By: Charlie Vaughan
“Please don’t ask… take my love and make it last.”The words came even softer, with a delicate rhythm. Her shoulder swayed in front of a soft chin poking over the scarf, and kind blue eyes traced over her shoes as a shy smile opened on her lips.
Hot damn! …This was incredible. A beautiful woman was giving herself to me right here in the express lane. I’d read about this in men’s magazines. Okay, stay calm… just reach out and take her hand.
“Where would you like to go,” I asked romantically.
The touch was electric. She sprang back into a rack of tabloids predicting the end of the world. Shock spread across her face and her blue-cream eyes flashed like lightning. Reaching under the length of her hair, she pulled a discreet iPod headphone from an ear and screamed.
“Can I help you?” she gasped.
The hand reaching out between us did not feel like it belonged to me. I could feel a number of bystanders tuning into the situation. My face twisted in every possible way. Embarrassed, I stared far off down the cereal aisle. Dear God, I prayed, let her think I’m retarded.
“I, um… ah, I was wondering what you’re listening to,” I stammered.
“Tampa to Tulsa,” she said defensively. “By the Jayhawks.”
“Fun,” I replied. It was a reflex and it sounded stupid.
Coming down off the balls of her feet, she studied me carefully, “Actually it’s a sad, lonely song.”
“Oh.”
“But I love it,” she added, her manner relaxing some. “It was written by their drummer Tim O’Reagan. He also played in a great band called Leatherwoods before the Jayhawks. He’s playing his first solo show Saturday at the 400 Bar.”
She abruptly stopped the explanation. The last part had slipped out and she wanted it back. Obviously a longtime fan of Tim O’Reagan, the woman, suddenly considering the situation, realized she had gotten ahead of her senses. I could be worse than retarded.
I just stood facing her dumbly, paralyzed with indecision. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A concert of busy cash registers sounded around us. After a long moment she said, “I think the cashier is waving at you.”
Right the cashier. Get a grip on yourself. Yeah, it went badly all right… but this kind of thing is bound to happen. Turn around and concentrate on the cashier. Pay for your groceries and get the hell out of here. Be cool and don’t do anything foolish.
“My,” the beautiful woman called over my shoulder as I dropped can after can into a paper sack, “that’s a lot of SpagettiOs.”
God dammit.
* * *
Saturday was humbling cold. It was a starless night with the orange glow of the city hanging in the sky. There were many taxicabs circling the neighborhood. Standing outside the 400 Bar I watched my breath sail away in fine white tufts. The Owls had just finished a ho-hum set. Meanwhile an impressive stream of people kept arriving at the entrance.
They came in boy-girl pairs. Many of them wore easy-fit jeans and modest jackets, some type of brown shoe, and practical haircuts. The average age was mid-to-late thirties. It was a weird group: no oddballs, loud drunks, smokers, or short skirts. Inside the atmosphere was calm and friendly. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d wandered into a ten-year reunion. Couples stood with other couples happily talking and drinking beer around the warm red walls.
One of these people happened to be an old friend of mine. We drank a beer while he pointed to various members of Minneapolis’s music scene from the early-nineties. It turns out the crowd was full of them. My friend is a normal roly-poly guy who owns a house in Northeast. He has a decent job and listens to a lot of records. He was in looks and lifestyle the statistical middle of everyone present—right down to the brown shoes.
The people he was pointing out had come to support Tim O’Reagan play a long awaited Minneapolis show, and they filled the 400 Bar quite nicely Saturday night. Toward the end of his set, as the mood relaxed and the beat doubled, the crowd almost started dancing. But first we had to watch The Owls.
The Owls are a delicate four-piece with a husband and wife combo. Allison LaBonne and Brian Tighe are married; Maria May and John Jerry are not—but it wasn’t hard to imagine. The women wore modest knee-length dresses and wool tights. Very ladylike, especially the one wearing a dark one-piece dress and blonde pixie hairstyle. One of the guys wore a dignified sport coat with a necktie. Both men had buttoned dress shirts. It was a perfectly booked show—the band was right in their demographic wheelhouse.
