I Believe In You

Trey left his cello case open backstage.

He had just crossed the stage to get his 8th-grade diploma, honors cords around his neck, looking calm and relaxed. According to The Anthony School website, it’s “a place where children discover their strengths, grow in confidence, and develop a lifelong love of learning,” combining “challenging academics with a supportive, nurturing environment.” Trey started here in PreK3, and now his band was about to close the ceremony. They were playing Green Day’s Good Riddance, with my son on cello. The audience had no idea what was coming. Their performance was a surprise.

Inside the case was a gift from his teacher, Jeremy Estell. A vinyl record. Wynton Marsalis - Early Marsalis, released in 1983 in Japan on the Atlas East label. And a note.

Jeremy wasn't just Trey's school teacher. He was usually one of the first faces that every middle school student at Anthony saw during morning drop-off. He was his French teacher. His cross-country coach. His track coach. Trey had never run cross country or track before Jeremy. He showed up anyway, and Jeremy was there the whole way. Encouraging, patient, present. That's who Jeremy is. He doesn't just teach the subject, he guides them through it. There wasn’t a single cross-country or track practice he didn’t run with the kids. He shows up for the person.

I’d noticed a connection at the end of last school year. One of Trey’s best friends, Ewan, landed a lead role in a theater production of School of Rock. Jeremy got the role of his father. I’m not sure how much acting actually had to happen to make his role convincing because he’s been mentoring these students for years.

When Trey and his friends decided they wanted to start a band, Jeremy stayed after school on his own time to make it happen. He brought his own gear up to the school. His amps. His microphones. He plugged in his guitar and sang alongside them, not as a supervisor watching from a safe distance, but as a musician in the room who believed in what they were trying to do. He gave them a place to figure it out.

And then he started coming out to Moody Brews on Friday nights. Sitting in the courtyard. Watching Trey find his footing on the bandstand week after week. He didn't have to do that. It wasn't part of any job description. He just kept showing up, the way people do when they genuinely care about what happens to a kid after the school day ends.

Jeremy's note explained that he couldn't remember when, where, or how this record came into his possession. He knew it was one of the first records he ever bought, about 25 years ago. It didn't travel with him to France. Every year he came home to visit his family, he played it seemingly nonstop. It just felt like home, and he’d kept it in heavy rotation all these years.

He wanted Trey to have his copy.

The part of the note that really got to me was about a specific song on the album. The one where they bring out Wynton's father to play with him. Jeremy wrote about his own dad playing drums and about what it means to make music with the people you love most. Jamming with my dad or with my son is beyond magical.

One of the most difficult pieces I’ve written was the “Albums that had a major impact on me” post I made back in 2019 on my blog. That grouping of 9 albums took me forever to compile. Not because I couldn’t come up with enough material, but because it was so hard to narrow down just a handful of albums that made a difference.

I didn't consider that Jeremy had his own versions of these stories.

A record that felt like home every time he came back to it. That he kept in heavy rotation for 25 years. And on the night Trey closed the longest chapter of his young life and stepped into the next, Jeremy put it in his cello case with a note that said, “I believe in you. Thank you for sharing your gift with me.”

That's not just a graduation gift. That's a baton. This leg of the 4x200 was done.

Trey doesn't know what that record will mean to him yet. Maybe it becomes the one he plays nonstop on the way home from his girlfriend's house. Maybe it's the one that teaches him something about what a bass can say that he hasn't heard yet. Maybe it sits on a shelf for years and finds him later, exactly when he needs it. That's how these things work sometimes. They wait.

I think about my band director, Rex Perry, standing at the front of the classroom playing until he turned red in the face for a room full of high school kids who didn't fully understand what they were witnessing. I think about a stranger standing at the front door of my restaurant holding an old case, wanting nothing except to hear his father's saxophone played one more time. I think about my high school friend, Matt Treadway, handing me a Bela Fleck record in the school parking lot behind the bandroom when I was seventeen. I think about what I felt the night Trey played Lucky Southern with me, and I couldn't find the words at the microphone.

It moves through you. And when the time comes, you send it forward.

Jeremy Estell sent it forward.

A cello case was sitting open backstage that night, and inside it was a piece of someone's life carefully passed to my son with a note that said, “I believe in you.”