Wade Allison

“Are you gonna do anything cool today?”

When it was Wade Allison asking you that question out of the blue, from halfway across the country, it seemed as rhetorical a question as any: If you had the good fortune of having him blindside you with one liners in the middle of the afternoon, you were already inherently doing something cool: you were talking to Wade Allison. “You should go fishing or something,” is what he said this time, which only got me laughing harder. It was like having Steven Wright trying out a new bit on you, in a Texan drawl. 

My earliest memories of Wade are admittedly murky, though I am almost certain he came into my life courtesy of Greg Mental or Pearse from Rival Mob. The first time I really do remember seeing Iron Age was when my band, New Lows, opened up for them on April 4, 2007, which I believe was our third ever show. There’s nothing I hate writing about more than music, or having to use comparisons to describe someone so incomparable, but for the uninitiated, Wade was like Duane Allman in Air Jordans, complete with shaggy blonde mop, a Les Paul guitar and every bit a gift to that instrument. “Effortless“ has become the ubiquitous adjective many of his (many) friends and fans have used to describe his musicianship in the days that have dragged on since we found out on September 11 that he had passed away. To me, his style of playing was akin to taking a morning piss—a muscle memory he didn’t even need his eyes open for, with a humble presence so laid back that made him so enjoyable to watch, one loose and aloof as heshers and edge men united to defy the laws of gravity (and probably a few others) in front of him. 

2009 is a year I have really found myself revisiting this week. That year I saw Iron Age a Grateful Dead-level of times, in at least five states around the country as they prepared to release their second LP, The Sleeping Eye. I would even travel to see them and hang with Wade throughout multiple states while I was on crutches from an ankle break. I’d have to say a defining moment in my friendship with Wade would be that year’s now infamous Sound And Fury festival in California, in which both our bands played during the day and where we partied in our adjacent motel rooms at night. When dozens of bands and hundreds of people cram into a city for 72 hours, it becomes a difficult necessity to filter out the crowds to maximize the experience. Or since it was California I guess you could say it becomes like shaking all the silt and dirt loose in search of your fortune. Wade Allison was that piece of gold that enriched my life. 

The Sleeping Eye, which Wade wrote and had a Prince-like responsibility for, was an instant classic record for me (and many others) when it came out. If you are not familiar, you should be; there’s never a wrong time to fall in love with it. Begrudgingly forcing myself into comparisons once again, the album takes the best elements of “Master Of Puppets”, “Best Wishes” and Leeway’s “Desperate Measures,” melting them down into thick, crude oil and pressing onto that a hit of acid. I still think the people who mindlessly branded Iron Age as a "crossover" band really missed out on Wade's sometimes soulful, bluesy riffs. I have been obsessively listening to “Arcana Pt 1,”  specifically that really fat and jammy outro that bleeds right into “Pt 2.” For 90 seconds it sounds like the band had strung their guitars with loose strings made from charred barbecue grills before rolling into the tight crunch of a Led Zep improv jam circa 1969. With Wade gone now, when the song plays I feel like I’m listening to Horace Silver's "Lonely Woman”- not a hardcore jam. I can't stop crying when I hear it but I can't stop playing “Arcana” either.

Often once bands break up or stop touring, friendships fade away, save for an occasional social media like, but when Iron Age halted and Wade became a husband, father and lawyer, he still always found time to see how I was doing, encourage me with my writing and see me when I rolled through Texas, always cautiously declaring that he was now a family man before we would meet up for a couple beers. When him and Claire came to Martha's Vineyard for their anniversary in the fall of 2015, I happened to be down there too, and had found out an hour before I met them that my father had just been admitted for emergency heart surgery. I was in a bit of a panic. But it could have been a stranger approaching him in a restaurant with the same story I had that night and he'd still have been a sturdy shoulder to lean on. Which he was.  Of course some absolute  Masshole decided to sit near us and then started giving us a bit of a hard time.  I was already on edge and praying for a quiet end to this situation. We trade a few barbs, steak head tells us he’s an MMA fighter and off-duty cop. Wade casually glances over and says in that great drawl, “that’s cool, we're MDMA fighters," while tugging on his brand-new Dorchester Youth Boxing hoodie he had just been gifted from Pearse in Boston. I broke out laughing and the steak head was left muttering, "Stay the fuck outta Hyannis!" 

