Edit Studio B, "Brass in Pocket," and Home
By Summit FM Contributor Marc Lee Shannon
It has been a long, strange trip that has led me to this small room with microphones, headphones, and a mixing console in front of my now 5-year-old MacBook Pro. The sounds of the Pretenders waft in the air from the nearby Tavoli radio as I sit in the Summit's Edit Studio B, where I am often left to write and ponder the meaning of my life—at least what my life has in store for lunch anyway.
Back to the Pretenders. The song "Brass in Pocket" takes me back to a day in Pasadena, California, in late March 1980. Just about to graduate from the Hollywood-based music school, G.I.T., I had left my home on Liberty Avenue in the west Akron neighborhood near Firestone HS (Chrissy's Alma Mater) 18 months prior, and I was searching for a post-school apartment. I found myself on a tranquil street when that song came on in my beat-up brown and tan Subaru. I remember the scent of the jasmine trees and a feeling of hometown pride sweeping over me in a way that only a dreamer of dreams can experience when he sees another from his 'burb "making it." I loved the song because it represented the hope that my dream could come true. Many years later, I still feel the same way. Exactly the same.
In the many ticks of the times since then, Ms. Hynde has proven her pedigree by sustaining a career, making authentic music, and cutting her trail in her way for over 45 years and some more than 12 LPs. Though she has now set down roots in the UK for some time, she occasionally returns to the Rubber City. At one time, she had a restaurant and condo in the downtown area of the Northside District. Her song “My City Was Gone” seems like a faint reminder of how much has changed since those days in the 1980s and how the city has morphed and changed since I left with all those great big dreams in 1979.
The tales from some of the senior staff here at The Summit FM speak of her visits and ability to be kind and… prickly. One story was of the times she would pop into town, stop by, and use her sharp wit like a wire brush on a pair of suede chukka boots. Clearing the grit, brushing the chaff, and then sharing a kind, soft compliment as a dichotomy that seemed to say, in essence, you can't predict me! She was colorful and tough, just like the several generations of folk who worked in the factories and spent their Wednesday nights knocking down bowling pins and cold Rolling Rock Beer in neighborhood strip mall joints.
Occasionally, she was available to comment or give a brief interview, but you had better be on your game and ready, Freddy.
So after all these years, why does it matter so much to all of us from this city, the ones that grew up here, migrated here by job or other chance, or the ones like me who purposefully left the big city lights to return to what our soul told us what the right place, the right path? It matters because an artist like Ms. Hynde from your hometown is made with the same stuff: a green work shirt and trousers, working-class work ethic, and sensibility, speaking a truth that only resonates with that loyal, faithful tribe of believers from the many different Akron neighborhoods and that are in fact actually the same place, Anytown, USA. It's your place, my place, a place that shares the small-town Friday night familiarity of a hamburger place at Wallhaven, a legendary pizza place in the downtown Northside district, or that family-owned restaurant with a name that no one really knows how to pronounce.
It's called home.
Home matters. Home is the same if you're a legendary singer or a local heavyweight playing at a renovated theatre in Kenmore's hopefully renewed art/music district. Home is heart; home is a memory of what you used to be and what you are now after years of faithfully rowing the river of a dream that everyone thinks is crazy, except you.
It’s knowing that there is a place for you at that familiar breakfast counter, no matter what. A place where you can live your life, strum your own song, grin that shaking-your-head smile, close your eyes, and slip back in time to a "remember-when" comforting sigh. Home is where we are all temporary strangers, waiting to discover that with a few more minutes of conversation, a few more stories, and a few more laughs, we are friends, after all.