Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All

by King, Stephen

  You can’t write about the Remainders without writing about Kathi. Kathi, and her smile, her wigs, her laugh. But we lost Kathi in May of 2012 to the unfairness of cancer, and my throat still chokes when I think of her, and I don’t want to get morose. So, about Kathi, let me just say: “Thanks. You changed not only my career, but my life forever when you invited me into this band.” Kathi’s photo hangs on my wall; her smile hangs in my heart.

  So there we all are in the green room. A little twitchy. Eager to get onstage. Maybe some a bit afraid. I’m working through chord changes and “feels” to songs; Dave and Roger and Stephen are celebrating YouTube performances; Amy is holding court with some friends; Scott is trying on wigs; Roy is running through how he’ll address the crowd. He’s always the first Remainder onstage. Matt is drawing Bart Simpson on plastic plates to hurl into the crowd as giveaways. Mitch is working out a problem with the keyboard.

  The call goes out: “Time.”

  Dave collects us. We join along with Ted, our volunteer manager, our spouses, including Camilla McGuinn, and about twenty of us do “hands in the huddle.” We stretch to touch fingers.

  Dave says, “For Kathi.”

  Our hands and arms lift like an umbrella coming open. We shout. A few people wipe tears away.

  We are led across a hallway and into a room of three thousand cheering people. Fans. Readers. Librarians, it turns out. Our final show is to three thousand librarians!

  JUNE 23, 2013, FINAL CONCERT, THE PAST OUR BEDTIME 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR,

  Photo by Joseph Peduto

  Roy takes the stage and introduces us one by one. We run onstage as he does. And with each intro, my throat tightens. These are no longer friends; they are family. We are family. Are we really breaking up?

  Roy makes ingenious puns and jokes out of our writing styles, or genres, or names. The crowd is right with him.

  My turn comes. I get slapped on the back by those remaining to be called. I run out, wave, strap on my bass. Shade my eyes from the lights to look out at Gary, our soundman, who’s been with us the whole run. I wave to him. I double-check the monitor sound man as well. We’re all ready.

  More are introduced. I applaud with the crowd. How did I get up here? What am I doing here? I test my bass; it makes noise. This is not a dream.

  Dave steps up to the mike and welcomes the crowd. Thanks them. A girl is sobbing in the front row while looking at Stephen.

  Greg catches my attention. “Hey, let’s do this,” he says.

  I nod.

  Every band member steps up to a microphone—we are starting with an a cappella intro to “House Is Rockin’.”

  Josh counts it down with his drumsticks. 1—2—3—4.

  Dave and I exchange a grin. There’s nothing like this. Nothing close to this.

  And we sing.

  Q&A: The Designated Worrier

  Q&A with the Remainders

  Q: As Designated Worrier of the band, what did Ridley worry about?

  A:

  “Playing the bass”

  “When Mitch would show”

  “Everything. Ridley is a powerful worrier. He routinely keeps planes from crashing using only the power of worry.”

  “The birds!”

  RIDLEY’S SIGNATURE MARK ON BAND FAXES

  Ted’s Management Lesson #1:

  Network

  In 2003, the Remainders played the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, where we also cooked up an evening called Besides the Music, a riff on VH1’s Behind the Music. We’d throw all these authors onstage and have someone in Hollywood interview them. But what Hollywood celebrity could handle this bunch? Two years earlier, I had attended a Passover seder in west Los Angeles. (Who doesn’t want a half-Palestinian-Eritrean-Episcopalian at a seder?) That’s where I met a woman who heard I worked for Dave Barry during his presidential campaign. “My boss is a big Dave Barry fan,” she shared with me. Her boss, it turned out, was Steve Martin. Remembering this, I sent Dave in to make the “ask.” The very next day, we got a yes.

