Their Faces

What happens when a community gets to witness something real growing in front of them over time? They became part of the story without even realizing it. That's what Pettaway has become. Not just a Friday night gig with my friend Chris Parker at a brewery, but a place where something is actually happening week after week.

I've been paying attention to the faces in the crowd on Friday nights. Not in a performer-scanning-the-room kind of way, but more like, I'll be in the middle of a tune, and I'll catch a glimpse of someone at one of the courtyard tables, and something in their expression stops me for a second.

There are a few groups of people out there who have been following this story without knowing they were part of it. They were there in the beginning, when it was just the duo. Chris and I. When Trey was just another kid sitting at a table with his family on a Friday night. They were there when a young college student showed up with a drum kit and sat in for the first time, changing the entire dynamic of the music. They were there when other horn players joined in, adding harmony and texture to the evolving group of musicians that came to sit in and jam from week to week. And they were there when that drummer looked over at my son and said, out loud, “Why don’t you play with us?”

A week later, they watched him move from the audience to the edge of the bandstand, and they were there the first time he played Lucky Southern. They saw what happened to me when that tune was over. I couldn't say much. I got to the mic, and the only words I could find were, "That's my 14-year-old son on the bass, y'all.”

That was it. That was everything I had.

I watch those faces when Trey is on the bandstand, learning a tune in real time, right there in front of everyone. No rehearsal, no chart in front of him. Just his ears and the music with me and Chris moving through the changes together, guiding without stopping. And the people out there in the courtyard, the ones who've been there long enough to know the arc of this, their faces do something I don't have good words for.

It starts as astonishment. Then it shifts to something closer to disbelief. Then they smile. Not politely. The real kind.

I think what they're feeling is what I feel every time it happens. That this is not a performance. Nobody rehearsed this. It’s happening in real time. You can see it on their faces, and probably mine too.

They keep coming back because they want to see what happens next.

So do I.

Every Friday night when the weather is nice at Moody Brews. Come find a spot in the courtyard.