Photo credit David Scharenberg
A year ago today, a close friend of mine passed unexpectedly. We met in the late 90s through an acquaintance when the ragtag outfit of musicians I consider my first band badly needed a drummer. No one we tried out even came close to the personality or musician we sought.
The acquaintance told me, "Hey I know this complete animal who would fit right in. Better yet, he's a great person." He introduced us to Rob, who had come home on military leave, and he could not have been more right. Rob was both an animal of a drummer and a great person, who became a great friend. Who became a brother.
I could spin endless threads about the adventures we shared in the two decades plus that I knew him (half of that time playing in various rock outfits), but I won't. Not here. Ask my sometime face to face. That's where they belong, not in this cold web deadspace. I will tell you this, though:
In my memories, I can feel in all five senses. I can smell the tang of weed and ancient ashtrays of each backstage of every venue we played; I can hear the audience clamoring, a raucous, multi-headed creature, hungry to hear what they paid for, and their cheers and catcalls and croons of "Play 'Freebird,' dudes!" (Rob hated that); I can taste every beer we ever shared onstage or backstage and every greasy meal in every grimy road house or diner while touring; I can feel the ground-and-pound bass throbbing through subwoofers and the driving backbeat of the drums like rail spikes through your rib cage and the guitar screaming like a demon unleashed and the way the stage shook beneath our sneakers and the sweat and blood that baptized everything in the path of our thrashing.
And I can see Rob. Standing right there, stage left. Or seated behind his Pearl drumkit like an artillery captain locked and loaded. Like it was yesterday. Like time playing on a loop, that one drunk friend dropping in your favorite disc and hitting REPEAT for eternity.
But that's the thing, isn't it? They say time heals all wounds. So does music. Music is salvation. Music has the power to transform. It binds people together. It ignites and incites and invites. It unites. That's precisely what it did with Rob and anyone whoever shared music with him, whether onstage or off. Music makes memories.
Photo credit David Scharenherg
And that's the beauty of memory. Memory is a path to immortality. As long as someone is remembered, they're never truly gone. And unless I'm very wrong, stories about Rob will trickle down for generations.
Speaking of, Rob was a storyteller too. Ask anyone who knew him. He told some of the best goddamned stories I've ever heard. Fiction and factual. Real jaw-droppers. He could tell a ghost story that would slush your blood. His jokes could make you laugh until you popped an ab. And some of the most impulsive off-the-cuff things that came out of his mouth still make me double over if I think of them today (most of which I can't repeat here, but ask me about them sometime). I'll be standing in line at the supermarket and remember one of Rob's one-offs and you should see the stares I get when the laughter bubbles up.
There's probably not much else I can relate here that hasn't already been said about Rob by people better than me. I'll finish by saying Rob was inspiring. Charismatic. Charming. He would have risked bodily harm to defend his true friends (and did on more than one occasion). We may have drifted apart in later years, but the bond of true friendship remains. It always does once it forms, distance be damned. That goes behind friendship.
That's brotherhood.
Rest in peace, Rob.
You are missed. You are loved. You are my brother.
You are immortal.
Photo credit Samantha Schramer
