I've seen the Polyphonic play since probably their third show ever. We even drove to Austin once to see them open for Granddaddy. The Beginning Stages was my summer anthem the year it came out. This was also the summer I was getting ready to move to Portland. I would ride in my friend Trish's mustang and "I'm ON MY WAYYYYY" would blare out to the streets and Candice would tap me on the shoulder from the back seat and say "That's you. You're on your way". Not just in the literal sense. I was supposedly on my way to a bigger and better life in Portland. Soon after the Polyphonic Spree started moving on to bigger and better themselves. They toured through Portland a few times and I would be so pumped to see my friends and hear my songs from my home. Interestingly once I moved to Portland I rarely went to shows but if a Dallas band came through I was hell bent on getting there.
Then Polyphonic toured with Bowie. I stood in line behind Zia from The Dandy Warhols (who I frigging love and I almost peed my pants with excitement but I of course played it cool in line) to get my tickets. Once I was in my seat emotion hit me like a ton of bricks. My Polyphonic was opening for David freaking Bowie. That day I cried Terms of Endearment style. I felt like I was on that stage with them and I felt like they represented everything I loved about Texas. The good things or at least the showmanship of the good things.
So here I was back at Lola's and the feeling hits me again. Lola's is incredibly packed on the stage and in the crowd. My day started in emotional anticipation because some of my friends are experiencing their performance for the first time and I just wanted to be them experiencing it for the first time. it seems so obvious to say it's a spiritual experience since the band wears choir robes but it's beyond that. It fills you up. All these songs about love and happiness and Tim with his radiant smile involving the crowd in every song with his sweet voice. There's so many different instruments playing you can't even focus sometimes, but when I do I'm just so happy. It fills me up and I feel like I should be floating I'm so full of happiness and we all should be floating and the band will just stay on the stage and we'll watch them from the ceiling. On some songs I'm jumping up and down with excitement so hard it's like I'm trying to get up there. So I'm jumping but still crying.
I cry for the same reasons as at David Bowie concert but this time it's from a place of history. I've been watching this band for ten years. TEN. I've grown up. they've grown up. One of the members I know isn't there because she, like me, has two kids at home and somebody had to stay with them. All the people who were in the band that I knew really well are gone and I miss those people dearly, but somehow it still feels exactly the same as it did back then. We've made it through the ups and downs of living and performing/ watching performances in Dallas. There are bands that have come and gone. Remnants of the past in Dallas of a different time. There are new fantastic bands and a new fresh start but the Polyphonic Spree is my constant. Tim Delaughter is my constant. With Tim comes the history of Dallas and my life there and the first time I heard Tripping Daisy playing live on the Adventure Club in my tiny little room in Cleburne and Tim kept referring to girls as doves and I thought it was the most adorable thing I 'd ever heard. Tripping Daisy was an incredible band and after the sadness of how they ended Polyphonic came and it's not the same. I can't compare the two really. That's like asking a mom who her favorite children are but Polyphonic helped me at least heal part of that sadness. So I cry remembering all of that.
I cry when they sing "It's the Sun," because that was my Portland song and in some sense Portland wasn't all I had hoped but in another sense going there led me back to here and loving being in Fort Worth and my current life and made me appreciate what I missed most when I lived in Portland. I cry because I missed the first two songs. I cry because Tim mentions MCA and oh hell no do not talk to me about MCA right now. My friends are holding my hand like I have mental problems or maybe just because we remember that we love each other. By this point Tim is hanging halfway off the stage over the crowd and he does a call and response with the crowd singing and the band and choir slowly leave the stage. It's just us and Tim and me and I've stopped crying but I'm still happy.
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