Published in the Quad-City Times on Apr. 10, 2024

Sometimes I see my dad when I see my own shadow.

Maybe it’s the curly hair. Maybe it’s my broadening shoulders, or the fact that I’m practical and methodical in the way I approach problems. 

For example: Once, on our gravel backyard court, I watched him make 39 consecutive free throws on an eight-foot hoop. I thought he was Michael Jordan reborn, but he was simply capitalizing on the ease of a bank shot on the plastic backboard.

Maybe it’s my love for music and the existential curiosity that stems from it. 

For example: A thousand times, I’ve seen my dad’s eyes narrow from the driver’s seat as one of his favorite songs comes on. He always waits for a quiet moment in the instrumentation to turn the volume down and say for the 25th time, Man, this is a good song, before turning up the volume to drown out any response.

When the song ends, he’ll explain why he loves it so much. His favorite lyric. The first time he heard it.

We, his six kids, have heard the stories before. All of them, many times. But re-telling them doesn’t seem to get old.

And I get it. That’s essentially what I’m doing in this column every week. Turning on a song, then turning it down a bit to tell you why I’m about to turn it back up.

There’s that shadow again. 

Concert of the week: Blue October at The Rust Belt

My dad played Blue October’s live CD “Argue With A Tree” so often on family car rides that I still have its banter and vocal cracks memorized. For as long as I can remember, the Houston band has been one of his favorites.

But I cannot hear their 2009 record “Approaching Normal” without thinking of hospital food.

The album was released a month after my two sisters, both 17 at the time, got into a devastating car accident. The older of them was in the hospital for over a month. 

On trips to and from the ICU, we listened to the CD on repeat. My dad didn’t turn the volume up or down. It just played straight through, on a tracklist that’s equal parts violent and violet. 

In the space between fluttering strums on the bonus track “Graceful Dancing,” I can see my aunts and uncles in a waiting room, praying. We were together. We were hopeful. My dad’s sense of humor fought past his steel emotional surface. 

In harsher songs like “Dirt Room,” I can see that month at its worst.

My tantrum at not being allowed to stay the night with my parents, the first time I saw my sister in a hospital bed, the tubes, the neck brace, the faintest smile that drifted to the edges of her normally vibrant lips, the realization that the people I love are impermanent. 

Blue October doesn’t really play songs from “Approaching Normal” at their shows anymore. But I wish they would, mostly because I’m far from home and singer Justin Furstenfeld’s voice on “Kangaroo Cry” is sometimes the quickest route back. 

But this Sunday, I’m grateful that home is coming to me — my parents are flying out from Nevada to see Blue October perform at The Rust Belt with me, and the show starts at 8 p.m. 

A little over ten years after my sister’s car accident injuries, she got married. For her father-daughter dance, she chose Blue October’s spritely mid-career tune “Home,” a saccharine song about building a life with someone.

And halfway through the track, my siblings and I joined her and my dad at the center of the dance floor. We swayed in a circle and held each other, the way I wanted to be held in the winter of 2009.

This is sort of a column about my dad, but it’s really a column about my family. Because without them, I do not have a shadow at all. 

Reader Mailbag

I know I’m not the only one who learned their music taste from their father, so I’d love to hear from you.

What’s your favorite song or album that your dad showed you?

Send me an email at ghanevold@qctimes.com and I’ll share a few favorites in next week’s column.

On This Daytrotter: Josh Ritter on April 12, 2010

Beyond my dad’s affinity for early-aughts pop rock, he also has a love for good alt-country. Neil Young, Drive-By Truckers and Uncle Tupelo (Farrar, not Tweedy) were often in his rotation.

One of his favorites is Josh Ritter, an Idahoan songwriter who recorded a Daytrotter session in Rock Island this week in 2010. This session sees Ritter at his most unclouded. With its minimalism, his witty lyrics and crisp guitar work are at the forefront.  

“Slowly, so there is no change,” he sings on “You’ve Got The Moon.” “It does not feel like the end of something.”

Slowly, so there is no change, I’m getting nostalgic again and I hear another song.

Third Eye Blind – “Third Eye Blind”

It’s buried underneath a memory from my first bedroom.

In this memory, I’m four years old and the carpet is pressed against my jaw as I lay on the floor, watching shadows dance underneath my door frame. 

It was a weekday and I woke up early. I listened from a few rooms away as my siblings laughed, making breakfast before school. There’s a peace in the sunlight of this moment, a mental Polaroid of a time in my youth that I’ll never get back. 

When I put on Third Eye Blind’s self-titled record, which celebrated its 27th anniversary this week, it shakes the image and the colors get clearer.

Third Eye Blind was my dad’s favorite band at the time, and my dad’s favorite bands are my family’s favorite bands. I’ve certainly inherited this fandom, because their debut album has an easy case as my favorite record of all time. 

On it, there are the hits. The era-defining doot-doot-doots of “Semi-Charmed Life” and the peppy platitudes of “Jumper.”

But there are also incredible ballads, a trio of which close the album: “The Background,” “Motorcycle Drive-By” and “God of Wine.” 

These slower tracks stand in noticeable contrast to songwriter Stephan Jenkins’ off-stage antics, which have been denounced by just about every one of the band’s peers and many of the former members, too. The lyrics are cynical, but also self-critical, a stripping of Jenkins’ signature ego.

“I’ve never been so alone, and I’ve never been so alive,” Jenkins sings on “Motorcycle Drive-By,” his last utterance coming with a splintering shriek. 

It’s perfect for car karaoke. Cathartic, singable and generally abstract enough to apply equally to a bright morning and a brooding evening. 

On car rides growing up, my family always sang a different tune: Third Eye Blind’s “Slow Motion.” This tradition still catches family friends off guard, given the song’s bloody imagery and blunt satirization of violence in entertainment. 

I don’t think too hard about the lyrics, but I know them by heart and I’ll sing them every single time the song comes on.

Because all I know is that when my sister woke up from her hospital bed to see my dad by her side, the first thing they did was sing the dark and ominous chorus Slow motion, see me let go and that was a reminder that we were together, hopeful and alive. 

I’m grateful to have been born into a family where vocal cords and car speakers are mechanisms worth breaking in the name of emotional release. 

Slow motion, see me hold onto their love and the way it has shaped me.

Slow motion, see the imprint of carpet coils on my cheek in a house I’ll never see again.

Slow motion, come the changes that turn me into a reflection of my father. And with that, a reflection of my family. A reflection to be proud of.