Rob Bergstrom, Everybody!

Left Foot Braking mid-show

Severna Park is a really nice place to grow up, in part because the people who live there are not paticularly transient. When people move there, they stay. If they move, its usually down the street. As a result, I've known a lot of my high school friends since kindergarten or first grade. Its a special kind of friendship when you can talk about who wet their pants in kindergarten (Rasim, and he will remind you of it) or who threw up in Mrs. O'Hara's music class (Brett Steger, who then moved away...but I don't think because of the music class incident).

Its the kind of friendship that makes you tolerate a lot of annoying traits...and that makes it easy to stay friends, even when people move away. And its the kind of friendship that makes it easy to drive 3 1/2 hours in the summer (without air conditioning) to go to a CD release party/show on a Tuesday night.

So that's what I did last week, on June 21st, which also happened to be Rob's 30th birthday. He and the band played a show at Gravity Lounge in Charlottesville to announce the release of his new CD, Live at Victory Hall Theater.

CJ and I were both able to rearrange our work schedules to get to the show, and my sister drove over from Lexington to meet us. Gravity Lounge was a cool venue - sort of a bookstore/cafe/music house with a very laid back feel and awesome, heavy, crystal wine glasses. During the show, I took a ton of notes (as is my way) on a variety of old credit card receipts found in my purse. I'm not a very prepared journalist.

After the show, Erin went home, I stopped taking notes, and Rob, CJ and I headed to another bar to hang out with Rob's sound guy (the very talented Rich...really the sound was incredible) and manager (the entertaining storyteller John). I was up way past my bedtime for a Tuesday...but it was well worth the pain.

After my miserable drive home (again with no A/C) on Wednesday morning, I typed up my notes and realized I'd taken in a TON of information, including the entire set list. I won't go into that much detail here, but there are a few observations I'm going to make:

1. Its really interesting to know someone for so long then to hear him sing songs and tell little stories (VH1 Storytellers style) about his life and how he feels. Rob has always been a pretty open guy with his emotions (I remember being at a party at his house in high school and listening to him read from his middle school diary. It was all about skateboarding and how cool Emily Pickens was. Just like I'd imagine ALL SPMS 7th grade boys diaries were back then.) But still, it is really cool to hear him express himself through music. Makes me feel like I know him better than I know a lot of other people.

2. Its also cool to have known someone for their entire music career (and since I met Rob when I was four, I feel comfortable saying I have). He's grown a lot, even in the past few years, month by month, I think. Lyrically, his newer songs have a clarity and universality (though they're still personal) that give them an edge over his older stuff (which is not to say I don't looooove Marlboro Lights, his early pop hit-to-be). His voice has matured, too, and (probably) his stage presence. Granted, this is the first time I've seen him play in such a professional setting, but I thought he did a great job telling stories that lead into the songs. Again with the Storytellers format. He's really suited for it.

3. Along those same lines, this was the first time I'd heard him play with Left Foot Braking and I was SO impressed. He'd do a few songs on his own, then a few with the band, then on his own, then again with the band. That left the audience able to contrast is solo style with what he gets from a collaborative effort - it kept it really interesting. Plus, the band played a few songs written by other members...and I thought they were awesome, though stylistically very different from Rob's songs and from each other. I left thinking about how my parents used to talk a lot about the difference between Paul McCartney's and John Lennon's Beatles songs.

4. During the whole show, and the drive home, I couldn't help but think about how lucky I am to have such great friends. When our friend Emily, the aforementioned coolest girl in middle school (and later, too) died a few years ago, Rob wrote a song to remember her. Its a happy, positive, fantastic song and entirely appropriate for her, and it always makes me cry when I hear it (CJ and I were a bit of a mess when he played it during the show). But it also always sends the Benfield/SP kids into a fit of remembering how lucky we are to have such great, old, talented and interesting friends.

Unfortunately, usually when we're being thankful for each other, its because something bad has happened - like Emily's death (or, for example, our friend Matt being in shock trauma after a stupid motorcycle accident.) The nice thing about that night in Charlottesville was that it reminded me of all the great things about my friends - in a happy way. It was Rob's birthday, we were celebrating, and it was very easy to be happy without the twinge of sadness that usually comes with the "we have such amazing friends" talk.

I realize this post has spiralled into the worst kind of sappiness...the "I love you guuuuyyysss" kind that usually comes only when I've been drinking. I'd planned to take this post in a different direction, actually, and talk more about Rob's musical style, how he reminds me of Ryan Adams, what it must be like to be a musician in a town known for one big, super famous hometown boy, and what might be different about Rob's musical career if he lived in Baltimore. But I didn't.

Instead, you got the schmaltz. Sorry.

But I really, really do love my high school/elementary school friends. Go Benfield Bengals!!!