A Free Bird Wedding
A Free Bird Wedding
A cautionary tale. (Yes, I’m the fool who played Free Bird at his own wedding)
Happy Friday all!
Since I know a lot of you in Substackia and beyond are current or former musicians
(or are surrounded by them ), this week I’m sharing another Musician’s Perspective Story about live performance.If you liked Crashing A Funeral you’ll enjoy this too, probably more so, regardless of whether you’re a musician or not. This is a true story from the mid 2000’s, when I definitely wasn’t. In fact this was the first time I ever played in public, as a total rank amateur, told in all of its innocent naïve audacious glory. (I wouldn’t play on stage again for thirteen years - but that’s a different story altogether.)
The title says it all, though not in the way you might think.
Don’t miss the cringeworthy vintage footage at the end!
A Free Bird Wedding
I’d been married for a grand total of six hours before I put my marriage at risk.
I don’t think my six hour old wife knew the stakes at the time. She will after she reads this.
Allow me to set the scene:
An outdoor wedding reception. Mid-2000’s. Big white tent. Big full moon. We’ve done the church thing, the vow thing, the picture thing, the dinner thing, the toast thing, the father/bride dance, I’ve danced with my mom, we’ve thrown bouquets and garters at the eligible singles, we’ve cut the cake. We’ve done everything but properly unwind and enjoy ourselves.
A happy sea of our closest friends and family surrounds us now, everyone properly hypnotized within that joyful time capsule that is a wedding.
The live band has everyone pulsing together like dancing ocean waves to Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl). My wife has followed Pat, the lead singer, from show to show for many years.
They are crushing it.
The band takes a quick breather and queues up some house music. It would’ve probably been something by Kool & The Gang, because apparently American wedding receptions can’t happen without Kool & The Gang.
Pat comes up and pulls me aside in that inclusive but wary way professional musicians carry themselves, trying to come off light-hearted, but I can feel an undercurrent of deadly seriousness in him now.
“We’re coming up on the end of the night - I want to ask you what song you want to close out with.”
He looks over at my six hour old wife.
“I can play Christopher Robin for her,”
(weighty pause)
or you can play something.”
It’s like someone’s hit the pause button on the universal remote that’s been programmed to my life. And somehow, I know it will be set to a new channel, maybe permanently, based on my answer.
Indeed my six hour old wife has mentioned to Pat a time or two that I play guitar and that I’m really good (I do, and I’m OK but nowhere near good) and being the inclusive person he is, he’s graciously given me the opportunity to take the stage on my own wedding night.
And bless her heart, she loves the song she calls Christopher Robin (it’s actually Return to Pooh Corner by Kenny Loggins). It’s a beautiful song, but it’s overly sweet, and it’s about Winnie the Pooh and honey and buzzing bees and regaining lost childhood. It ends on a wistful note with Loggins crooning “Back to the days of Pooooooh…”
I know exactly how it will go. Everyone happy, wife happy, bubbles blown at us as we walk out, reception over. My wife will forever have a memory of one of her favorite songs played just for her to close out a perfect night.
And I will forever know, suffering in quiet desolation for the rest of my life, that I am a complete chickenshit. To the point where instead of stepping up and doing something memorable, I let my own wedding reception conclude with the word “poo.”
This is a wedding. My wedding. It needs to have a proper sendoff.
Without thinking I say, “How about Free Bird?”
Pat looks at me like I’ve just sprouted an extra head.
There are four big problems with what I’ve just said.
This is the tail end of my wedding reception, and I do not possess appropriate levels of sobriety.
I don’t own an electric guitar, and certainly don’t know how to play Free Bird on one.
I have zero experience with stage equipment.
I’ve never actually played in public before.
And Pat’s expression doesn’t do me any favors. It’s in his eyes, mostly. They say uh-oh… here comes a train wreck.
He is right.
I falter at those eyes - maybe there’s another way out. “I’ll talk to her and see what she wants to do.”
So I go to my six hour old wife. Unforgettable in her flowing white Greek goddess dress.
She’s just as surprised and saddened as I am to hear that our reception is already ending so soon.
“Pat just came up to me and asked what we wanted to close out the night with. He said either he could play Christopher Robin for you, or I could do Freebird.”
She doesn’t hesitate.
“Freebird.”
Gulp.
Pat hands me what looks like a jet black Paul Reed Smith with a blue strap that takes me way too long to loop over my tuxedo vest. Of course, I have no idea if it’s a Paul Reed Smith or not because I don’t play electric guitar.
It’s like holding a chainsaw.
I look down at the neck - there are like six extra frets. My acoustic doesn’t even have these notes. I’m assuming that’s where the Free Bird solo is.
Although I don’t know the song’s note specifics, my plan is to sound out something passably decent as I go. I noodle around on it for a bit, warming up, trying to get a sense of the guitar and an ear for the sound it makes. I listen and feel my way around the neck, settling into sounds as I hear them in real time.
It didn’t take long for problem #5 to present itself:
I have never in my life played guitar standing up.
And it’s incredibly awkward. For anyone thinking it shouldn’t be too big of a deal, try putting a treadmill in front of your computer and writing something while walking in place.
I am now praying I can come up with something just passably not awful enough so as not to embarrass myself, and give my wife and all of our friends and family something to remember on our way out.
The time-bending nature of weddings speeds everything up, and the band kicks off before I know what’s happening.
Free Bird begins with a dramatic organ ballad on the keyboard, and then goes straight to that highly recognizable lead guitar part, where Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd plays a classic slide solo. When my time to shine arrives, I slide up to where I think I should be. That’s when problem # 6 hits:
I can’t hear myself playing. At all.
I could hear myself fine when I was noodling around warming up, but now with the sound of the full band around me, I can’t hear a bloody note. Unfortunately, I do not know to ask to turn up the volume of the monitor, nor do I have any idea what one even is.
