February 19th, 2011
Birthday/Going Away Party at the Hooley House

Night 2 – Richie Reece

First of all I would like to say that all in all, Kendra and I had fun. Richie’s performance was on par with his usual, but with less drunken heckler action, as he stayed sober for the whole show. There was one caveat which in the end tainted my experience – he promised me a certain song, and never played it. It’s different to make a request of someone, musician or otherwise, and have it go unfulfilled – in this case, I’ve had requests at any given show that Brigid’s Cross didn’t do. But being hopeful is one thing. It’s an entirely different breed of disappointment when expectation doesn’t suit action. I will try to write this with my usual zeal, but if you find it to be fouled up by the faint odor of frustration… it’s Richie’s fault.
When we sat down at our table I learned something that just about shocked my socks right off: Kendra drinks Dr. Pepper now. That’s right. Used to drink Root Beer but turned her nose up at my favorite soft drink, which she now slurps with gusto. Took me by surprise. Looks like she’s finally come to her senses.

___________________Kendra enjoying her barbeque chicken wrap___________________

I had to show her the proper way to dip a Hooley Hunk (you have to cut it in half so that the clean inner chicken-ness is exposed), and savored my very last pre-Scotland Hooley Hunks. Speaking of dipping, our waitress didn’t give me an odd look when I requested extra teriyaki sauce, stating that she dips her food in all manner of odd sauces. I liked her, although I did notice that after she got her tip we didn’t get any more refills. In fact, I hardly saw her come anywhere near our table. That was more than a little annoying, needless to say.
Several songs into the show Kendra noted my characteristic head-weaving (to the music) and laughed at me. Apparently there’s something amusing about my inability to stay still when I hear a beat. And it’s not just music, either. Any steady rhythm can do it. This particular brand of head-weaving seems to be exclusive to Brigid’s Cross shows, and to Richie’s songs especially. I pointed this out to her, and she suggested that I am under a spell of some kind. “It’s magic!” she told me. “You’re like a cobra!”
I recognized two or three of the original songs he did, and took a video of a song called “Whiskey and Rain” that’s quite pretty. Upon playback, however, I noted that it’s a little difficult to hear him over the crowd, but it could be worse.
Kendra’s favorite part of the show was the country covers. When he did “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, a semi-standard with Brigid’s Cross, he insisted that one of the hecklers from the corner behind us come up onstage to sing the chorus with him. His criteria for choosing this particular person? He was wearing flannel; Richie commented that he was required to get in touch with his inner hillbilly. After all, Richie’s inner hillbilly had manifested itself in the form of a five-o’clock shadow and a Bud Light trucker hat. Actually, he called it a beard, although personally I think that was a little generous – he would look funny with a real beard – and the shadow suits him better anyway. Maybe you could call it a 7 o’clock shadow. I attempted to point out that Kendra was wearing flannel as well, and was badly in need of getting in touch with her inner hillbilly, but I went unnoticed (nothing new there). In any event, she threatened to kill me if I succeeded. She threatened to put her coat on.
Speaking of country tunes and drunken people in front of the stage that were lucky enough to have their requests actually played, Kendra also got excited about “Friends in Low Places”, by Garth Brooks. Garth’s lyrics apparently didn’t entirely suit him, and be it through creativity or ignorance of the real lyrics, he amended the final verse with this crowd-pleaser:
“I didn’t mean to cause a big scene
Just wait til I finish this glass
I’ll sit at the bar, and play my guitar…
And you can kiss my aaaaaaaaaassss…”
So, you know how in Friday’s’s blog I mentioned that I’d approached Richie to request a song called “Goodbye Michelle”? So here’s my story, self-indulgent as it may seem to my readers:
Last August I’d moved into my dorm just in time to attend my first Hooley with Richie. Since Jennie was not moving in until the following day, I went by myself, even though it made me feel self-conscious. I was impressed with Richie’s repertoire of original songs, and amused at how a show with him seemed to be even more relaxed than a Brigid’s Cross soiree. He tried his hand at songs he didn’t technically, if you want to be picky, know the lyrics to. Occasionally he would get halfway through a song and say, “Screw this, I’m doing something else,” and he had few qualms about heckling audience members.
At one point he introduced a ballad with the following paraphrased introduction: “This is a song that was written by my uncle, and I’m the only one that’s ever been allowed to sing it.” When he sang the song I was closer to tears than I’d ever been at the Hooley House. It was a beautiful song about a man who experienced heartbreak at a young age, a heartbreak that remained in the back of his mind and colored his life year after year before he finally found a way to get past it.