Later that night I watched the sunset in Edgartown with Claire and Wade before, I'm sure, overstaying my welcome hanging in their hotel room. But that Texas hospitality is real and I will forever be grateful to Wade, and especially to Claire, for allowing me to spend that time with them when I really needed a friend to comfort me. Looking back through messages and photos, that night also happened to be six years to the day since we had (at that time) last played a show together with Rival Mob in Boston on October 15, 2009 (I reminded Wade of that show recently and its fifty people at most in attendance: “Well, responded Wade,  “I’m sure half of Boston was under indictment.” Here we were now, having a quiet, peaceful night looking out at a pink sky shrinking behind Chappaquiddick, years and miles away from Oxnard, California. While standing there on Memorial Wharf overlooking Nantucket Sound, Wade,  with that signature, arid sense of humor pointed at a seagull and said "Man, lookit that sea goose." I still can't remember if he was just fucking with me or if he really did call them sea geese, but it ignited a call and response not unlike the Moors vs. Moops Seinfeld debate. I kept shouting in a George Costanza-esque pitch, "They're seagulls!"  Another reason why that’s a night I cherish more than one spent in a motel or festival, and the sole reason I will now refer to them as sea-geese.

Last year I found myself having a pretty rough time with family, work and just life in general, so it's no coincidence it was also a time in which I was in regular contact with Wade for the first time in a few years. I needed his support; even joking around with him, I knew I’d get it. Around that time we both happened to be planning on playing shows with our bands again. He wasn't able to get Iron Age to Boston but insisted we play together in Brooklyn that summer, which I just took as a pre-planned excuse to hang out again and have fun. For what would end up being only two days we got to hang out that year, we didn't waste a second, and after that matinee, which would end up being his last performance, we found each other arm in arm sauntering around Greenpoint as the sun crept up over McGuinness Blvd., telling each other we loved each other and absolutely refusing to let the night end. He suggested I go back with him to his hotel to wake up his brother Jared as a joke before they caught their flight back to Texas. It's now always a great regret that I let my politeness get in the way of one more great story with Wade; I can still see him leaving the car, and it still has me in tears. I also thankfully recorded 10 seconds of video of him sitting down to play piano in the opulent lobby of our friends Luke and Sarah's building, where we again got to watch the sunset as Wade played with their infant daughter and expressed his extreme dislike for the song "Wild Horses."  He was still in regular contact with me during the pandemic, sending the sweetest video of him and his mom celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, and inviting me to come down to Austin for the summer. I had also repeatedly texted him and Pearse while closing my bar down to play the song “Mississippi Queen.” I woke up the next morning to a video from him blasting the song and flipping me off while driving next to his son. I had already forgotten about the texts I sent him but Wade was just somehow cosmically connected to my sense of humor and commitment to a joke. It is tormenting me that I didn't rabidly accept Wade's offer to Face-Time each other at "Six eastern time" to listen to the Aerosmith discography in chronological order, "OK,” says Wade, “gotta figure out how to play music and talk on my phone at the same time."  The last time I spoke to him was the week of Riley's passing, and we again said we loved each other. As restless as these few nights have been, I am comforted in knowing how much he did love me. I loved Wade so much that I feel physically different without him here anymore. I feel like he's gone. It's awful. What is most painful to me that if I feel this way, I can't imagine what his family is going through. His beautiful children. His band-mates and life long friends. I am so sorry and I am still sitting here crying. Whatever new world or life this is without him I can already confirm that it sucks and I'll never do something as cool as spend time with Wade Allison again. So maybe it's finally time to remember his suggestion and go fishing or something.