“Sally, did you make a set list?”

“I started to, but I couldn’t remember whether Lucas and Eric are playing two guitar duets or one.”

“I thought it was two, right guys?” Walt asks us.

“Yes, two, if we have time to run over ‘Alabama Jubilee’ before noon,” I say, as I wash my hands in Walt’s kitchen sink, trying to remove the sticky traces of Maura’s blueberry pancakes, slathered in maple syrup, a delicious but not ideal meal before a gig.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Eric says. “When do we need to be up at school? 11:30?”

This isn’t so much a last-minute rehearsal as a warm-up before our noon concert in the Library, a gig that Walt snagged when the band slated for today’s concert suddenly broke up. Forced to find a band name quickly, we went with Eric’s first suggestion, inspired by the reason the other band gave for the cancellation: Reconcilable Differences.

Sally and Walt have finished breakfast and are playing “Tucker’s Barn,” the quirky fiddle tune we’ve decided will open the concert. My hands are tender and raw from the nearly scalding dish water, but I pick up my fiddle and join Sally on the raggy, eccentric melody. Eric completes the quartet on guitar, still chewing on a piece of homemade toast.

“I think we’ve got that one down,” Walt says when we finish. “Let’s run the set.”

“I haven’t written it out yet,” Sally says. “I was hoping you’d tell me what you think first.”

We spend five or ten minutes finalizing the running order for the twelve tunes and songs on Sally’s list. I play guitar on half of them, including the two duets with Eric, and fiddle on the rest. Sally picks up the banjo-uke for two of the old-time songs that Walt is singing—“I Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow” and “Raleigh and Spencer”—as well as the fiddle tune “Sandy River Belle.” She’s also singing two old-time country duets with Eric: “Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes” and “Short Life of Trouble,” for which Eric switches to mandolin. Eric and Sally are not particularly strong singers, but their voices blend nicely on these sweet, sentimental songs, which Sally learned from a reissue of some 1930s recordings by the Blue Sky Boys that she found at a Seattle record store on winter break. Walt is also singing Charlie Poole’s version of the old blues song “Frankie and Johnny” and the uptempo murder ballad “Poor Ellen Smith.”

The guitar duets are short, mostly showcases for Eric’s virtuosity, although I play a solo on each. His arrangement of “Alabama Jubilee” is based on Clarence White’s, and I play a version of Clarence’s most straightforward break. The other duet is “Say, Old Man” a four-part, minor-key fiddle tune that Eric has been working up for a guitar contest in Seattle next month. Our arrangements are the same for both: Eric kicks off the tune, I follow with a solo based on the melody, and Eric finishes with two breaks, the final a repeat of the melody. The only other song with two guitars is “River Blues,” a novelty swing ditty sung by Eric, on which I play a short bluesy solo I came up with a few weeks ago. The set ends with a rollicking two-fiddle version of one of our favorite square dance tunes: “Mississippi Sawyer.”

We manage to run through everything before we have to leave, and I feel good about everything except “Alabama Jubilee,” which Eric wants to play much faster than I can manage. It’s not an unusual tempo for the tune, according to Eric, and a fair amount slower than Clarence White’s recording, so I can’t legitimately suggest he kick it off any slower. I hope I can find a few minutes to practice it again when we get up to the Library.

Though I’ve only been playing fiddle for a few months, the repetition of playing tunes over and over at the weekly square dances, with a full band keeping me in line, has made me more comfortable on the fiddle than the guitar, especially when I have to play anything other than rhythm. Compared to Eric, who’s much more accomplished and confident, my solo attempts feel like trying to cross a rickety suspension bridge above a deep ravine while people watch impatiently from the opposite side. As fiddler, when I’m playing a simple song melody or a tune I’ve played numerous times at the square dances, the banjo, guitar, and banjo-uke give me a comfy musical bed to relax on. Playing double fiddle with Sally is even less taxing, like having an understudy ready to jump in at any time, or a prompter ready to whisper the next line in my ear.

“I’ve never heard you play fiddle,” Angelica says, as I step down off the stage in the Library lobby. “When did you start doing that?”

“During Christmas break.”

“You’re kidding. That’s all?”

“I played cello in junior high, so the whole bowing thing isn’t totally foreign.”