*Living with emotional pain that has no resolution can influence a person in subtle ways. It takes a lot of energy to smear metaphoric plaster adhesive in the cracks of one’s heart, and trying to silence that pitiful little creature that lives inside. After a while the poor thing’s voice becomes your own, until it starts to affect your self-image. The constant pain becomes easier to live with as time passes, until you can’t recall when that tightness in your heart wasn’t there. You still wish it wasn’t, since it’s always hovering over you, poking at you every so often so that you won’t forget that it’s there, but at the same time it had ingrained itself in your identity so that you fear that erasing the pain would cause you to lose the person you’ve become.
Not that I could possibly know anything at all about that personally, and not that my lack of said knowledge on the subject could possibly be a reason why I liked the song so much.*
Since that August show I have wanted to hear that song again, but at the next Richie show I went to the stage seemed less approachable (to my social phobic eye), as he was flanked on either side by backup musicians. This was true regardless of the fact that I looked really cute that night and was sitting at a table immediately to the left of the stage.
So I approached him on Friday night to let him know that I had really loved that song, but I didn’t know the name of it. All I could remember was the lyric regarding “finding the good in goodbye” and that it had a woman’s name in it. He enthusiastically replied, “Oh, yeah, that one’s called ‘Goodbye Michelle’. Absolutely, if we don’t get to it tonight, I’ll do it for you tomorrow (because I had told him I’d be back with Kendra for his show).”
The table in front of us was just getting up when he started the song “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, and these particular people got very excited about this and decided to stay an extra few minutes. The problem, in my opinion, with this plan was that the tallest of them decided in his excitement that he would stand directly between me and the stage. It was insult on injury when he reached around behind him to scratch flagrantly at his butt.
Kendra and I spent some time during the first part of the show creating a request list. “Goodbye Michelle” was the only song I really wanted to hear, but I added “Straight to Hell” by Great Big Sea because I keep thinking it would be fun to hear Richie do it. Kendra had 8 songs in her request queue: “Chicken Fried” (which I’d seen Richie do before), “The Dance” (which he also does), “Bennie & the Jets” (she was just being funny with that one), “Lola”, “Paradise City”, “Whiskey Lullaby”, “Sweet Home Alabama”, and one other that neither of us can apparently remember. She told me I needed to add more songs to my list because she didn’t like the disproportionate look of our respective lists, so I added his original “Get to the Pint” (a show staple that BC hadn’t done), and “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams and “Pour some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard, neither of which I’d ever heard him do but both of which he ought to know.
At intermission I gave him our list, and he was his natural enthusiastic self. Looking over the list he again mentioned that “Goodbye Michelle” was on deck somewhere. I left him with Kendra’s request that the waitress bring her his cousin Danny (one of only 2 Hooley Hunks currently waitering at the pub) in a to-go box. Kendra might kill me if she finds out that I put that in here. Or that I told Richie to begin with. *gigglesnert*
Kendra had been up since 5am, and she started to get tired at around 11. Knowing her, I figured that gave me about 45 minutes before the first tremors of grouchiness would start, so I figured that once he did my song we could leave. I didn’t know how long Courtney would stay up waiting for us, as we needed her to let us into the apartment when we got back.
By 11:30 I started getting tired too, having gone to bed at 1:30 that morning and living with a biological clock that kicks me in the butt if I even think about sleeping in. But I hadn’t heard my song yet, and had my camera at the ready to record it when it happened. I was quite excited, thinking that each song that passed meant one song closer for me, and 6 months has already been a while to wait, yeah? Meaning both that I’ve waited 6 months already and it’ll be another 6 months before I’ll have another chance.
The Dancing Nagy made his appearance, rocking out “Johhny B Goode”, which was fun, and Richie announced that the end of the show was nigh. It was at this point that I started to get annoyed. Well, so it would be one of the last songs. Okay.

_____________________________"Johnny B Goode"___________________________

Then we heard “Jack and Diane”, which annoyed me even more because I discovered some years ago that I hate John Mellencamp’s music. At around half past midnight, to the delight of everyone else in the crowd, he sang Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” with Hooley House-inspired lyric changes, then announced that the show was over: “Well, that’s it for us! Thanks for coming out…” etc. I turned to Kendra, her expression mirroring my own. Hey, Richie, the show can’t be over. Aren’t you forgetting something?
The customary bid for applause for his backup drummer and sax player followed – it was indeed the end. I hadn’t expected to be crestfallen at the end of the night, but at that moment I was quite tired, half an hour past being sick of waiting, and thoroughly annoyed. I gathered up my camera and Kendra and I left.
I would like to know what the hell happened (or maybe I wouldn’t – I might be disillusioned).
4 ½ days til Scotland.