Mandatory Credit: Photo by RMV/REX/Shutterstock (9646726aw)
Frightened Rabbit – Scott Hutchison
Handmade Festival, Leicester, UK – 30 Apr 2018
Lead singer and chief songwriter of Frightened Rabbit, a brilliant band from Scotland. He battled depression for years, and ultimately couldn’t break free of its grip.
There are no casual Frightened Rabbit fans. You either love them or you’ve never heard of them. (The latter can be rectified, btw.) There was a sadness to Scott’s lyrics — that’s what drew us in. We are all damaged… lost souls in need of a friend… lonely hearts wanting love.
The sadness that drew us in also stole him away. Depression is a liar and a thief.
It’s been a year and I’m still torn up about it. I try to get through by focusing not on the darkness, but rather on the light. I think about the joy he brought to the world, rather than dwelling on his sad exit.
Mostly, I think of my friends who are also fans… Dale, Michael, Ric, Deuce, Sara, Reid, Maggie… We’re still here. And we can pay heed to Scott’s lyrics:
Two women. One microphone. None better at bringing songs to life. I love Lucius.
Photo credit: Jon Calderas, CincyMusic.com
Lucius played Memorial Hall in Cincinnati on Wednesday. Actually, they wrapped Memorial Hall around their matching little fingers. Such powerful, pristine voices, such picture-perfect harmonies, such soul-stirring songs. For me, it was goose bumps all night long.
To the uninitiated, the matching outfits, makeup and wigs/hairdos can seem like a gimmick. But when you hear the voices of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig intertwine and mesh so well, it totally makes sense. They are two, yet one.
But let’s not forget the other three folks on stage – playing guitars, drums and providing backing vocals that always served the songs, complementing them but never overshadowing them.
One woman at the show had traveled 600 miles to see Lucius. Totally worth it. If they come anywhere near you (and the show isn’t already sold out), you simply must attend.
When I was six, my family moved from über-urban New Jersey (shout out to Jersey City!) to super-rural Arkansas (shout out to… the cows that lived next door?). Our new abode was in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, so it got chilly, but we rarely experienced snow or ice. (I remember one year when we got nearly a foot of snow overnight and my grade school was closed for two weeks straight!)
Cold-weather sports such as hockey weren’t really on my radar. Sure, I might read the occasional article about it in Sports Illustrated, but I’d never seen a live game and really knew very little about it. In college, I got a work-study job in intramurals, and had to be a linesman for broomball, the poor man’s hockey. It took me a long time to understand the “icing” penalty call.
I’ve been to a handful of hockey games since then, but don’t really follow the sport. When my old friend John Fox — who is now the editor of Cincinnati Magazine — rang me up and asked me if I wanted to contribute to a photo essay about beer league hockey players for the April issue, my initial thought was that I was woefully ill-equipped for the gig. But I overcame my imposter fears and I’m so glad I did, because I got to interview a bunch of very interesting folks from all walks of life, united by their love of “the good old hockey game.”
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