(Sunday Paper, Year IV, Issue 41)

Here’s a little history of my Sara Bareilles fanhood.

I liked ‘Love Song’ enough from its radio play that I bought the album Little Voice.

That was apparently, according to the internet, in 2007.

I probably would have guessed Sara Bareilles was around longer than that, but be that as it may, I enjoyed the album, and I remember liking ‘King of Anything’ when that came out in, according to the internet, 2010.

But I can’t honestly say I would have bought that album on my own.

Turns out I didn’t have to.

Every once in a while (or I should say lots more than once and for many whiles) in my teaching days I would visit my friend Anne in the art room down the hall.

We’d talk and we’d laugh and there was often music playing. There were times I’d hear something with which I was unfamiliar and ask her who was playing…but I distinctly remember when she was playing Kaleidoscope Heart (the album that had ‘King of Anything’) I asked what that was because there was not one bad song in the time we were listening to it and chatting.

She told me it was Sara Bareilles…and a couple of days later there was a copy of the album sitting on my desk when I came to school in the morning.

I played the heck out of that album - likely for three years, until The Blessed Unrest came out…and that album ended up meriting a few mentions in the ‘365 New Things in 2013’ experiment…because there was the album itself, some pretty good music videos, and a website with videos where Bareilles talked about the inspiration for some of the songs. (I will say my brother must have recommended the new Sara Bareilles at one point too because I have a Facebook memory that pops up every year at this time thanking Anne and him for turning me on to her music.)

I don’t want to bore you because I realize this is meandering away from the main point here, but obviously at that point I was all in.

Then she started releasing the Waitress music, and I called in to a radio contest when ‘She Used To Be Mine’ came on the radio and won the opportunity to meet her.

She didn’t disappoint.

Nor did she disappoint when Kathy and I got the chance to see her in the Broadway show (the show was eh, she was great)…or live on the tour for The Blessed Unrest.

So it was a no-brainer when tickets came out for this tour she is on now, promoting her newest album, Amidst the Chaos, that we were going to go as a family.

That’s what we did Friday night. Sara Bareilles is a talented musician and an excellent singer - but she’s unbelievably charming too. As much as I enjoyed every second of the music portion of the concert, her talking to the crowd in between songs was so much fun.

I just can’t sing her praises enough. I admire her talents, and how she uses those talents to create a platform from which she can speak up for those who might not have enough people speaking up for them. She is a nice, good person in a world where that type of person has been overshadowed too much lately.

I’m always thrilled when I meet another person who loves Sara Bareilles as much as I do - not unlike when I meet someone who is a Mets fan or who lives in Queens.

And on Friday night I was thrilled to be among thousands of people who enjoy at least one thing that I enjoy with my family, watching a truly good person do good things.

Writing

*Two items of note from my writing world: One is that by the time you read this I will either have finished (yay!) or will be scrambling to finish (ugh…and probably more likely) two articles that will appear in a newspaper insert magazine called ‘Ion’. So keep your eyes peeled for that insert - you might see my name in there occasionally.

Two is that Monday, October 14 (that’s tomorrow, if you’re reading this on Sunday), I’ll have an essay published on the website Narratively. I’ll certainly be posting it to the Facebook page (you can ‘Like’ that page here!), but I’d been teasing that for a couple of weeks so I wanted to let you know to keep an eye out for it. I’ll probably tell you more about the story in the coming weeks.

Comedy

*I’ve told you a lot about someone else’s show - Saturday night was my show. We had another sellout at Exhibit ‘A’ and another fun show. Man. I’m so lucky to have this every month. Lots of people hung around after the show ended and we chatted a bunch - it was just really nice.

I am very proud of the shows I’ve put together here the end of 2019…and it’s looking like it’ll continue into 2020 as we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the show. I strongly urge you to check out our headliners in November - Kathe Farris - and December - Bethany Van Delft. They are two of my favorites and I’m so excited to have them at Exhibit ‘A’. I’ll certainly be telling you about tickets when they go on sale.