“Well, you sound fantastic. Hey Sally, I love your singing with Eric.”

Angelica wanders off to talk to Sally, and I look out into the audience, spying Jenny next to Alma in the front row. They seem to be arguing.

“You should play fiddle more often,” Sofía says, appearing at my side as if from nowhere, my blinkered gaze obscuring everything but Jenny.

“Thanks. That’s mostly what I’ve been doing lately. You could probably tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just that my guitar playing sucked.”

I had gotten through “Say, Old Man” without mistakes, but I choked on “Alabama Jubilee,” which Eric kicked off even faster than in rehearsal, and when it came time to play “River Blues” I was so nervous that I barely made it through what should have been an easy solo.

“You could have fooled me.”

“Thanks. Hey, you had your conference with Mr. Coleman yesterday, right? How did that go? I’m meeting with him this afternoon.”

“It was good. We just talked, no big deal.”

“Do you have a subject for your term paper yet?”

“Of course.”

“That’s the thing, I don’t. What are you doing?”

“I’m writing about George Gershwin and Benny Goodman, the intersection of jazz and classical music.”

“Nice. Mr. Coleman liked that idea?”

“Yeah. I showed him an outline and a couple rough pages I wrote. I played ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ in high school, so I’m familiar with the music, and I found a couple Benny Goodman records in the library I can write about.”

“Wow, you’re way ahead of me. I have no idea what to do.”

“Don’t worry about it. Mr. Coleman will help you figure it out. And it’s not like we get letter grades or anything. As long as you hand in something, you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks. Hey, are you . . .”

“What?”

“Uh, nothing, I don’t know.”

I like Sofía, and the feeling appears to be mutual, but I can never think of any excuse for us to hang out that might not be misconstrued as a date. I’m hoping something will eventually suggest itself.

“Hey Sofía, they were great, weren’t they?” Angelica has returned.

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“What are you doing this afternoon?” Angelica asks me. Sofía smiles at me in farewell, ceding my attention to Angelica.

“I’ve got a meeting with Mr. Coleman at two. Why?”

“I was wondering if I could have a guitar lesson today instead of tomorrow?”

“I think so. How’s four? I should be done by then. But I don’t know if there will be any practice rooms open.”

“How about I come by your dorm room?”

“Sure. I think Eddie’s off somewhere. I heard him leave early this morning and it sounded like he was dragging a bunch of camping gear.”

“Great, see you then.”

I’m glad to see that Angelica has returned to her old self, almost as she was before Dawn’s disappearance. It’s been six weeks, and there’s still been no word, or even guesses as to what could have happened to her. I’ve long since stopped asking Angelica about it. She’s been a little more vocal in book group lately, although her wry wit seems to have vanished along with Dawn. But that’s about the only time I see her. She’s been more likely to cancel her Thursday afternoon guitar lesson than not, and there have been no band rehearsals since our Library gig, although this may be because she’s busy working up new material with Alma and Jenny.

The thought of Jenny compels me to turn back toward the audience, but neither she nor Alma are in their seats, and a nervous scan of the lobby indicates that Jenny has left without saying anything to me.

“You know, Lucas, old-time music, bluegrass, all that, may have come from poor and working-class whites in the South, who yeah, would have been slave patrollers, overseers, etc., in antebellum times. But most Americans in the first half of this century were not exactly friends of the black man. There’s a lot of problematic music from that time.”

I’ve been talking with Mr. Coleman for almost a half hour, mostly about how I’m feeling stretched in too many musical directions. When he asked me which of my bands I enjoyed most—Angelica’s band, Reconcilable Differences, the weird trio with Lulu and Sofía, the Sunday night square dance band—I told him that playing with Walt, Sally, and Eric is the most comfortable and inspiring, but that I still have questions about playing old-time music, given its origins.

“Have you ever heard Louis Armstrong’s recording of ‘Darling Nellie Gray’?” he asks.

“Really? You’re kidding?”

“No, from the late 1930s, with the Mills Brothers, as I recall.”

“I guess I can see that, since it’s sung from the point of view of a slave who’s lost his partner.”

“That could excuse it, but Armstrong also recorded ‘Old Folks at Home,’ a Stephen Foster song in which the singer longs ‘for the old plantation.’”

