I think I have every early mixtape that anyone ever made for me. Some were from friends to celebrate birthdays or the seasons or just to share a new selection of music they were really into at the moment. The artwork was as important as the music on the mix and the list of the songs and the artists were written neatly on the the inside flap of the Maxell casette. I have mixtapes from strangers I met in coffee shops back when you would hang out and write in your journal and smoke packs of cigarettes while sipping bottomless coffees and everyone in the place seemed to be up to something creative (they just weren’t on phones or laptops then). These mixtapes were a way to share a bit of who you were with the world or at least with anyone who would listen. It was like an Insta story I suppose, just lasted a lot longer.
One of my friends from high school and I used to seek out this cafe culture and sometimes would even drive up to the Full Moon Diner on US 41 just because we liked the fact that it had “moon” in the name. There we would sit with our journals and write, cigarettes sending plumes of smoke into the roadside diner as we sat with a single cup of coffee that the waitress would refill with charming indifference. It was a scene so poetic it could have been a in a David Lynch film from the 90’s. It was the 90’s.
William Steffey and I shared many mixtapes with one another and many cups of diner coffee since those early years. You can tell who the artists are in your universe if you pay attention and Bill was one of them. His passion for music was palpable and his ability to write lyrics with a subtle use of metaphor, to play guitar like he does and to create music based on the golden ratio is not the stuff of your everyday angst-riddled teenager. He was seeing the world in a different way and not because he wanted to, but because he just did. Artists rarely choose the path of the artist but are driven by a passion so deep that to follow any other direction would be a painful pursuit leading only to regret and emptiness.
The lifelong pursuits of most musicians I know are undertaken for the same reasons we used to drive out to that Full Moon Diner all those years ago. It is not for fame and fortune, just like it was not for the food or coffee at that diner (it was pretty terrible I remember). The musician follows a more mystical calling, the one from a deeper realm that once it has surfaced and made itself known cannot be easily ignored. There was nothing certain about what would come out of taking that long drive just for a cup of coffee. There were closer cafes, better coffee, easier options…but the pursuit of this distant unknown was too intriguing not to follow. Music has the power to pull us to explore far corners of ourselves, both for the musician and for the listener. You have to be willing to listen, and should remember that every mixtape exists because somewhere a musician sat down at a cafe and started to write. And where would we be without music?
Come celebrate the music of a lifelong musician and friend this Friday at Esquina. Record Launch. Listening party. Raffle / Fundraiser for Thresholds. Food and small bites. FREE. 8PM.