Then you should definitely plan on coming back in January to celebrate one year of the show and see me close out the show.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

*So as I was researching streaming video services for the aforementioned articles I was writing, I came across the show ‘My Boys’ on Crackle. I remember when ‘My Boys’ was on - it was promoted pretty heavily during playoff baseball, I think…and my friend Justin always talked about how much he liked it. And recently someone had talked to me about Jamie Kaler, who is also in the show. So when I saw ‘My Boys’, I figured I’d watch it. I watched the pilot, and I really enjoyed it. I showed enough discipline to not binge the rest of the series while I was working on a deadline, but I plan on watching more of the shows. I was surprised to see Jim Gaffigan in the show too - I have a vague memory of knowing he was in it, but I had certainly forgotten.

Thoughts on Dog Ownership

*Autumn is going to be rough. Tate likes to eat leaves and grass and every morning there’s new branches or leaves down in the yard and it’s hard to tell when she needs to actually go to the bathroom or just wants to SMELL EVERYTHING NEW THAT USED TO BE IN A TREE AND IS NOW ON THE GROUND!!!! SO EXCITING!

Notes

*A few final Sara Bareilles thoughts, if you’ll indulge me:

-The show was at Agganis Arena, which is the ‘new’ hockey arena at Boston University. (I say ‘new’ because it opened the year or two years after I graduated…but that means it’s 20 years old. I have this habit of doing that with buildings that are not new but in which I refuse to acknowledge that I am, in fact, getting old.) Anyway, it was cool to be back on campus with my family. But the rainy weather meant we were limited in doing anything besides just going into the arena. I might have liked wandering through the bookstore beforehand if it was nicer out….but we didn’t want to linger any longer on the street than we had to.

-I think most people find Sara Bareilles as (non-musically speaking) entertaining as I do. She is a good follow on Instagram because of how funny she is. I particularly liked this - when tickets went on sale for the tour she was excited to be playing Madison Square Garden - “the real Garden,” she said, “not the secret Garden.” Something along those lines. Because when Kathy and I saw her in 2013, it was at the ‘secret Garden’ - the Theater at Madison Square Garden. You might still be able to score a ticket to the Sunday night show at the Garden - I don’t know. It’s tonight.

-Some day I’ll write more about when my daughter and I met Sara Bareilles. I’ve already gone on too long with this. But she was exactly as you hope she would be - and she was outrageously nice to my daughter and I’ll never forget it.

*How did it go bringing the kids to their first-ever concert? Well, I think I should have been a little more mindful of a late night show after a long day of school…mandatory nap time in the afternoon might have been beneficial. Overall, though, the girls enjoyed the show…and I enjoyed having them there. But I didn’t notice many other kids below the age of, I don’t know, 15? (Sara Bareilles doesn’t hesitate to let the curse words fly, which I knew and tried to prepare the girls for….I think they handled that maturely as well.)

*Did you give my Facebook page a Like up there in the Writing section? You can follow me on Twitter here.

*Apparently, I realized as I was writing this, the John Sucich Stylebook dictates that album titles are written in italics and song titles in quotes.

*It also occurred to me that as far as physical CDs, the Sara Bareilles albums might have been two of the last couple of CD albums I ever owned - shortly after that everything was all digital.

*Quick running update: I ran ten miles on Tuesday. (Well, I mixed in a couple of walks in the run - but I still clocked a good time, so it was a 10-mile run.) I unfortunately will not be able to do the half-marathon I was planning at the end of October, but I’ll find something soon to do. Because, and I say this with great conviction, I did not run 10 miles for nothing.

*I am not a good picture-taker in concerts - many come out blurry or barely visible. But I’m proud of that pic at the top of the post…the lights brightened during one of the songs and I realized it would be a good opportunity and I snapped it and I was right.