Evangeline and I had some pretty substantial overlap in our taste in music, but it was never complete. I had recently picked up a country music habit that she couldn’t really embrace and she was further down the “alternative” of alternative rock than I was. After our first split, I became interested in the local country rock scene (think Skynyrd) and she in more R&B-infused pop rock.

We each came into our first round with one favorite band that we both loved and each of us having one that the other had either never heard of or was only vaguely familiar with. On one hand, there was some hesitation on each of our parts to embrace the other’s favorite band. If I embraced the Flaming Wrecks and she didn’t embrace Troy Thomason that meant that any time the two were in town she would get her way and I wouldn’t get mine and vice-versa. And the reasons that she could relate to the Wrecks’ music were the things about her that made me ill-at-ease and vice-versa. Thirdly, it felt like she wasn’t even giving Thomason a chance and I would be darned if I put more effort into liking her music than she put into liking mine!

On the other hand, who doesn’t like to like more music? Other than music snobs, that is, which neither of us were. And I don’t know about her, but I really did want to embrace the Flaming Wrecks because of some mushy desire to understand her more fully and all that (as much as it terrified me). But even that worked against my listening to the band because I felt like I was under a lot of pressure to like them and I couldn’t just enjoy the music. I told myself that was really why I was having trouble. Not because of the pettiness of the previous paragraph and definitely not because I couldn’t relate to what so obviously touched this person that I was so obviously meant to be with.

It naturally follows that as things started falling apart and the pressures I was feeling elsewhere overwhelmed whatever pressures that a band could apply, I came to really enjoy the Wrecks. They became one of my all-time favorite bands for a while. I’ve purchased every CD they’ve put out since more-or-less right after it came out. When they got national airplay and a video on VH1 (or whatever channel it is that actually plays music videos these days) I celebrated. They’re really good.

And for her part, Eva started to actually listen to the Thomason CDs that I was always sure that she was never actually listening to. She started going to Thomason shows just as I had started going to Wrecks shows. With rare exception, we always missed each other. She would drag her ex-boyfriend that absolutely hated me (something to do with my prying her away from him…) so that she wouldn’t be alone at a Troy show. where I might be there and see her. I came close to hiring an escort on one occasion and on another paid for three tickets so that I would have a couple friends go with me to a Wrecks show. In short, we started going to these shows despite one another rather than because of one another.

Secretly, I think we both spent a significant portion of the shows glancing wayward to see if the other person was there. Outwardly hoping they weren’t, inwardly wanting to be invisible so that we might see the other person there but without having to go through the trouble of acknowledging one another’s presence or going to all of the effort not to acknowledge thus.

Meanwhile, close to the beginning of all this there was another band named Kalispell. Kalispell was another local act that originally hailed from Deseret. They were one of the first local country rock acts I got into. I found a website devoted to them. It was better than their official website because it had the lyrics to all of their songs. It was run by a guy that I would a couple years later meet named Rick. He didn’t transcribe the lyrics, though. That chore was done by a medical student across the state by the name of Clancy Himmelreich.

I’d meet her a couple years later, too.