Back in 2004, I was chasing stagelights through backroads, little white lines, and dive bars. Running the west coast, cutting through the south, loading into venues where the floors stuck to your shoes and the speakers hummed like they were barely holding the electricity.
We were musical nomads, broke, hungry, determined, but somehow “arriving.”
Growing up in the Dallas music scene of the 2000s was magic: Blacktie Dynasty, Midlake, Flickerstick, Kessler, The Feds, Mermaid Purse, SouthFM, Forever The Sickest Kids, Ryan Cabrera, 7 Channels / The Vanished, 40Percent, Barefoot, Artist Vs. Poet, The Secret Handshake…
If you know, you know.
Then the labels started calling:
MCA. Universal Motown. Fearless. Idol. Epic. Virgin.
Suddenly, everyone's getting “deals.” Some of us landed on VH1’s Bands on the Run. A few performed on SNL. My old roommates toured with Kid Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Friends were in Rolling Stone. Ashley Simpson appearances. Tour buses. Backstage bracelets. All of it.
So when my favorite local band, the soundtrack of my twenties, announced a reunion show this year, I felt like someone tossed a match onto old film reels in my brain.
Flashbacks.
Sweat.
Youth.
Everything.
These guys were family.
We played stages together.
Stood in each other’s weddings.
Broke bread, bones, and band rules.
We fought other bands together (listen, the early 2000s were wild).
But my buddy wasn’t as enthusiastic.
“It won’t be the same. He can’t sing that high anymore. The lineup’s different. Bet they use tracks.”
And honestly… I sorta felt it, too.
But we did what good friends do: we showed up.
We met at our old stomping grounds, Angry Dog, ordered the same junk food we used to inhale at 2 am, and reminisced. My buddy kept bringing up all the things that could ruin the magic, so I finally looked him dead in the eye and said:
“Why are we here?
Why’d we drive an hour?
Why pay $40 for parking and $20 to get in?
We’re chasing a feeling, man."
That’s all.
But we’re not the same guys anymore, and that’s the point.
We aren’t the same people we were. We've grown into respectable men with an entirely different value system. The way in which we view the world is much wiser, less ideal, and quite a bit more honest. Although our memories feel as close as our wallets, we will never be able to experience what "was." And that’s the beauty of it. We can watch it for what it is now, not for what it used to be.”
We weren’t there to recreate what was.
We were there to honor what is.
Different men. Different priorities.
But the same heartbeat.
And being there reminded me of the quiet, overlooked gift of presence.
After scarfing down our old Angry Dog orders and talking trash like we were still in our twenties, we stepped outside before the band went on. The night air hit just right, that mix of downtown concrete and nostalgia, and my buddy pulled an H99 Papas Fritas out of his pocket like he was revealing state secrets (btw, his old band The Secret State was legit).
We lit up and instantly time-traveled.
There we were, two washed-up former “cool guys,” standing in an alley behind a venue, smoking a damn good cigar and remembering when we could get into any club in Dallas without waiting in line.
We talked about how we used to get stopped on the street.
How promoters once begged us to play.
How bartenders knew our names.
How we thought we’d live forever under stage lights.
Then we looked at each other and laughed, hard.
We weren’t those guys anymore.
But that little stick of leaf and fire gave us permission to revisit them… just for a moment.
And man… that cigar?
It’s a banger.
Complex, spicy, sweet, full of depth….like the perfect soundtrack for revisiting old versions of yourself without letting those ghosts rent space in your head.
It was a moment only the brotherhood of the leaf can create: halfway between memory and reality, halfway between the men we were and the men we’ve grown into.
And it anchored the truth I was about to learn inside that venue…
Like many of us, I’ve spent a lot of years re-tracing old conversations, replaying old jokes, and trying to resurrect my grandmother’s recipes with no success.
I wonder sometimes what 13-year-old me would think of 42-year-old me:
Would he be proud?
Embarrassed?
Would he think I peaked too early?
Would he still want to be my friend?
Would I be pinned at the top of his text thread?
The holidays bring nostalgia straight to your doorstep.
The crazy uncle with the cheesedip.
The cousin who suddenly becomes a political analyst after two White Claws.
Moms hovering over turkey like it's a newborn baby.
We revisit the same rituals every year, replay the same stories, but rarely sit still long enough to appreciate the sacred weirdness of the moment we’re actually in.
We’re somewhere between who we were and who we’ll become.
My mind?
Prone to wander.
It takes a good deal of focus to be present. It takes discipline to accept life on life's terms, to not get too caught up in "future-tripping" (the mental habit of getting lost in anxious thoughts and worst-case scenarios about the future, often due to fear and a desire to control the uncontrollable) or spending too much time on memory lane….to let life be what it is instead of what it was or what it could be.
But at that show?
We were present.
Beautifully, imperfectly present.
We screamed lyrics with strangers who once filled our MySpace Top 8.
We celebrated the fact that, somehow, the music still hit.
Maybe not the same way…
But in a way we needed right now.
That’s the beauty of music, it collapses time.
It stitches the past to the present, and if you’re lucky, it hands you hope for the future.
Presence is a currency.
And most of us spend it like we’re broke.
We waste today trying to resurrect yesterday or outrun tomorrow, forgetting that the only place life actually happens is right where your feet are.
But here’s the wild thing:
The more you practice being present, the richer your life becomes, and the returns multiply with compound interest.
Every moment you truly inhale…
every conversation you fully show up to…
every memory you allow to become what it is instead of what you wish it were…
those moments stack.
They build.
They grow.
Presence doesn’t stay small.
It compounds into connection, clarity, gratitude, and stories you’ll tell long after the lights come up.
At the reunion show, I realized something simple but profound:
Nostalgia is sweet.
But presence?
Presence is sacred.
And cigars, like concerts, teach us this every time.
You light up.
You slow down.
You breathe deep.
You absorb the moment….not for what it used to be, but for what it is right now.
You savor it before it slips away.
Because one day, even the ordinary moments will become the stories we chase.
Light Up & Lean In