“Wow! Why would he do that?”

“It’s controversial now, but it was a different time back then. Black musicians had to sing and play whatever the record companies wanted, and, of course, they were all run by white men. Armstrong could excuse it on the grounds that he was expressing a longing for the place he was born, the South, even if he had to swallow his pride to mouth the racist lyrics.”

“But that was forty years ago. I know there’s still a lot of racism in this country, and in the music business, I’m sure. But that would never happen now. And I don’t see how that helps me figure out how to deal with music that comes from racists.”

“Well, I’m not saying you give a pass to racist sentiments because they’re from a time when racism was common—that’s not what I meant by bringing up Armstrong. And I wouldn’t say this to every student, but, because we live in a racist society, everybody, certainly every white person, is racist to some degree, or benefits from racism. You are a white man born into a racist society in which you are a member of the dominant, privileged class. And you have to figure out what that means, and what, if anything, you’re going to do about it. In your case, as a musician interested in music that originated in much more blatantly racist times, does that mean just not singing racist songs, even if the racism is subtle, or going further and deciding not to play music born in the heart of white supremacy? Does it mean acknowledging the origins of the music, but trying to make it your own in some way, potentially transcending or illuminating its racist origins? I don’t know. Is such a thing possible? I don’t know. Those are hard questions, questions you’ll either decide to face or not. I’m guessing that few old-time and bluegrass musicians ever think about this. But you have, which puts you in the minority. You may not get much help from your fellow musicians. Have you talked to Walt and Sally about this, other than your objection to ‘Darling Nellie Gray’?”

“No. It hasn’t come up.”

“And you haven’t brought it up. Look, all art is based in culture, because art is a reflection of human experience, and no human can escape the culture they’re a part of. While you can’t choose the culture you’re born into, you can, to some extent, in this country at least, choose the culture you want to be part of as an adult. Not entirely, of course. But . . . I’m sorry, I don’t mean this to be a polemic.”

“No, no, I appreciate it, and you’re right. That’s one thing I’m trying to do: figure out what musical culture I want to be a part of. But I wonder . . .”

“What?”

“I was thinking about what you said about record companies getting Armstrong to record those racist songs. It’s weird to me that a record company would want him to sing folk songs. Maybe there was more crossover between those worlds than we realize.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m wondering where ‘Darling Nelly Gray’ comes from. Was it an old popular song, or minstrel song, or something like that? I don’t know, but I should find out. Anyway, it also made me think about the control record companies had over the music that got heard. If they could get a popular black musician to record racist songs, they might also ignore music that didn’t fit their stereotypes of what white music was and what black music was. Country Music USA says that early country music was influenced by black music. But, for them to be influenced by it, white musicians must have heard black music that was something like what they were playing, or they wouldn’t have paid any attention to it. So, there must have been black string bands—black fiddlers and banjo players. Maybe they weren’t recorded for some reason. Maybe the record companies didn’t think there was a market for black string-band music, black country music? Or maybe they only recorded black string-band musicians if they were playing blues or jazz.”

“That’s a good question. Would you want to write about that?”

“Maybe.”

“It would depend on what you could find out, of course. Maybe you could try to find something about how early record companies determined what did and didn’t get recorded and promoted. It might have been a financial decision. If there were early black string bands, they might have been recorded, but if the records didn’t sell, the record companies would have stopped making those kinds of records, and we wouldn’t have heard much about them.”

“It’d be interesting to look into.”

“You’d have to do some digging.”

“What if I don’t find anything? What would I write about then?”

“You could write about what inspired your search: the experience of being a white anti-racist in a band singing songs with racist origins. You know, the only person likely to read your paper is me. And obviously I’m not looking for some kind of publishable or definitive article. The important thing is that you try to find out about things that interest you, that inspire you to get deeper into the music. Whether you find anything worth writing about or not is almost beside the point. You’re trying to find your place in music, even determine if there is a place for you. Just keep that in mind, because, for you, it may be a lifelong activity.”

Gonna blue my eyes

Champagne your lies

Put pepper in my stockings

Vaseline my face

When winter comes a calling

It’s the same damn place

I know, you know, she knows

I know, she knows, you know

We’ve spent the last fifteen minutes of Angelica’s lesson working on a guitar part for a new song she’s written, a simple pop song I’m guessing is about Dawn. But the guitar part she came up with is complete as is, and I only made a couple suggestions about her technique.

