"Those lies you tell make me wanna be your lover"

Summer in the city can be a magical place when you are in your early 20s. In my early 20s, I was living in a vibrant section of Minneapolis. There was an energy to it, and there was always something going on.

One summer day, my friend Emily convinced me to make the short drive with her to St. Paul to attend the Grand Old Day Festival, an annual summer festival with live bands, plenty of beer, and food trucks. This particular year, I only knew one of the bands performing, a raucous rock band that had a bluesy feel and lyrics that spoke to the everyman, the commoner. The band was called the Ike Reilly Assassination (the IRA if you’re in the know), and I had only recently become familiar with them. One of the songs off their latest album was getting sporadic play on a local radio station, and I dug it.

Emily and I wandered around a bit and checked out some other performances before making our way to the stage where the IRA would be playing. I didn’t really know what to expect; I had heard exactly one song by this band, and while I really liked the song, I hadn’t been moved to rush out and buy the album. Then they hit the stage.

Seventy-five minutes or so later, as we walked back to our car, I realized that I had found a voice that I didn’t know was needed in my life. There are few things in life as exciting as unexpectedly stumbling into music that you love almost from the first note. When you hear it, you just know that you weren’t living your best life without it. Music that suddenly expands your vocabulary, your dreams, your hope, and your emotions. The IRA was one of those bands for me.

I immediately became a devotee, and over the next few months, I got my brother, Hunter, into them. Hunter thought the music was good, but he certainly wasn’t fully bought in like I was. When I heard, they were going to play at First Avenue the night before Thanksgiving, I talked Hunter into coming along. That’s all it took; from that night on, I knew Hunter would be present anytime the IRA came to town.

Lucky for us, that turned out to be multiple times a year, as a band based in Chicago, Minneapolis was an easy tour stop.

One summer night in the mid-Aughts, Hunter and I found ourselves at The Cabooze, a popular bar and music venue, for yet another Ike Reilly concert. We were packed in, singing along, and having a good time. At some point early in the show, I tapped him on the shoulder and remarked to him how pretentious these two girls about six feet in front of us were for wearing sunglasses at night in a bar.

Shortly after making this comment, I noticed that one of these girls was spending more time facing us than she was the stage. I tried to ignore her, but she was in between me and the stage, and my eyes kept drifting back to her.

Soon, my beer was empty, so I made my way back to the bar for a refill. As if she had traveled through a secret passage, she was standing against the bar as I stepped up to order. I said nothing. She had blond hair and a slight smile that only revealed her top teeth. I was now sure that her smile was meant for me. I was enchanted, and at the same time, I couldn’t get over the sunglasses. I ordered my beer and turned her way. She was smiling right at me. I stared into the two oversized black lenses, reached over, and slid them off.

“That’s better,” I said.

I picked up my beer from the bar and walked back towards the stage. I found Hunter, and before long, we ended up next to the sunglassed girls.

I started dancing with the one that I had been transfixed by. We eventually started talking, too; the pretentiousness that I feared wasn’t there. She and her friend were just out having fun; the sunglasses were for their amusement alone. We danced, we talked, we laughed, we kissed.

Her name was Jen. She was eight years older. She was divorced. She was smart. She was funny. She was pretty. I dug her. We went out a few times; it was light and fun, and we had great conversations. I lost interest because of something she said. In hindsight, I see that I didn’t have the life experience to appreciate what she told me. She understood. We remained friends, though, and occasionally would run into each other at shows. I always had a fondness for her, even if I didn’t want to be with her.

Eventually, I moved away. Life moved on and I lost touch with Jen.

“Charcoal Days and Sterling Nights” is song by Ike Reilly that always reminded me of that summer night, those sunglasses, and how errant my initial judgement was. Anytime that song would play or I would strum it on my guitar, it would bring a smile to my face as I remembered what was.

A few years on, I heard that she was sick. A couple of years after that, I heard she passed away. She was 42.

It hit me in a way I hadn’t experienced before. She was the first person whom I had dated who had passed away. It was one of those times when I felt myself aged. It was one of those times when I realized I couldn’t go back to that summer, that those times are frozen in place by the memories that were made.

Listening to “Charcoal Days and Sterling Nights,” still makes me smile, it's just that sadness is now part of the memory. I used to imagine that some Thanksgiving Eve, at an IRA show, I would see her. That thought doesn’t exist anymore, and now all I have is the memories of that smile and those sunglasses.