Moving Up Living Down, Rachel C.

It's 2007. 

I'm newly sixteen. My friends and I cram into the one single velvet couch at Milkboy in Ardmore, after having ordered items with as little coffee content as possible from the infinitely pretentious menu. We are giggling fools, giddy in the knowledge that we've made it here, to this *~very adult place~*.  We have decided seeing live coffee shop music, which is a *~very adult thing~*,  is now *~our thing~*.  

None of us could drive here to Milkboy, but one of us had an older sister who said she would drop us off but would NOT pick us up. None of us had jobs but everyone babysat every once in a while. None of us had ever been drunk, but one of us had snuck two beers at Thanksgiving and she said it felt like floating. Only one of us had even broken a bone, and it was so long ago that even she couldn't recall the pain. None of us had ever had our hearts broken, by a boy, by the world, or otherwise.  

A slight, reedy guy with a keyboard and guitar approaches the mic, quips a couple words about his songs & their inspiration. He launches into a set that harkens Jason Mraz and Dispatch, and we are lost in it. Someone says, "He's like... if Jim from The Office could sing," and we all nod furiously. I think to myself, "This guy looks like an indie pop Clay Aiken," which I stand by. Everyone whoops when he mentions Villanova, I squint over the lyrics I can piece together, committing them to memory. We all scream along during "Call Me Back," because we've all been there? Right? I think? I'm sixteen; I don't have a clue.

He does a mash up of "How Will I Know" / "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" / "What's Love Got to Do with It" It's a hit and we all start singing along. Everyone around us hates us. We are simultaneously acutely aware of this, and yet unphased in our ineffable enjoyment.

We flock to the greeting table afterward and each buy a signed copy of his first CD. Someone claims he flirted with them, and we cry laughing together as she lists her evidence. We walk together in the dark, tripping and joking, and then someone's mom drives us all home one by one. Once there, I immediately code the sound file of that mashup into my Myspace so everyone who visits my page will hear it and know that I, too, am a chill cool girl. 

It's 2023. 

Sixteen years from when I saw Eric Hutchison live at Milkboy with my friends. Imagine my shock to discover someone else knows about Eric Hutchinson and has offered up a DIFFERENT album than the one I have in my possession today! This man had multiple albums? A full music career? Absolutely wild!

I give it a listen, I check the release year. 2012—and not very different in style than the first. Jason Mraz voice and scraping acoustics, talented keys and lively beats. Hutchinson sports the same swift lyrical delivery with bone dry candor, and a little bit of a pick-me-bitch attitude (e.g. "Talk Is Cheap," "I'm Not Cool," "Watching You Watch Him"). Overall, if these songs had been playing in the mall, they would have inspired me to buy some BOGO accessories. This week, however, they inspired me to call the friends I loved most ferally.