"I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow Comes!": Song & Story

We’d been playing Spice Street for about a month. When we first started we played every Thursday and Friday. This was my first steady gig, and I was on the set with cats who’d been dealing with this music much more intimately. That’s how it felt anyways. Every night I was tryna keep up. Even after we’d gotten a solid repoirtoire together, and I knew what I was doing a little bit, the rush of anxiety from just missing that turn around, or almost nailing that lyric kept me hungry. It was like finding and chasing a brand new high, and I never wanted to run out of supply.

She was coming into town Friday morning of that holiday weekend. I wanted her to be there when I sang it with the band. The day after I wrote it, I played and sang it to her in the Chicago afternoon sunlight of my humble Hyde Park apartment. She rescued me then, and so I fumbled through on the keyboard trying to give her an idea of what I heard in my head, but it was still too fresh. She loved it. I didn’t do it justice. So I got excited to perform for her. Make up for some missed effort. I wrote out a chart for the band and planned to save it for her for Friday.

Maybe management knew I had to stay true to the lyric. Early that week we’d been moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays. Instead of music while you’d dine, they had a belly dancer. She told me she took a class at the YMCA or something. I think her name was Amy.

Discouraged as I was that she’d miss it, I was determined to deliver it to her, in spirit at least and or somehow. I handed each of the guys a chart, and the rest is on youtube. My own song and it felt like I was writing it in the performance. There was a brief discussion of form and feel before we played but that was all dealt with on the inside. Each of us all listening singing reading playing losing finding our way back. Rewarded with the claps from the few girls that sat in front of us, not knowing we were blind to them, seeing only the music. Me seeing only her.

‘…here every Wednesday and Thursday from 6:30 to 9:30, and we’re gonna be working in some new tunes for y’all real soon.’ I said after introducing the band. Not realizing I hadn’t introduced the song.

History preserved courtesy of JC’s iphone. He sent me the raw audio, and I forwarded it to her email before she came. I wonder what she thinks of it now…