  PAID FOR BY THE COMMITTEE TO HAVE ONLY ONE LEAD GUITARIST IN THE REMAINDERS (aka GREG ILES)

  Pop Quiz: Most Likely To…

  Who voted him/herself as “Most likely to fart on the band bus and blame someone else,” “Best pirate,” “Most likely to attend summer school,” and “Most likely to plagiarize”?

  Select a choice:

  Mitch Albom

  Matt Groening

  Dave Barry

  James McBride

  Results: Most Likely To…

  See what percentage of the Remainders and all other readers picked each answer

  Mitch Albom Readers: 27%

  Remainders: 0%

  Matt Groening Readers: 32%

  Remainders: 17%

  Dave Barry Readers: 26%

  Remainders: 66%

  James McBride Readers: 16%

  Remainders: 17%

  INBOX > Subject: Update/Request about the Remainders’ e-book

  From: James McBride

  Sent: Monday, June 4, 2012 7:32 p.m.

  Ridley,

  I have no idea what I would write [for this book] other than to say this is a very lousy band, one of the worst I’ve ever played with, and that overall it has been one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve ever had as a man and a musician. I always feel free in this band. I admire the humility of the deeply talented souls around me, and I feel a kinship to them. Even to those I rarely see. Writers don’t live in a vacuum. We’re lost in public. And I’m happy to be around so many lost souls like myself. Without Kathi, we are truly Remainders. We’re all that’s left. We better enjoy it and spread some love while there’s still time. I’ll do the best I can.

  Peace,

  James

  A Truly Horrible Band

  by James McBride

  I was monkeying around at a writer’s event sometime before 2000 when I came across Amy Tan and Isabel Allende. I don’t remember the event. I don’t remember the year, or even where it was. I just remember we were serving penance there, signing books. The only thing worse than doing that, by the way, is not being asked to do it.

  After all was said and done, after the books were signed, the crowd had gone home, and the room was cleared out, Amy turned to me and said, “I hear you play sax. You wanna join our band?”

  I didn’t realize at the time that Amy is a softie. She’ll give a stranger her last dime. She had apparently invited several best-selling writers who claimed to have musical skill into this band, at times with disastrous results. I didn’t know that back then. In fact, I didn’t know the Remainders at all and had never heard of them. But I was a desperate man at the time. I was a full-time musician who’d recently become a full-time writer, and I was starving to play. I would’ve played with the Ku Klux Klan Marching Band back then if they’d asked me.

  Amy was sitting at a table when she popped the question. And while I don’t quite remember what she was wearing, I do remember it wasn’t wash-and-wear. I seem to recall there were lots of scarves and flowers on the thing, whatever it was. And each time she shifted in her chair, the daisies on it seemed to get all mixed up with the azaleas. The regal, South-American countenance of the gorgeous Isabel Allende peered over Amy’s shoulder as Amy spoke, and between the two of them, they seemed to suck the air out the room. I felt like I was like sitting in a room full of marshmallows. I seem to remember that at least two of us were married at the time, me and Amy being those two. But who cared? It was a writer’s conference. Isn’t that what they’re for? It was all systems go. All things seemed possible. I said yes.

  Next thing I know, I was staring at the ugly mug of Steve on a bus outside a hall in Washington, DC, after the most horrible rehearsal I’d experienced in years. The band sounded absolutely horrific, like a cross between a warm engine trying to crank on a cold October morning and the gurgling sound my uncle Walter used to make after he downed five rum and cokes. They stopped for any error, or worse, they’d drive to t
he end of the song anyway, carrying a mistake around their neck like a sandwich board, embracing it, caressing it, placing it on the ground and stomping it, destroying it, decimating chords and harmonies, entire songs, slaying the dragon until the whole thing was over. Just pound the thing into dust till it disappeared. Just kill off everything, the mistake, the song. Just turn up the volume and demand more reverb and go.

  Afterward, I staggered to a bus that was waiting to take us to the hotel, fleeing to the back to lick my wounds. I was one of the first aboard and kept to myself. After a few minutes, Steve and Warren climbed on and bounced to the seat in front of me. Then Steve spun around and said, “Now you’re in the band. And there’s no way out.” Next to him, Warren laughed.

