Flying to Nashville Was The Closest I Got to Paradise
I flew from New York to Nashville for Briston Maroney's Paradise Festival and I'd do it again if given the chance.
One week before Briston Maroney’s Paradise Festival – a two-night “extravaganza” at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville featuring headlining sets from Briston and performances by Indigo De Souza, Annie DiRusso, MICHELLE, The Greeting Committee, Sunflower Bean, and Cece Coakley – I felt this pang in my chest telling me I had to go. My friends over at Pleaser Mag were posting about their excitement for the festival and Briston’s stories were filling up my Instagram feed, adding to the anticipation. Call it FOMO or whatever social media is doing to our brains lately, but the desperate desire I’ve had to leave New York combined with my love of Briston Maroney was enough to establish that I was going. I found a flight ticket from EWR to BNA for $87 round-trip, and I texted a friend in Nashville who I had met out at a West Village pub after a gig just this past August asking if she was down to go to Friday’s show. She was in for it, and thus, the plans were set.
The chaos started Thursday and carried through Sunday with Halloweekend, leaving Monday and Tuesday as my two rest days before heading out to Nashville Wednesday morning. My friend had work that evening, so I explored on my own, first stopping at a local brewery down the street from her apartment. Posted up at the bar, I ended up deep in conversation with a couple celebrating both their birthdays – one having been two days prior on Halloween, the other turning 48 that day. The couple was Tennessee born and bred, taking it upon themselves to warn me of tourist traps and what they called the “Wee-Woo Wagons” that parade around town with bachelorette parties onboard. (I later saw one of these, questionably at 11:30am on a Friday, while reading my book on a park bench. The locals given name for the sight was quite accurate.) I’ve been convinced since touring across the country this past summer with Courtney Barnett’s Here and There Festival that the best way to get to know a place is to sit at the bar alone and see what conversations strike up.
After leaving the bar, slightly buzzed and energized by the couple’s festivities, I took to my close friends story to post the thought: “I love leaving the city because it reminds me there are so many places I can be happy outside of the tri-state.”
I don’t travel much for concerts because I don’t see the need for it. I grew up in Connecticut where New York venues were just a 45 minute train ride away, and I’ve been living in the city going on four years now. If concerts are your lifeline, why leave the place where all the artists dream of making it, where all your favorite bands are bound to play?
Probably because I hate it here. Or I don’t know, maybe I just need to move somewhere else for a while to be reminded why I love it. Too much time – or in my case, a lifetime – in the same place can make you find the worst in it. (Does this make me a glass half empty kind of person? I’d like to argue otherwise, but I’m not making the best case for myself here.)
I also like going places where no one knows me, because I can choose to be all the best parts of myself there. I’m not defined by anything I’ve left behind.
Thursday, my friend and I hit some vintage shops and record stores across East Nashville, where I found some rarities, like a hilarious shirt with my last name across the chest (the deeper meaning of said shirt will have to be excluded from this article), The Lumineers’ first ever EP on vinyl, and a pre-loved copy of Hockey Dad’s 2018 album Blend Inn in a stunning pink-galaxy pressing. We also discovered that an artist I’ve been following for few years, Rayland Baxter (whose New York show I’ll be missing to photograph another gig), was doing an intimate set to celebrate his record release at Grimey’s the next evening. All you had to do was pre-order the album, which would be signed by Rayland and available for pick-up at the event. So, in line with the impulsivity of this trip, we bought the album, knowing we’d have to scramble to fit it in before Paradise.
By Friday afternoon, we were overflowing with excitement knowing we had an insane lineup of music approaching. We made it to the record store for Rayland’s set just in time, where fans lined the stacks and Rayland performed with just two members from his band on a tiny stage along the back wall. He played his record from front to back, and we held the album to our chests as his songs filled the room.
We arrived at Brooklyn Bowl for Paradise Festival just as the band MICHELLE was heading onstage, who were then followed by Indigo De Souza. Indigo has been on my radar for quite some time, having saved a couple of her songs on Spotify but never digging much deeper into her work. However, she’d brought some amazing artists on tour with her on the past (i.e., Field Medic, who did one of my favorite interviews ever with me on Flashlight Podcast), so it came as no surprise when she put on an absolutely incredible, awe-inspiring set. Her soft demeanor on her albums sets a classic indie-folk tone, but her performance took a turn for cathartic power with an explosion of emotion through captivating vocal runs and expressive screams. Her stage presence is encompassing, small at times but a home for energy, which she successfully catches and releases as she navigates her set. (Read my thoughts on Indigo’s performance here.)
