To The Friday Night Kitchen Fantasy That I Am Chris Robinson

I have one Black Crowes album because, in truth, there is really only one.

And really, there’s only one song.

Occassionaly, on A Friday night, Keith and Whit are out: a new action movie or a road trip to Michigan and I’m in the house alone. I play my music loud. Real loud. The dogs go upstairs. I shut the windows out of courtesy for the neighbors, though I’m sure they can still hear it.

I always start with Nirvana. A small amount of Smashing Pumpkins. Pearl Jam. I’m getting my grunge on, the mix of speed and slow, the rasp in the guitars, the restrain--and then not--of the drummers. And this is dance-in-one-place music. My kitchen is small so it’s like dancing at a crowded concert, like the Pearl Jam concert I saw with Anne in Indiana, only in my kitchen, it’s less terrifying because I only imagine the crowd pressing me toward the stage.

‘90’s music isn’t the music of my era; I had already grown up. Not my high school nor my college soundtrack and I felt cheated. In retrospect, the 80’s had it going on, but at the time, I found most unbearable. I wanted to be a child of the times, but those asymmetrical haircuts and Duran Duran? No.

So I have an unearned nostalgia for 90’s music and fashion. And I live it out on Friday nights in my kitchen, put the playlist on shuffle and wait for it: “She Talks to Angels.”

That little lonely guitar riff, repeated. Two notes in and I am Chris Robinson himself, sometimes

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playing to a small bar crowd under an assumed name so no one knows it’s me until I start. Or sometimes in the studio. 3 AM and dead serious. I’m wearing a sport coat, faded blue jeans and suede saddle oxfords (clearly, I take liberties with Robinson’s wardrobe). I have a fedora and a long white scarf, but they are hanging on the back of chair. I move to the mic. The song is perfectly in my range, especially the louder I play it over the sound of my own voice.

“She never mentions the word addiction/in certain company.” I ad lib a few “yeah’s” and “mmmm’s” but don’t go too far off script. The song is perfect. I never move from my spot but there is so much goddamn soul in this performance the crowd is hushed. My stage prop is a pool cue I grabbed on my way in and I lean on slightly in the slowest verses. I am, as they say in the business, leaving it all on the stage.

Some nights I am Margo Timmons. Or Billie Holiday. Or Lucinda Williams. I can be in their songs rather than just around them. But Chris and I? For this song? We are not just soul mates, we are one soul. And that lock of hair she keeps? We know who it’s from. She told us. She told only us.