No. 151 - Steve Gunn’s “Among the Trees” Changed My Life
How an eight-year journey culminated in one miserable — then magical — night for Sara Kamillatos
This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.
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• 5 min read •
In 2015, I moved to Williamsburg after college and began to navigate city nightlife with the vigorous appetites of a burgeoning alcoholic about town. I rapidly developed my own local “hot/not” list and reviled no place more intensely than infamous indie venue turned hook-up bar Union Pool. Maybe it was because drinking with past-their-prime, skinny-jeans-wearing 30-somethings depressed me, maybe it was because I secretly resented that my beautiful and put-together girlfriends were the ones being chatted up and never me, and maybe it was because one time in the bathroom I knocked drugs down the sink and couldn’t fish them out of the drain (ALLEGEDLY!); but I smack-talked and avoided the place with nearly pathological intensity. As fate would have it, it would also become the place where I heard the song that changed my life.
In the summer of 2021, restaurants, cafés, and theaters were gradually reopening as Covid restrictions rolled back. At the same time, a fog was lifting in my personal life. I had bottomed out and gone sober, moved into my first solo apartment, and started seeing someone. My new boyfriend sent me a flyer to a tribute show: Bridget St. John with guest Steve Gunn playing the songs of the recently departed folk artist Michael Chapman. I had never heard any of these names, I didn’t particularly care about acoustic folk music, and, when I scrolled to the top of the post and saw the account name, I realized the venue was Union Pool. Oof. I guess they were one of the first music venues back in the game, but OOF. However, I hadn’t seen live music since 2019, and I had a shiny new boyfriend to impress, so I just texted “can’t wait!”
We drove my crappy Ford Focus to Williamsburg with the windows down, and my date’s childlike excitement mixed with the drowsy September air was infectious. We breezed through the courtyard to the back room, and I could feel my cold prejudices loosening before the show even began. The moment Steve Gunn walked out, I was mesmerized by his diminutive posture and arresting blue eyes. He didn’t look like every other indie hack I’d seen ooze across that stage.
The hush of rapt listeners was thick and delicious. Steve started to play the first song: a cover of Chapman’s nostalgic ode to youth, “Among the Trees.” His fingers brushed across the neck of the guitar and danced the opening chords.
We clutched each other close and swayed in the dark. Tears came to my eyes; I couldn’t help it. Between the beauty of the song and my lovey optimism, I felt intoxicated. When the final verse closed, I didn’t even stop to applaud, I turned on the heel of my clog and ran to the courtyard to light a cigarette. I sucked in plume after acrid plume — exhaled a smooth wisp — we had a song.
For the next two years I was basically a Steve Gunn groupie. I downloaded all of his music, I went to every show he played — seriously every single show — it’s a miracle I didn’t catch a stalking charge. Over this period, Steve’s stage presence grew (in my eyes) more confident, practically regal. His original music seemed daring, experimental, downright cool. He stepped into his true virtuoso potential and left sweet folksy covers in the dust.
The whole time, I held a glimmer of hope at every show that I’d hear the dancing chord progression and “la la las” of “Among the Trees”. It was a dragon to chase through the ups and downs of relationship tumult, a move out of (and blessedly back into) Manhattan, and relapsing on drugs and alcohol with pretty gnarly consequences. Overtly, I could say I had a new favorite singer and a shared hobby with my — um, mercurial — boyfriend, but internally, I think the song took on a superstitious quality. Hearing it seemed to validate the frenetic roamings of my late 20s, and my well-meaning but ultimately desperate bids to adopt the interests of my partner.
Before the official end of that relationship, I bought tickets to see Steve Gunn at Tubby’s in Kingston. I thought I could manufacture intimacy if we spent the night away from the city and saw “our” favorite act. Inevitably, we broke up before the show, but I couldn’t sell the tickets, so I still went.
The night was miserable, the opener was awful (or I was just in a bad mood, they might have been amazing if I wasn’t heartbroken); plus, I was back on the wagon, relegated to sipping water from the plastic jug on the card table in the corner. What am I even doing here??
Even Steve’s set began chaotically, almost violently. He played, at first, his most “out there” guitar tracks at increasing volume. I was ready to get the hell out. I devoured a final cigarette in the side yard while cursing the very marrow of Upstate New York, then brushed myself off to go grab my coat and flee.
I winced when the door slammed behind me and shuffled through the hushed crowd while Steve finished introducing another song. I finally reached the mess of winter jackets, and as I hunched to search for my own puffer, it started. It only took two notes for me to recognize that it was finally happening. I unfurled my spine hesitantly.
He started to play our — no, now my — song. I retracted my hand from the coat pile and floated to the middle of the crowd. A weight sank through my chest, and I started to sob. Every verse, every chord sliced me, and I wept. I released the past few years. I didn’t even have to vow that I’d never call my ex again, I just let Steve (and all the hip Kingston people who bore witness) play me out of that chapter.
I stepped into the cold and foggy night. My trusty Ford was waiting in the lot, ready to take me home. I didn’t play any music on the drive. I had caught the dragon, and the high was nothing like I had expected. I knew I’d never see them again, neither my former love nor Steve Gunn. It may have been an errant coincidence, but I will always be convinced that he played it, one last time, just for me. ◆
About Sara
Sara Kamillatos is a historian, consultant, (sometimes) artist, and generally grateful Human Being who splits her time between Los Angeles and Manhattan. She misses that Ford Focus very much…
Instagram @sara_kam4
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Categories
Friendship • Family • Coming of Age • Romance • Grief • Spirituality & Religion • Personal Development • LGBTQ+
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