In one of the green rooms of the Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, Marshall, JT, and Sam listened to the end of the first half of a benefit and memorial concert for an audience composed about half of older classical-music fans and half of younger alternative-music fans. The sounds of Mozart's String Quartet Number 15 in D minor carried into the room.
The Aberrantes String Quartet had been playing together since the musicians had met at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia when they were students almost ten years earlier. The cellist played an instrument named the Duchess of Cleaveland, made by Domenico Montagnana in 1740. She had owned the instrument for five years, having played a Lawrence Wilke instrument based on the Montagnana from the time she began at Curtis. Both instruments were gifts from the same man, an uncle by marriage.
As the music ended, applause and shouts from the enthusiastic audience filled the large hall, and it took a few minutes for the players to leave the stage. As the players, two men and two women entered the green room, the cellist put the precious cello in its case and then rushed to hug and kiss JT. He told her, "You sounded great." Then, he held her at arm's length and commented, "You are one beautiful woman."
Jamie laughed and patted her husband on the ass. "You, too — I mean the beautiful part, not the sounded great part."
The string players drank water, and the three cousins peed away the water they had quaffed during the first half of the show as they all waited for intermission to end. Vee came into the green room to tell the cousins: "Three minutes."
Sam picked up his Falcón García guitar with the sixth string tuned down to D, and the string players grabbed their instruments. They walked to the wings as the audience settled back into seats and began to quiet to the dimming lights. Aberrantes walked onstage first and was greeted by applause. When Sam followed, the sound of the cheering increased. The quartet sat and prepared to play, and Sam settled onto the performance chair on the stage-left side.
"I know you're anxious to hear The Outliers," he said into the microphone, "but we're going to play Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto for Guitar and Violin in D major, RV 93. This is dedicated to our dads who are out there somewhere. Thanks for choosing us."
The Peruvian guitar sounded rich and full in the acoustically perfect hall, and the piece was met with the same enthusiasm as the earlier quartet performances had been. As he always did, Sam teared up during the second, largo movement.
The stage darkened, and stagehands rearranged the furniture on the stage. Marcus and Digby had acted as roadies at every Outliers performance since their first one in Goldendale. Marcus brought the instruments out, placing them in stands. The two violinists and the violist took their seats at stage right, and the riser with JT's drum kit was pulled onstage. The whole setup took three minutes.
Marshall and JT came from the wings and took their places. Marshall, Sam, and Jamie picked up their Rics, and as the light came up, Jamie shouted, "Let 'er go, Digby!", to the other person who had been with them since Goldendale years earlier. The Outliers' banner was unfurled at the back of the stage from the fly system.
One advantage of playing only two gigs a year even though the group could tour full time is that the cult keeps growing, keeping the Outliers name in front of rock audiences. Over the years, word of mouth about the band and Lucas's foundation — plus YouTube — had made the performances A-list events.
After the kids in the hall quieted a bit, Jamie said, "This may be the only time in your lives that you'll see three Rickenbackers played at once."
Marshall then said, "You all probably know that two of the guys in The Outliers up here are adopted. You may also know that my cousins, JT and Sam, were raised by gay couples." A burst of applause interrupted Marshall. "The rest of the show is dedicated to our fathers, my mother, Jamie's mom and dad, and our grandfather, Jim, and our grandmother, Vi, all of whom are here with us tonight. But the main reason we're here is to honor Sam's Other Dad, Lucas Jansen, whom we miss every day. A lot of you out there have been direct beneficiaries of my Uncle Lucas's secret gifts over the years or from the support of his foundation, work that Sam carries on. He was a great mathematician, a great horseman, and really snarky. We all loved him. The rest of the program is for him, although he'd be the first to tell us that he's dissolved into a collection of atoms and can't hear anything now. Tough shit, Uncle Lucas."
The program spun out from The Outliers, starting with their first YouTube hit, "Boys Just Want to Have Fun" through "When My Boy Walks Down the Street" and "The Kindergarten Wall."
As the show ran down to the last song, Sam told the audience, "My Other Dad, OD, was a complicated guy who always treated me as an intelligent human. The last words he left me with were the same last words he had heard from his mentor, the poet Samuel Marshall, 'Everything is just as it should be'.
"This song, written by Virgin Forest, is from me for him; it speaks of his ability in the midst of his theoretical work to own a life in the real world and of my place in that world. It describes what a truly great man felt about me, his adopted son."
I remember when you were younger
Cuz I could hold you in my hands,
And I know you don't understand
But you do the best you can.
When I went walking in the darkness
You were lying on the floor.
Alone, were you dreaming in the empty room?
You're not alone any more.
When I told you that I loved you
I told you what you mean to me.
You would look up with your big brown eyes
But you never said anything.
And I don't know what it means.
And it's okay if I don't see you
Cuz I know you're happy just the same
But I could only bring it all back home
I would do anything.
Like I would wake you in the morning
And you would turn and look at me
I'd bend down just to pick you up
And you would reach up to kiss me.
And we'll know what it means.
And we'll know what it means.
And we'll know what it means.
And we'll know what it means.
And do you know what it means?
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