Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: You Kids with Your Music
Episode 13 in a series of true rideshare stories
“You doing the TreeFort thing?” I ask as he climbs into the front seat.
The TreeFort Music Festival has taken over downtown Boise, and practically every venue is cashing in. Those that don’t have live music are doing offshoot events like ComedyFort, AleFort, HackFort, DragFort, FortFort, and GetStabbedUnderABridgeFort. Those of us stuck at WorkFort are pretty much trapped in ChitChatFort with the MotherForters who are allowing us to pay our rents, lest we end up living in forts.
“No,” he says. “I looked at the lineup, but I didn’t really know the bands. I was hoping they’d have some local EDM bands, but it didn’t look like it.”
“Ah, that’s too bad,” I say, really just trying to empathize, but in retrospect, that’s where I make my first mistake.
“You ever go to local EDM shows?”
“No, can’t say I have.”
“We’ve got a surprisingly good EDM scene here.”
I shrug. I don’t dance, don’t really go in for loud and crowded events, and, when it comes to music, I tend to put lyrics first. All of which is to say…
“I’m not really a big EDM guy.”
“I wasn’t either,” he says, eyes widening like a born-again Christian setting his sights on me for conversion. “I’m a classically trained violinist. I always wrote it off. Then my girlfriend told me she got tickets to this three-day EDM festival, and she was gonna go with or without me, and I was like, ‘Well, it’s gonna be drugs and dancing and a bunch of other guys, and if she’s gonna be there, I’d feel better if I was there too.’ So I spent like three months trying to psych myself up for it, and then you know what?”
He stops, like I’m not going to believe this next part. Like there’s no way I could guess. But… I mean… there’s pretty much only one way this story can go.
“You enjoyed it?”
“Best weekend of my life! I’ve never felt so accepted by a group of people. Everybody took me in. Everybody was so nice. Every interaction was like, ‘I see you, man. I see you and I respect who you are as a person.’ And that would be the whole conversation.”
It doesn’t exactly sound like a conversation. In fact, it seems like kind of a weird and awkward thing to have said to you by a stranger. But he seems to regard it as an epiphany, so I nod along. “That’s awesome, man.”
“It changed me. I had PTSD. I couldn’t do crowds or loud music or anything like that, and that was like three years ago. You know how many concerts I went to last year?”
“How many?”
“Forty-seven.”
“That’s a lot of concerts.”
“There’s this guy I like, he’s amazing. He’s gonna play here pretty soon. I’ve seen him live six times already. He plays here on a Thursday and then he goes out to Portland and Seattle, so me and my friends are gonna go to the show here, then get in the car and go to Portland, then Seattle, three shows in three days.”
“Wow. He must be good.”
“Can I play something for you? Do you have an AUX cable?”
I had a feeling it would come to this. “Sure, let’s do it.”
I give him the cable. He gets on Spotify, cranks the volume, and cues up the worst sound I’ve ever heard, like a city bus with a busted axel getting molested by a rusty bulldozer while construction workers jackhammer through a four-foot stack of manhole covers in the background.
“Right?” he says, headbanging and flailing his hands.
“Heh heh… Uh… Yep…”
I look at the clock. Two minutes to destination. Whew.
He keeps trying to recommend artists to me as I drop him off, probably six or seven of them. I have to tell him I have another passenger to pick up (I don’t) just to get him to wrap it up. He says, “Do you want to write these down? Or I could text them to you or something?”
“Nah, I’ll remember.”
He finally goes into his house.
And you know what? I like him. I like that he’s enthusiastic about something. I like that he never complained once about anything he hated and only wanted to talk about and share what he loved. I like that something changed his life and he’s hoping it will change other people’s too.
I don’t like his music, but I’ve watched the three-hour director’s cut of Midsommar multiple times and most people I know seem to feel the same way about that movie that I feel about EDM, so fuck it, let him have his Midsommar. Let everyone have their Midsommar.
I hope he enjoys those three concerts in three days. Someone should.
It ain’t gonna be me though. That’s for damn sure.
Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.
It's nice when people share their passion. Sometimes it can be like my son when he was young talking about Pokémon 😍