The next two or three notes are a mangled mess. Hacked. Massacred.
I look out at the crowd with a rueful grin of apology, mouthing “I don’t know this part!” Internally I am cringing and want nothing more than to run off the stage and crawl in a hole. I don’t really know any of the parts. I was relying on playing by ear to sound things out enough to make it through. This was no longer an option.
Pat picks up on my troubles immediately, bless his Irish descended heart, and goes straight into singing the verses. So as not to just be standing there for the next five minutes of the ballad portion of Free Bird like a gigantic idiot, I do little guitar riffs in between his vocals.
On the plus side, I get to see all of my friends and family from a wholly new and unexpected perspective. They seem happy and inebriated enough not to care much about my playing woes, for which I am forever grateful.
On the other hand, I catch a glimpse of Heather, our pure-hearted, perma-smiling wedding videographer, that smile now frozen behind a red blinking light. And I shudder, knowing that this self-wrought musical fiasco is being documented for all time.
I am damn near panicked as the ballad portion concludes and the tempo ramps up for the definitive jam-out “FREEBIRD!!!” solo - you know the one - it’s what ‘that guy’ has in mind every time he shouts “FREEBIRD!!!” at the top of his lungs wherever there is live music.
In a last ditch effort I bring my ear down to the guitar and pick the high E string as loudly as I can, desperately trying to connect my hearing with what is coming out of the guitar.
And just as Pat goes into the final vocal crescendo
“Oh won’t you flyyyyyy hiiiigh Freeeeeeee Bird Yeah….”
I find it. Right between Freeeeee and Bird I find it. The high G root note. I don’t need sound anymore.
I know exactly where I am.
Something takes over and I launch into the solo with a surge of confidence. Maybe I am finally being rewarded for my courage in stepping into the great wide open, for my public Fool’s Journey.
The whole atmosphere transforms, goes electric, and even as I stare with laser-eyed intensity at my finger positioning I can feel Pat’s eyes next to me - instead of train wreck they are now excited to be along for the ride.
I completely let go of all sense of control, no idea what I’m playing anymore, and it’s definitely not Free Bird, but I can’t hear what the hell I’m doing anyway. I just feel the rhythm coursing through me, fingers shred-flailing away within some general pentatonic structure, hoping to get lucky. It seems to be working. Everyone is going nuts.
I’m almost home free when disaster strikes.
I still can’t really hear anything, but at the very least I can see where my fingers are. And F me - my heart drops when I realize they’re in the wrong place. I’m playing the Free Bird solo in the wrong freaking key. And I have no idea how long this has been going on.
I shift back up a fret to the right spot, but it’s too late.
Pat and the band have already made an abrupt about face, bringing the song to a sudden crashing halt. Oh shit. The Hook - I’m getting the Hook. It must be bad. It must be really bad. How long has it been? Have I been playing this whole time in the wrong F-ing key?! F**k….
I strum a single half-hearted G chord along with them to close out, then relinquish the guitar to Pat.
Red-faced and embarrassed, I can’t even look in his eyes.
In a jolting contradiction to the awfulness which has just transpired, beaming friends and family slap me on the back as I step back onto the dance floor.
Wow I had no idea you could do anything like that
Freebird!!!
Dude that was AWESOME
I plaster a false grin on my face. They’re just being nice to a half-drunk groom. We all know what just happened.
I duck my way through towards my wife, 100% certain I’ve completely embarrassed myself in front of her and everyone we care about.
She bends me into her and pulls me into an embrace. I mumble some kind of apology in her ear. She is glowing and doesn’t seem to care.
“You were great!”
Two weeks later the wedding video arrives. I feel sick to my stomach, afraid to look. Sadly, even quiet moments of my honeymoon have been stolen by dark thoughts around the tail end of our reception.
Then I see the video.
Yes, the ending was indeed quite awful, but it was over in a flash. As for the rest of it — I can’t believe my eyes, let alone my ears.
I was shredding that shit.
As a “seasoned” (emphasis on the quotes) professional musician now, who played his first live show fifteen years post Free Bird Wedding, I marvel (and cringe) at the sheer audacity of even considering something like that under those conditions.
But I often wonder, to this day, what would’ve happened if I’d taken the safer route. I’m reasonably certain there is an E.T. Allen living a parallel life as we speak, who wouldn’t have been able to stomach the self-loathing of knowing he’d built his marriage on a foundation of “poo.” The music within him lies dormant, unknown, and the bitterness of its repression has piled up over the years in countless shapes and forms. Fully wedded to a high-flying business career, he is no longer married.
Of course, going the Free Bird route is not without its own unique set of challenges, to which my now seventeen year old wife will readily attest.
She could’ve given me the easy way out, then and now. Instead she is always finding new ways to say I want to hear YOU.
After all, she is the one who showed up on my 38th birthday with the coveted guitar I’d been playing on my lunch break for nine months straight, knowing I would never buy it myself. Knowing I would’ve just kept plucking away at the same one I’d had for twenty years. She is the one who surprised me with a microphone and speakers that same Christmas, knowing I would never risk singing a note in public otherwise.
She is the one who gives me the freedom
Then and now
To fly.
VINTAGE FOOTAGE ALERT (!)
The exact moment Pat’s eyes got on board:
“Shredding that shit…” (From my vantagepoint now this is really just flailing around, but I was quite pleased with myself then given the circumstances)
Train going completely off the rails and getting The Hook. (Earmuffs.)
A vintage shot of Pat and I 🦅 🦅
What a delightful story. I can see why she loves you!
I do not drop links to my own work in other people's comments casually. This is a have-to.
'Nuff said:
https://www.adamnathan.com/p/sweet-home-alabama