For almost an hour they played bright chord melodies and sang gently. Trading through bass, drums, keyboard and acoustic guitar, the members added soft harmonies and small piano fills when not singing lead vocals. Each member kept steady and played their instrument very carefully, as if they worried the thing in their hands could start going wild at any moment. They kept to the major chords and simple rhythms and the songs never got to a head of steam. Everyone seemed pleased.
The Owls would make a great house band at a public television station. The overall personality was restrained modesty. The delivery was flat and unassuming. Their message was brushed with broad emotional strokes too dull to cut below the skin. A fitting soundtrack to a generation of Volkswagen drivers, the music was best described as polite.
In two songs there was a reference to reading the newspaper. It was a sad suggestion about a world coming apart at the seams. The audience, familiar with a daily paper, understood the symbolism. It didn’t drive them to heights, but they knew what the band was getting at. The Owls played with their heart on their sleeve, but kept it covered with a handkerchief.
The only time The Owls showed any real authority in their music was when Brian Tighe sang lead. His songs had a different quality. The songs were richer and the beat two steps quicker. His voice carried more notes and he dug deeper into the guitar, using more of the neck to find less common combinations to the simple structures. Even his turn at the keyboard gave the piano more life. He was easily the most talented musician in the band, and likely, too polite to make any noise over it. 
When it was over The Owls smiled and descended a flight of stairs behind a weathered black door. During the night loads of women went in and out of that door. It led to the backstage dressing room. It’s impossible to say what was going on down there—thirty-something women are hard to read—but every time the door swung open I expected to see evidence of an espresso machine or cheese plate waiting below.
The most humble thing to come up those stairs was Tim O’Reagan. He ambled onto the stage almost apologetically—in a tender sort of way. Gone were the hawkish features of youth. His face was worn soft through years on the musician’s merry-go-round, complimenting his indifferent dress and easy manner. Thin combed hair and experienced eyes capped the man and his attitude. He twisted a few knobs on an old electric guitar and began.
The stage floor tightened. A mass of people, now stretching back to the far wall, eagerly craned over shoulders and between heads for their sight line. They clapped appreciatively for his presence while a few heartfelt shouts rose from within the audience. In some form or another, a majority of them had seen Tim O’Reagan on stage before. He was amongst friends and the feeling rode through the entire show.
“What would you think if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
and I’ll try not to sing out of key.
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends…”
--Ringo Starr
The show was a long time in the making. It marked Tim O’Reagan’s first hometown show since the release of his self-titled debut album in June, which has won serious acclaim with critics far and wide. Tim O’Reagan, the album, rolls along on charming guitar chords through classic arrangements. O’Reagan’s voice is earnest and thoughtful, with a hint of gravel when needed. Themes of love and women travel longingly through the songs. The whole album is very Midwestern. It brings to mind wide-open spaces, moonlit fields, and dusty roads. Tim O’Reagan was indeed once a Jayhawk.
Live, the material becomes personable. With O’Reagan and his band packed onto the small stage the songs took on a more realistic shape. Standing behind his guitar, O’Reagan sang from experience, not the studio. At times his black acoustic guitar shone with bits of reflected neon light. At times the melodies seemed vintage. He trolled through new originals, a couple covers, and old favorites from the Leatherwoods days. O’Reagan and his band held it tight right until the end. They played twenty-six songs over the course of two hours. Keeping small talk to minimum, O’Reagan engaged the crowd in modest statements of someone not accustomed to the front-man persona. Joking with an audience member about remembering the man’s face from 1989, O’Reagan then went on to play a song from that era. It wasn’t a cruel statement, it was a joke on the both of them. And they both laughed openly.
Laughed?
Where was the holy indifference? The reckless outsider attitude? This show was vastly different in spirit from the typical Minneapolis rock show. Was it the absence of gigantic amplifiers and pretentious zest? Or was it the sensibilities of a veteran performer who abandoned the idea of being an act and decided to be a musician? Based on the audience size and music, I say he chose wisely.
The sound grew stronger and stronger as the nerves passed and the band settled in. There was no hurry. The songs were given room to breathe, often between the picked notes of lead guitar. Even with all the instruments going, songs never wandered away. The sound was held expertly like a racehorse jockey thundering a thoroughbred down the stretch. O’Reagan made sure to deflect the praise onto his band: Jim Boquist on lead guitar, bassist Frankie Lee, drummer Peter Anderson, and on again off again multi-instrumentalist Pete Sands. They stood on stage proudly and played like professionals.