“That sounds good just like that. Is there anything else you want to work on?”

“Actually, I kind of just want to talk.”

“OK.”

“I’ll be blunt. I think I need to find another guitar player for the band.”

“Uh . . .” This takes me by surprise, but in a way it feels like a sort of reverse déjà vu, like I unconsciously knew this was coming, but the possibility hadn’t yet burbled up from my subconscious, passing beyond shadows to reality.

“I assume you don’t mean an additional guitar player?”

“No.”

“So, you’re firing me?”

“To be brutal, yeah. I don’t know, Lucas, you just don’t seem like you’re into the music. Listening to you play the fiddle today made sense. It’s obvious that’s where your head is at.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t pull that ‘you just don’t seem that into me’ thing. You’re not that cliché,” I say with a grin, but without looking at her.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“I suppose, yeah. I’m sorry. I never spent enough time working on your music, and I couldn’t keep up. That dismal gig proved it.”

“Look, this is difficult for me. I’ve been avoiding talking to you about it. Gabe said I should have kicked you out of the band a while ago. But . . . I lost Dawn and . . . and I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“OK, maybe not, but . . . fuck, just don’t be mad at me about it, alright?”

“OK.”

“Honest?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. It’s kind of a relief. If you’d come to me today and said we had a gig this weekend, or something, I’d have freaked out.”

“Good. I mean, not good, but . . . Actually, I do have a gig, at the Deluxe, opening for the Fruits when Ezra returns.”

“Fuck!”

“Oh, sorry. Not a good time, huh?”

“Not the best, no.”

“How’s that all going, with Jenny?”

“You honestly want to know? You haven’t asked and it’s been almost two months.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been . . . you know.”

“Yeah, I don’t mean to get on your case. I just thought it was weird that you never asked me about Jenny. It seemed like something you’d be curious about. Do you talk to Jenny about us?”

“Uh . . .”

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me. I probably don’t want to know what she says about me. Or maybe I do. I would love to know why we can’t seem to ‘consummate the relationship.’”

“What do you mean?”

“She hasn’t told you about that? That’s good, I guess. Anyway, every time we’ve tried to, what’s the technical term—‘have intercourse’?—she’s either feigned exhaustion or started crying.”

“No, she didn’t tell me. I’m sorry, honey. What do you think the problem is?”

“I don’t know. Last time she said it was something her mom said . . . about me, or her. She accused Jenny of cheating on Ezra with me, and some other things I shouldn’t repeat. Jenny told her mom she and Ezra are done, but . . .”

“That’s what Jenny said? That she and Ezra are history?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t say, but that’s not the impression I get.”

“Why, what has she said?”

“Nothing specific, I just get this feeling she doesn’t want to be tied to anything right now, not with music, not with school, not with . . . men. But she doesn’t really want to exclude anything either.”

“So, you’re saying that what you told me way back in November is right . . . again. You were right about Emily, and you were right when you said I shouldn’t be thinking about ‘relationships.’”

“‘I told you so’ is such a fucking awful thing to say.”

“But so appropriate.”

“Look, I may be wrong. I know Jenny digs you. She thinks you’re cute as hell, but . . . I think she still feels the same about Ezra, and she may still feel something for Tracy, too, although Tracy has the added turn-off of being a macho prick, which you don’t.”

“Thank God for small favors. So, who are you going to get to play guitar?”

“Andrew said he’d be into it.”

“Makes sense. He sounded good with you three at the . . . ”—I almost say ‘jazz concert’ but I catch myself, realizing those words could ignite emotions I would prefer to steer clear of—“ . . . at the rehearsal I heard.”

“Glad you approve.”

“You know, I tried. I listened to this James Brown record Gabe gave me—a lot. And I get it. But listening isn’t the same as playing, and it didn’t make much difference. It just made me more aware of how off I was.”

“Which wouldn’t help.”

“No.”

“It’s OK, babe. You’ll figure it out. Maybe this fiddle stuff will be your thing. You sound like a natural to me.”

NEXT: Chapter 22: May 7: Breakup