10pm rolled around and it was time for Briston to take the stage. He of course kicked off his set with his latest single, “Paradise,” bringing the energy in the room up to the nines.
I’ve been a big fan of Briston Maroney going on maybe three or four years now, my love of his music starting with “Freakin’ Out On the Interstate” and now encompassing pretty much everything he’s ever released.
I didn’t get to see him live for the first time until March of this year. I was aimlessly depressed at the time and searching for meaning in the remnants of a dark ink that had bled across my life over the past eight months. I don’t think I’d listened to the lyrics that closely, or just hadn’t in a while, but I remember hearing Briston sing, “Never feeling like I’m all the way home,” followed by the echo of “all the way home” from the audience, and clutching my throat in silence. I remember the feeling of a single tear falling down my cheek like a sweet and secret release. It didn’t pull me out of my depression or anything miraculous like that, but it made me feel less alone for a moment. That’s how I feel, I thought — like I’m never all the way home, and that’s how I still feel; I came home for a night in October to sheets on my childhood bed that weren’t my own, and my brother’s work set-up all across the desk that used to be a spot for my late night musings and attempts at art. I told my mom, this room doesn’t really feel like mine anymore, but neither does my room in New York, it’s too small and cluttered and it suffocates me whenever I return to it, so if I don’t feel at home at home, and I don’t feel at home in New York, where will I ever feel at home? When will I ever?
I’m not writing all this to say something trite like, ‘the only place I felt at home was at Briston Maroney’s Paradise festival!!!’ That’s not true, and it doesn’t encapsulate how I actually felt at the show. I feel at home when I turn the volume up on my headphones so loud that I feel the drum’s vibration in my toes; when my mom hugs me and traces her fingernails gently down my arm; when my sister says “I love you” before leaving our apartment to run to a bodega, purchase a single Yerba tea, and then come back to sit on our couch with me; when I see a dead leaf on the ground or two strangers holding hands. What I’m saying is, I find small doses of peace in these simplicities. But it’s fleeting.
The feelings I get from live music may be much more complex. Like Briston sings in his 2019 single, “Steve’s First Bruise,” I think it’s something bigger than me. He sings it like a testament, like a threat to mask the fear of uncertainty.
I’m never alone at these shows, not figuratively or physically, because I’m surrounded by people like me. Like me, they are searching for something and like me, they’re more likely to find it in each other than the artist they’re seeing.
I interviewed a fan of Briston, Allyson, the other week (before Paradise, before ever meeting in person) for my final research project I’m working on in the School of Global Public Health at NYU. We talked about stan culture, the live music community, and about her following Briston’s Sunflower tour in February/March. She was at the second New York show, I was at the first — we just missed each other. Yet, our recounts from the show were interchangeable, we resonated with feeling connected not only to Briston, but to those around us. She told me that Briston creates such a community within his fan base and at his shows because he doesn’t make it all about him. It’s equally about the fans.
The most memorable part of Briston’s set at Paradise wasn’t anything he did — rather, it was what his dad did. Briston told the story of his dad opening up the mosh pit for “I’ve Been Waiting” at one of his earlier shows, pointing to his dad in a beige cowboy hat and plaid button-up shirt, seated comfortably in the balcony. Without hesitation, his dad got up and found his way to the floor, ending up right next to me. His dad opened the circle, hyping up me, a bunch of teenagers, and other 20-something’s before the drop. The absurdity of the situation we found ourselves in — moshing with an artist’s dad to a song off their second EP?! I couldn’t stop smiling, thinking holy shit over and over again, followed by a wave of self-reassurance, it was totally worth coming to Nashville for this. And so I screamed and screamed and laughed until sound escaped me and left me with only bliss.
In “St. Augustine,” Briston sings — with a paradoxical softness, “If I scream at the top of my lungs? / Do you think my friends will hear it back home?”
If I scream at the top of my lungs at this show, will it find its way back home? And will it lead me there?
I like to think it might.
Listen to Briston Maroney perform “June” at Brooklyn Bowl:
Recorded on my Voice Memos app, from my bag.