I WAS STANDING on the sidelines, drinking tepid coffee from a travel mug, watching my thirteen-year-old son play yet another game, because that’s what you do on Saturdays when you’re a soccer dad.
It was a cold, rainy afternoon. At some point in the endless second half, my friend Eric drifted over to say hi. He said he’d stopped by my house the day before to pick up his son, and had heard me playing my electric guitar.
“You sounded pretty good,” he said.
Another dad, a guy named Bill, was standing nearby, close enough to eavesdrop. I still remember the way his head swiveled in my direction, and the probing, sidelong look he shot me. I didn’t know Bill very well, though I’d seen him at countless games. After Eric wandered off, he sidled over. His glasses were speckled with tiny raindrops, just like mine.
“You play guitar?” he asked.
“I used to,” I said. “I’m getting back into it.”
“You should come to my house,” he said. “We can jam a little.”
BILL’S BASEMENT WAS loaded with all kinds of equipment—guitars and drums, amps and keyboards and microphones, a whole rock-and-roll arsenal. He was a way better guitarist than I was, but he didn’t mind my limitations. He just wanted to play. And we actually sounded okay together, despite our different styles and abilities.
“We should do this again,” he said.
When I showed up for our next session, another soccer dad was there, a guy named Roger, who played keyboards and sang. Our drummer Narayan joined us the next time we got together—I’d coached his son a few years earlier on the B travel team—and then I asked my friend Ben if he wanted to jam with us. Ben didn’t live in our town, and his daughter didn’t play soccer, but he’s a great bass player and a dynamic front man, and he made us complete.
I’D ALWAYS WANTED to be in a band. I tried out for one in high school, but I choked at the audition, and I was so humiliated that I put my guitar away for 25 years, and only started playing again in my forties. It was exhilarating to suddenly be living out my teenage dream, but also humbling, because I was the least experienced musician in our group, and made a lot of mistakes.
Our first gig was a high school graduation party, held in a function room at a local country club. We were the opening act; the headliners were a bunch of graduating seniors, including Bill’s son, Gavin. We arrived three hours early to set up our elaborate gear and to do a proper sound check, and then stood around, grinning nervously in our black T-shirts as the cavernous party space filled with cheerful teenagers, who told us over and over how cool it was that we had a band, and how eager they were to hear our music.
When the big moment finally arrived, Narayan clicked his sticks, and we launched into a sizzling version of “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones, at which point the kids immediately left the room and went outside. They stayed out there for our entire set—we could see them through the windows, standing in little groups, chatting among themselves—and returned the moment we were done. No one requested an encore.
WE HAD TROUBLE finding a name for ourselves. Various ideas were floated, but nothing stuck, until Narayan’s daughter suggested “foodbaby,” which made us all laugh.
Our kids are grown now, but foodbaby’s still going strong after fifteen years. We started as a cover band—Tom Petty, R.E.M., Patti Smith, exactly what you’d expect from a bunch of suburban guys our age—but now we mostly play originals. Our first record, Midnight Snack, features songs by Ben, Bill, and Roger. During the pandemic I started writing songs too, and the guys encouraged me to sing them, and you know what? I’m an okay singer. Not great, by any means, but not terrible, either.
We know how lucky we are. Sometimes we look at one another in the middle of a song and just shake our heads in amazement and gratitude, because it’s a powerful thing, playing music with your friends, especially at this point in our lives, when we’re all aware of the ticking clock, the knowledge that it can’t last forever.
WE DON’T PLAY a lot of gigs. Every once in a blue moon, we’ll get booked in a little bar or club, but mainly we just perform at our local Porchfest. We set up in Roger’s backyard on an autumn afternoon, and play our songs to an audience of family, friends, neighbors, and even the occasional stranger. It’s a lot of work—we have to lug all the gear back and forth from Bill’s house—but it’s great to get out of the basement and into the sunlight in front of all those friendly faces.
Sadly, the weather doesn’t always cooperate. This past year, there were predictions of a possible thunderstorm on the day of our gig, but we crossed our fingers and went ahead with it. We had a nice crowd—maybe a hundred people—and everything was going great until the middle of our second set, when the sky began to darken. We had two songs to go when, just like at Woodstock, the rain came pouring down.
The crowd rushed for cover, and we started frantically unplugging our instruments and turning off the amps and trying to save what we could from the deluge. Luckily, a bunch of our sons and their friends—the scrawny soccer players we used to watch on Saturdays, mysteriously transformed into grown men—were in the audience, and they helped us break down the equipment and carry it into Roger’s house before it all got ruined, getting themselves completely drenched in the process. There was something sweet about that, the full circle of it, because they’d learned the lesson we taught them all those years ago, without even realizing we were doing it.
Sometimes you have to stand out in the rain for the people you love.
Tom Perrotta is a screenwriter and novelist. He’s written Election, The Leftovers, and now Ghost Town, his latest, out April 28.