But Boquist stood head and shoulders above the talented group. This man could easily be picked from a police line-up as a rock musician. He is tall, wiry, and has a leathery face from some branch on the Iggy Pop family tree. His electric guitar fills wound through the framework of the songs, pouring in life and legs. When called for, he machine gunned loud solos. Other times keeping his hollow body guitar busy with tight sequences of rhythm. A former member of the alt-rock band Son Volt, Boquist—in an honest gesture by Tim O’Reagan—sang a few of his own songs during the performance. One of these was a beautiful ballad pulled from an acoustic twelve-string guitar. The vocal melody is still trapped in my brain.
The show ended with a couple of Tim O’Reagan’s friends climbing from the audience to help on a few songs. The first was Marc Perlman. Another former Jayhawk, Perlman donned an electric guitar and sang harmony on a long extended jam. Sharing a microphone and solos with Boquist, he kept off to the side and let his old drummer swim in the spotlight. The song had a faster tempo and the tension from over an hour of serious material washed away. The audience cheered the camaraderie. In their hips the first signs of dancing took hold.
At the encore finale, a pale moon-faced man with bleach blond hair replaced Tim O’Reagan in the spotlight. It was Curtiss A. He wailed into a harmonica as the band launched into “I Can Only Give You Anything,” the '60s garage classic. Alternating between harmonica and microphone Curtiss A brought the knockdown punch.
Bang.
The audience broke from their distant trance. Curtiss A hit them again. Responding to the iconic character howling on stage, shouts and cries sprang up. Feet began to move. Ten more minutes and actual dancing would have broken out.
Did it matter he was reading the lyrics from a piece of paper taped to a stage monitor?
Not really.
Tim O’Reagan broke into a wide grin and a big weight seemed to fall from his neck. KC and The Sunshine Band’s “Keep It Coming Love” rang out. This was the end: a rocking, loose ramble without the burden of soul bearing. For the first time that night Tim O’Reagan played with obvious joy.
Everywhere people were smiling and looking at each other knowingly. The shift from reverence to cheer was stunning. It was like I had been plucked from the 400 Bar and magically dropped onto the set of a coming of age movie. All that was missing was a beautiful woman.
And then there she was. The woman from the grocery store. Leaning against the wall with the same wool coat on. She was framed poetically by dim lights that highlighted her long brown hair. I hadn’t stopped thinking about her all week. She was putting on little mittens.
All right this is it. This is your chance. The mood in here is off the charts. Just walk over there and introduce yourself. Say something charming.
“Hello, remember me,” I said. “My name is Charlie.”
She was obviously surprised—again. The woman bit her lower lip and judged the distance to the exit.
“I didn’t tell you at the time… but I’m a rock critic.”
Her eyes turned into mine. A new expression flashed across her face. “Yeah,” she laughed, “then you must not be any good.”
Raising an eyebrow I shot back, “What do you mean?”
“A hack. No good. Lousy.”
“I guess I meant why?”
The beautiful woman turned on her heels and joined with a group of friends coming out of the bathroom. At a safe distance she shouted back, “Because you were buying ten cans of SpagettiO’s.” And then she walked out the door.
I knew it. Running to the door I called after her into the cold night, “What’s wrong with SpagettiO’s?”
* * *
Tim O’Reagan Set List:
Game
Black and Blue
Girl/World
Why
These Things
Highway Flowers
Riverbends
Tinseltown
(wastin time)
Happy Man
Pictures of Dad
Ivy
Plaything
Star
Anybody’s Only
Train Leaves
Tampa to Tulsa **
Just Like You
Drivin Wheel
Big White Cloud
Rain
Encore:
Gone Gone Gone
Bottomless Cup
Everything
I Can Only Give You Anything
Keep It Coming Love
**Author’s Note: The length of this song is precisely the time it takes to microwave a jumbo-size can of SpagettiO’s w/ meatballs. Enjoy.
Photos: Tim O'Reagan; Brian Tighe of the Owls; O'Reagan; Marc Perlman and Jim Boquist. All photos by Skye Bingham.
Location Info:
400 Bar
Artist Info: The Owls, Tim O'Reagan
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