I felt a kinship with Bre even before I met her. Which happened the day of the interview. Two reasons: one circumstantial, a happenstance of geography. The other is the subject of this essay (“essay” feels cold. There’s got to be a better word for it. Confession?)
Bre was born in Salt Lake City. Her own family, as I learned in the interview, came up in Idaho Falls. I was born and raised in Idaho, in a different Falls — Twin Falls — and we used to go to Salt Lake on vacation, it being the biggest city in 500 miles. Who cares about that but there was (and is) an amusement park in Salt Lake called Lagoon. And that, my friend, is what a childhood thrill is made of.
I rode my first roller coaster at Lagoon, an ancient wooden thing that shook from side to side on the track because it was only held there by gravity. I was six. I was with my dad. We were in the front car. So terrified I was after the first drop I wormed out of the harness and grabbed his leg and bit him through his Levis until he bled. It’s been part of our family lore ever since. We went every summer, some years more than once. We used to camp in a trailer next to the amusement park to save money. I was assaulted there by a park employee when I was 14. I ran to my find my parents and told them what happened. An hour later I saw the man and pointed him out and to my utter shock and amazement and respect, my gentle soft-spoken father confronted the man in public. A huge crowd gathered. Everything suggested a fight was about to break out. Instead we reported him to the Lagoon office and received a very apologetic letter a few weeks later that the man had been fired. Writing this down now 35 years later… I wonder where that guy is. I hope he’s okay.
Back to Bre. She showed up with a guitar and good will to spare. That makes it easy to have a genuine conversation. I made an observation out of the gate that her songs — at least on her new record The Alchemist — have a lot more to do with self-acceptance than they do romantic love. Was that an accurate perception? That set us going in a direction away from music business and toward music meaning, which is what I’m in it for.
Bre is having a moment of positive reinforcement. These things come and go. Mostly, go. So when you find yourself in a come moment, it is like getting straight As on your report card. You feel you may indeed have been right all along. The world is finally catching up with you and your bold vision. You glow with a kind of effortless confidence. Bre had that confidence. And with it, a willingness to explore herself and her life and what brought her to this moment. I went with her.