  Thus began the wild and fun activity of my middle years.

  ***

  One irony about becoming a best-selling author is that you no longer know if your jokes are funny. You’re supposed to be wise, when the truth is, you’re a kind of fraud. You’re no wiser now than you were when you wrote the dang book in the first place, whatever it was. It’s a hell of a thing, to walk around in a world where everyone thinks you know more than you do. It makes hanging out with old friends difficult. It makes finding new friends even harder. Others look at you and say, “Why can’t I have what you have?” In this band, that’s not a problem. We know we got nothing. We know we’re lousy. At everything. We stink and it’s great.

  But there’s another part of this for me, and it’s serious. This band has served as a kind of passage for my middle years. While I was in the band, my mother died. My brother and my favorite niece died. My wife divorced me. My youngest son was born. My two older kids grew up. 9/11 happened. And all the while, this band remained as stalwart friends. Texting and e-mailing from across the country, because they had their share of the blues, too, telling sour jokes, making fun of one another, comforting one another in times of death and deprivation. Always the same. Just a rotten bunch of frauds. A terrible group. Brash as ever. Loud, garish, unforgiving, and totally fun.

  The blues visited us all. I don’t feel like getting into Warren and Kathi, because I’m a positive person. I don’t see the point in lingering on a person after they’re gone. I don’t want anyone getting all blubbery over me, having death extravaganzas and so forth. Throw a party and get it over with, is what I say. But I suppose I should talk about them, since they were important to us all and their deaths hurt us so much. The fact is, a lot of the Remainders were closer to them than I was. I used to call Warren from time to time, mostly when I had shuttered myself in some tiny cheap hovel to try to eke out a book. I once called him from a pay phone, using a calling card in the wee hours, from upstate New York, outside a pizza place near Woodstock, where I’d cloistered myself. I said, “Man, I’m stuck.”

  He said something like, “Join the club.”

  “What do you do when you’re stuck?” I asked.

  “I go out and buy new shoes,” he said. “I have a whole closetful of shoes. Prada shoes. You want me to send you a pair?”

  I laughed and felt better. I read about his death in the newspaper. It was a long-distance closure of a life. Like watching a neighbor at a barbecue across the street fold up a chair and place it away among a stack of others. Kathi, too. I heard about her death in a text that came from California, and minutes later, a horrible storm swept through my area of Pennsylvania, knocking out power for hours. I sat there in the dark, remembering some zany radio program Roy and I did with Kathi in New York City. Kathi with her fine self, a knockout, all bangles and beads and her sweet smile. Just sitting there feeling my life slip away, bit by bit, death working like an onion peel, just smoothing us off, knocking us off one by one, till it’s my turn. That’s how it comes. I let Kathi loose right there. I let her go in the storm. Just like I let go of Frank. My brother Billy. My mother. My niece Jade. Gone. Free.

  Kathi’s exit was the death knell for this band, if you didn’t already know it. But she went out in style, with Roger’s voice in her head, singing “May the Road Rise to Meet You” as she moved from this world to the next. She went out with a song in her soul. That’s the way I hope to leave this life, just go to sleep with someone singing to me.

  So long as it’s not someone from this band.

  Roger, of course, doesn’t count in that regard. He’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. He’s Hank Aaron amidst a bunch of minor-league ballplayers. He’s an All Star.

  Speaking of stars, I don’t recall the other stars that suffered through playing with us. I generally avoided those gigs. I was interested only in my friends: Dave, Ridley, Mitch, Greg, Kathi, Amy, Steve, Roy, Scott, Matt, Sam, Roger, Ted, Gary, and of course fellow tenorman, Erasmo, and Josh, the only two real musicians on the bandstand—unless you count Mitch and Greg, both of whom once played to live.

