding Kyle’s hand with both our midriffs showing. I keep telling my mom I’m a rock star now and can’t handle something like that getting splashed across the band’s Facebook page.
“Just calling for the sake of it?” I ask Kyle.
“I need some advice,” he tells me. “We’re doing a project in music class where we have to talk about a musician that has changed our lives.”
“That’s cool. Why didn’t I get to do cool things like that in music class? All I ever did was learn Christmas carols on the trombone.”
“They had trombones when you were in school?” He pretends to be shocked. “That was so long ago I thought you were all still sitting around in caves, banging sticks on rocks around a fire.”
I chuckle. “When did you get so savage, Kyle? High school is making you lose respect for your elders.”
“You just can’t keep up, old man.”
“Old man? Watch it, or I’ll kick your ass next time I’m back in Sudbury.”
“When will that be?” His tough guy act slips and I hear the yearning in his voice. “Are you coming for my March break? Maybe I could come see you in Montreal instead. I have enough saved up to take the bus.”
My heart jumps into my throat. I haven’t seen him since Christmas. I start mentally flipping through all our upcoming shows and press junkets, trying to find somewhere to squeeze in a last minute trip up north.
“I’ll be home for Easter,” I offer with a heavy exhale, after realizing that’s the best I can do, “and you know what I told you. As soon as you turn eighteen you can come spend a whole summer out here with me.”
I glance over at our windowsill, which houses an extensive liquor collection and the dragon-shaped bong JP brought home one day. I might not party as hard as the other guys, but there’s still no way my Montreal life is the kind of environment a ninth grader should be hanging around.
“That’s years away,” Kyle complains. “Maybe I won’t do my project on you.”
I blink.
“Huh?”
“I was going to do my project on either you or Dave Grohl. I was calling to see if maybe I could ask you some questions for research, but now that you’re being such a cock blocker I guess I won’t give you the honour.”
I almost choke on the sudden surge of emotion. My little brother just lumped me into the same category as Dave Grohl. My brother, who used to sit on my lap and mess around with my drum kit before he could even walk, has to write about a life changing musician and he thought of me.
Someone could walk into the apartment right now to tell me Sherbrooke Station just went triple platinum and I wouldn’t feel the same mix of swelling pride and the clanking weight of responsibility that I do right now.
“Matt?” Kyle prompts, filling what I realize has been a full minute of silence. “You still there?”
“Yeah.” I swallow, letting my head drop into my hand as I try to keep my voice light. “Cock blocker? Who am I cock blocking you from?”
“From the Montreal babes! Montreal literally has some of the hottest girls in the world. They’ve done studies.”
I laugh, glad for a change of subject as I work on pulling myself together.
“I sho
uld probably be concerned about what kind of studies you’re looking into, Kyle,” I warn him, “but you’re not wrong.”
I picture Kay Fischer crouched beside me on the staircase last night, tucking a lock of hair behind her glasses as she sized me up with those ray gun eyes of hers. I knew the second I saw her in Sapin Noir she was going to mean trouble.
First off, I’ve always had a thing for girls in glasses, especially girls with faces that make them look like angels of sin.
I’m almost certain ‘Angel of Sin’ was the god-awful title of one of our old Chained Souls songs, but it’s the only way I can come up with describing her china doll features and thick brown hair. Combine that with an earful of piercings and the hint of a tattoo, and physically she’s pretty much my dream girl.
There was more to her than that, though. She just seemed to get it. I’m used to reporters giving me blank stares when I geek out over music the way I did with Kay. Journalists seem to want catchy quotes, not passionate soliloquies, but when I looked at Kay after telling her what drumming means to me, I saw a blazing understanding in her. I wasn’t just spewing words to someone with a microphone; we were sharing a feeling.
“The girls here are definitely some of the hottest in the world,” I admit to Kyle, “and once you’ve reached the age of legal majority I’ll introduce you to as many as you want.”
“Cock blocker,” he fumes.
“For four more years,” I insist, “then I’ll be your wingman.”
He spends the next few moments grumbling about how unfair the world is before asking if he can start his research on me right now. I pull my phone away from my ear to check the time on the screen. I could sit here talking to him all night, but I’m going to start getting angry texts from the band soon, and usually I’m the one sending those out.
“I’m really sorry, LB, but I’m already late for rehearsal,” I admit. “How about after school tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that works.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you then. And Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
I run a hand over my eyes. “This, uh, this means a lot. You wanting to do this project on me. I promise I’ll do whatever I can to help.”