We're sitting in a hotel bar in Minneapolis, having just stepped away from the Protospiel event we’re attending, which is a board game developer conference (yeah, in my spare time, I also design and develop board games). It's just me and my wife, Melanie, and our very friendly Thailand bartender.
We chat with him for a bit and learn he’s from Bangkok. His first U.S. stop was the Carolinas, but he has just arrived in Minneapolis a little while ago and is experiencing his first winter in the mid-America northlands. He shares how, where he comes from, the weather really doesn’t change and therefore he is still acclimating to our seasons. I mention how the best part of winter is the coming spring and the best part of the approaching winter is Autumn. He smiles so big and wide to the mention of fall and states how magnificent and beautiful midwestern autumns are.
A tall, lanky older gentleman with thinning dark hair walks in at that moment asking about the beers on tap. He asks about a hazy IPA. I let him know that they're out of Pseudo Sue (what Melanie had hoped for), but the Saga IPA is very good (what Melanie is enjoying, even if it isn't hazy). The gentleman goes for that, lets everyone know he really likes it, and sits quietly enjoying the brew while Melanie and I sip our beers and talk about what the heck is wrong with the mechanics of my latest board game design.
When the older gentleman to my right finishes, I notice two things: he's looking around to cash out and leave, and our genial young bartender is suddenly nowhere to be seen. I turn to him and say, "Yeah, we've noticed this happens a lot here. I think they're short-staffed."
He shrugs. "Yeah, I looked around and couldn't find anyone. There's some conference going on, maybe that's keeping them busy."
I display the badge dangling from my lanyard. "Yup. We're part of that conference."
And that gets us talking. I ask where he is coming from and he says LA. He explains how they were on the evacuation list for a while and had to pack up in a hurry. He says he has a bunch of people staying at his house because they are now homeless.
I ask if it’s business or pleasure that brings him to Minneapolis and he explains he is a trombone player and about to go to his second night at a gig. They are reenacting the Last Waltz, the final performance of The Band that occurred in 1976 on Thanksgiving day where every musician who was anyone performed with them. Martin Scorsese documented the entire event and directed the film released in 1978 called The Last Waltz.
And then he casually says, “You know, I was part of the band that night. I’m in that film.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. “That’s amazing.”
He goes on to tell us that he joined Levon Helm’s next band, Levon Helm and the Barn Burners. He mentions being in the Blues Brothers movie, and playing with the Saturday Night Live band for a decade. He says he was part of David Letterman’s band under Paul Shaffer’s direction, and has been in a myriad of other projects, including Paul McCartney’s latest album.
That’s right. We are sitting next to and talking with Tom “Bones” Malone.
I put out my hand and we shake. I tell him how fantastic it is to meet him.
I can’t wait to tell him how our local Chippewa Valley musicians reenact Stage Fright/The Last Waltz almost every year and had their fourteenth-annual performance on the night before Thanksgiving. He gets a real kick out of that. “If you ever find yourself in Eau Claire Wisconsin on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you have to check it out,” I say.
We share with him how we had pursued music for a while, but how it wasn’t in the cards for us. He mentions how going to work for him is stepping onto a plane and flying all over the world. Time moves on, our bartender returns to settle our tabs, and we need to get back to the Protospiel. We wish Tom the best, he offers his fist, I bump knuckles with “Bones” Malone, and we part ways.
Melanie sometimes expresses frustration with me because of my tendency to start conversations with strangers. A self-proclaimed introvert, I only recently learned the term ambivert during work and I shouted out, “Hey, that’s my wife!” The fact is, she is loath to start a conversation or put attention on her, but once its there, she can win over a room in seconds (better than I, the extrovert, can).
But listen, in all my years of leaning over and saying a few words to the person next to me, I I have never, ever, ever regretted it. No, it is not a common experience for me to casually start up a conversation with someone who ends up being an internationally recognized and famous person. And no, I certainly do not remember the countless number of people I have conversed with while standing next to them in line at the store, or sitting next to them on a plane, a bus, or theater.
Everyone has a story, and I do retain the emotional memory of those conversations. It reminds me that individuals, removed from affiliations and beliefs and ideologies and agendas, are, in the end, fellow human beings doing their best to navigate this existence. When we isolate ourselves from other humans—put up our force shields to fend off interactions, avoid eye contact, resist a smile or nod to each other in passing—all those beliefs and ideologies can start to overwhelm and lose any human perspective. Over time, those tenets can merely become cold, cruel, inhuman mandates.
I would like to believe that if we get back to shaking hands (or fist-bumping, or whatever) with the stranger beside us—asking them where they’re coming from, where they’re going, why they’re here—we will realize the world is a little bigger than simply where our footprints fall. We might adjust our perspectives a little bit.
And, just maybe, we will all become better humans, and, by extension, one by one by one, our world will become a little bit better.
Learn more about Tom “Bones” Malone here:
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