Ride With Me

It’s the little things—the moments and opportunities—that have kept me going at my job.  Being at a special show, meeting someone I admire, or just having a night where I remind myself that this is what I’m doing for my work, my career—this is part of what I get paid for.  For every fifty grids and reports I need to fill out there may be one of these little moments, but they can really carry me.

Last week was one of those nights, and frankly it’s been a while.  I was invited to a sort of unofficial (friends and press) album release party by Sarah Borges and The Broken Singles.  The show took place at Camp Street Studios in Cambridge, where they had recorded the album.  There’s an enormous amount of history at the studio, with music from The Pixies to Radiohead to The Lemonheads being recorded or mixed there.

I hung out early before the performance started and soaked in the scene.  Wine and cheese and PBR—from a keg—was mixed with old recording equipment and colored lights that were strung from the walls.

The back of the room was covered with bins of vinyl records, and in front of them was a combination soundboard and dusty old record player.  As people mingled, records were swapped out and played on the old deck.  It was a cool scene.

I soon realized that Paul, the studio owner and house producer, was manning the turntable.  I later found out that the entire wall of vinyl was his personal collection that he loaded into the studio years earlier when moving apartments.  Lucky for us.

Sarah and the band took the “stage” (really a corner of the room where the gear was setup) soon after.  The songs had an Americana twang with a touch of punk rock styling bubbling under the surface.  She was wearing cowboy boots.

At one point Sarah told a story about how when she was starting out as a musician and playing open mic nights around town, she would sing a cover of “Ride With Me,” by The Lemonheads.  She went on to say that it wasn’t until years later that she found out she had been playing it wrong, and that the original version of the song had actually been recorded in the same studio, by the same guy that produced her record.  The same guy that was spinning the records before the show, and the same guy that was standing at the soundboard at that moment doing the sound.  The same guy that owned the studio that we were all standing in.

That’s one of those moments.  I didn’t sing the song, and I didn’t record it.  But it’s a little thing—a little twist of history—to be standing in that same studio hearing that story.  It’s a moment I won’t forget any time soon.