Published in the Quad-City Times on Jan. 17, 2024

I hate the smell of leather. 

It has given me a headache since I was a five-year-old kid riding in the backseat of my dad’s car, which he always kept equipped with an air freshener that made the new car smell even more intense. 

His seats were pristine. There was no eating allowed in my dad’s cars. No crackers, no drinks, nothing. On road trips, we held our hunger until we got to the hotel. To this day, he trades in his car for a different one every 18 months or so, ostensibly in search of a better deal.

But I think he really just wants the peace of mind. The knowledge that the new one is clean. That there are no crumbs that have snuck between the cracks. 

And so, that smell of leather is always present. But I loved riding in my dad’s cars. Mostly because he played cool music. He introduced me to pop punk, alt-rock and Americana. The tunes were as crisply suave as the car’s seating. It was worth the ibuprofen. 

And when my dad controlled his car radio, it was the main event. The bass was boosted. The volume was loud. He’d stop between lyrics to explain just why each line meant so much to him. That explicit passing of the musical torch makes it easy to draw an arrow from my dad’s love of Uncle Tupelo to my love of Zach Bryan. You can see that genetic quest for why a song means so much to me in the newspaper every Wednesday. 

But in my mom’s car, the rules were loose. Food was fair game. In fact, it was encouraged — when I was in elementary school, she’d stop by the gas station every day on the way to work and buy me a pack of blue gummy sharks. I ripped them open and ate and ate and ate. 

And in her car, the volume stayed low. She likes music, but it doesn’t consume her the way it does my dad. So on longer drives together, between bites of Cheez-Its or Happy Meals, we talked. About the girls I had a crush on and the stress of my next homework assignment and where I’d be going to college. 

When I got older and more stubborn, I’d forget the joy of conversation. I’d wrestle her for the AUX cord, always needing to show her a song I just heard. She’d protest, “Why can’t we just talk?” 

I hate to say it, but she’s right. In those moments where I needed to communicate feelings through somebody else’s lyrics, she forced me to say them out loud. I think she and I are closer for it, too. Even though sometimes I still reach for the cord.

Because of its quietness, her music taste passed onto me a bit more subliminally than my dad’s. To celebrate her birthday this week, I’ll share some of my top picks of her favorite songs. While these are all great, the songs that are truly worth singing are the conversations she and I have sung above the radio. 

The 88 – “Coming Home” (2005)

One important thing about my mom: she loves movies and TV. That’s where she finds the majority of her music nowadays. (We both still love “Goodbye Horses,” of Hannibal Lecter’s fame.) “Coming Home,” a whimsical pop rock tune full of la-las and platitudes, came to her in the critically-panned but admittedly lovable holiday movie “Surviving Christmas.”

For the last seven years of my childhood, I was the only kid in the Hanevold home, and “Coming Home” reminds me of one of my favorite days from that era of my youth: my mom, my dad and I road-tripping to central Utah to chop down our first natural Christmas tree. He drove. But still, we talked.

Marlon Williams – “Thinking Of Nina” (2022)

One of my most successful recent recommendations to my mom is “Thinking Of Nina,” a single from New Zealand alt-pop singer Marlon Williams. To me, it’s the meeting point of our tastes — the spunky bass-heavy 80’s pop that raised her, and the Dead Oceans-driven indie rock that is raising me. It probably helps for my Mom that Williams has been in Netflix shows and made a cameo in “A Star Is Born.” Like I said, that Hollywood co-sign means a lot.

Linkin Park – “Wretches And Kings – Live In Las Vegas” (2012)

I should note that even though I called my dad’s music taste cool earlier, my mom can throw down, too. She knows all the explicit words to Lil’ Jon’s “Get Low.” She used to play Jason DeRulo’s “Talk Dirty” on the way home from middle school. And when she took me to see my favorite band, Linkin Park, in my first ever concert, she fell in love with their anarchist rock-rap banger “Wretches And Kings.” That moment is cemented forever, because the band released an official live version of “Wretches and Kings” in 2012, from the exact show in Las Vegas where we saw it. 

The Avett Brothers – “Through My Prayers” (2012)

When I left home for college, I remember bickering. About everything: her daily check-ins on my well-being, her taste in television being an affront to my newfound counterculturism. And then one night, I listened to The Avett Brothers’ “Through My Prayers,” a devastating Americana ballad about grieving a loved one in the wake of a fight.

The Avetts are my mom’s favorite band. And that night, I cried and cried and cried. The tears were quiet enough that — six feet away — my randomly assigned dorm roommate couldn’t hear. But they were loud enough that — 300 miles away — my mom probably could. I haven’t listened to it since, but I probably should. 

Electric Light Orchestra – “When I Was A Boy” (2015)

Before the Avett Brothers, my mom’s favorite band was Electric Light Orchestra. And while I still enjoy the band’s catchiest hits (and there are many), I’ll always have a soft spot for Lynne’s raspy, solo piano ballad, “When I Was A Boy.” When it came out, it was all my mom listened to. And a year later, I wrote a sloppy spoken word song over its instrumental and gave it to her as a gift.

She cried and cried and I didn’t know what to say. Sometimes speaking through a song is easier than speaking a capella. Sometimes saying what I feel through a column works, too.

Happy birthday, Mom. I love you. I’m trying my best.

On This Daytrotter: Dan Croll on Jan. 17, 2013

When my mom isn’t finding songs from TV shows and movies, she’s finding them in the commercials in between. So it only feels fitting that 11 years ago today, folk pop singer Dan Croll recorded a Daytrotter session that featured his breakout single “Home.”

It’s a sweet little song that I found from a HomeGoods ad from 2016. (Look closely in the commercial, and you’ll see a 21-year-old Phoebe Bridgers making a brief appearance.)

Concert of The Week: Darren Kiely at Raccoon Motel

While we’re on the topic of wholesome folk pop, Irish singer-songwriter Darren Kiely is stopping at the Raccoon Motel on Saturday night at 8 p.m. It’s a 21-and-up show, and tickets start at $20. Fans of breakout folk popstar Noah Kahan need to check this one out. 

Kiely’s 2023 record “Lost” sounds somewhere between Kahan and Marcus Mumford (a great compliment in my eyes), and the album features “Mom & Dad,” an honest and brutal affirmation of Kiely’s parents’ sadness after seeing their son’s pain. 

“Have you words for those moments?” he asks emphatically on the chorus. “Or is your silence how I tell that you feel what I have felt?” 

Okay, I’m listening. It’s quiet in my mom’s passenger seat. There are no songs in my head or on the radio. No smell of leather in my nostrils. And I know, deep down, that I love my parents for their balance.

Sure, I hear my dad in Jackson Browne and Third Eye Blind and Counting Crows. But I hear my mom in the silence, and what we say when we break it.