  FELLOW TENORMEN,

  Photo by Mike Medeiros

  I have in my computer every e-mail that I’ve ever received from every member of this band—and that would be hundreds. I’m not sharing ’em with anybody. I’ve given enough of myself to people. They’re my memories. I want them for myself, when I get old, so when the day comes when I can no longer hold my water and have to sit around sipping whatever they make you sip when your kidneys give out and your lungs no longer wheeze, I can look back on playing the dozens with Dave Barry, a certified fool, or reading a word of encouragement from Mitch, or getting a much-needed pat on the back from Ted, who made the whole deal go, or breeze through a funny line from Amy, who got me into the whole thing. I want to remember Roy’s funny hats, Kathi’s gentle barbs, Greg’s homespun goodness, Matt’s funny masks, Steve’s laughter, Ridley’s steady hand, and Sam singing “Nobody’s Fault but Mine.” I want to hear Josh’s thunder and Erasmo putting the fire to his tenor in ways I never could, even if it’s in my memory, fading like lousy black-and-white TV.

  These were my good years, when I had a family outside of my own, a family I chose, a group of horrible, rancidly bad musicians whose only purpose was to make noise and lift a few dollars for charity from the pockets of the poor suckers who were kind enough to plunk down cash to hear us destroy the works of some of the greatest songwriters of the last seventy-five years; fellow scribes who never once, in all the years I traveled and played with them, sat around and talked about whose book said what, who sold the most, who’s a good writer and who’s a bad writer, who shot John, and all that jazz. Because most of that doesn’t count. The only thing that counts is the Love. That’s the true note, the true song, the true wisdom, the true music. In that regard, this was a band of All Stars, and we will always be brothers and sisters.

  Remainder Code of the Road

  Get up really early!

  Shut up and listen to Ted.

  There is no road. There is no tree. There is no house. And if Josh and Erasmo aren’t there, there is no gig. Cancel it.

  Never poop on the bus.

  Q&A: Twilight Fan Fiction

  Q&A with the Remainders

  Q: If you were to write Twilight fan fiction in your genre, what would happen?

  A: “I would transform into Rudy Giuliani and dance around at Occupy Wall Street in a hula skirt and a Mike Tyson T-shirt, wearing African war paint.” —James McBride

  “At some point the vampires would go: ‘Wait a minute…We’re rich, intelligent, sophisticated and highly cultured. We can do whatever we want. Why the hell are we attending high school?’” —Dave Barry

  Roynote: On Inflatable Sheep

  When some people hear the expression “inflatable sheep,” they want to associate it with impure thoughts. Nothing could be further from the treweth. And yet we hear that a man down in Snakebran, Florida, has launched a campaign to ban inflatable sheep. A legislator in Scratchit City, Kansas, has introduced a bill that would create a federal registry of inflatable sheep. A seamstress in Everyman, Maine, has sewn a tapestry on which addiction to inflatable sheep destroys her marriage to an inflatable-sheep-addicted man. Quite frankly, thi
s is hooey.

  What does a fellow look for in inflatable sheep? Ewesewelly, companionship. This is especially so in the case of traveling men, such as those in a rock-and-roll band. Can a modern-day minstrel pack one or more flesh-and-blood sheep, or even stuffed sheep, into a carry-on bag? The question almost answers itself: No, he cannot. Deflated sheep, on the other hand, can be packed, and at the next destination, inflated. And there they are. Familiar. Accepting. These sheep are not strangers.

  They are, however, made of plastic. Okay? They are not woolly. They do not baaah, or rub up against a fellow. They do not snuffle around in a fellow’s pockets looking for kernels of corn. Yes, these sheep remind us of the sheep back home. But is a fellow moved to embrace them in an intimate way? Let me answer that question with another question: Would anyone in his right mind have relations with an inflatable plastic watermelon? No one would even think to accuse anyone of such a practice. And yet he who enjoys the company of inflatable plastic sheep is so often stigmatized.