InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "not i'm of consenting age..."

Detroit was kind to Henry Gonyo. Middle class family, middle class home, middle class education. His parents had brought up their only son to be hard-working, honest, and cautious. Small risks were taken in moderation and medium ones with careful consultation. Great risks were excluded altogether. It was with this mindset that little Henry's future was planned out from start -- first, education, from kindergarten to grad school, followed closely by career, preferably in university education (private colleges being first employment choices), and lastly, family with a pretty wife and handsome children. It was in his parents' interests that he should follow this plan accordingly with little deviation in order to live a happy and fulfilled life.

What they hadn't factored into the equation was the presence of one of the middle O'Dooley children, the third youngest, a boy named Nate, from a family with the penchant to find themselves in various troubling situations. Henry's mother knew them as the rowdy boys from across the city that Henry had no reason to befriend (as they were the walk different circles in life, that was all), while the O'Dooley kids were happy to allow Hank into their "merry band of misfits," joking about needing a dash of high-brow society in order to give them a certain degree of influence on other neighborhood kids and unsuspecting adults. When the youngest O'Dooley boy got a part time job at a used instrument store, Hank was eager to apply despite disapproving looks from his mother who had only allowed him to work at such a menial business after an hour-long discussion on the merits of working in a slightly underprivileged area and how diversity was looked kindly on in college applications. It was at this store that the 15 year old Ian O'Dooley and the 18 year old Hank Gonyo started teaching themselves various unsold instruments and called themselves a band.

However, as previously stated, playing the drums nor forming a band were things on Hank's life's to-do list. So you can imagine the pride and utter relief of his parents as he went to University of Chicago on an academic scholarship pursuing a degree in comparative literature, with a focus on romanticism and the Victorian age. He was to be a fine scholar and a fine educator, if the plan was to be followed, but Hank knew that, as much as romantic poets tugged at his heartstrings and gave him a niche in which to find himself among other academics, his fingers tapped beats idly in class, itching for a chance to return to his high school days at the music store with Ian. After three and a half years and a stack of grad school applications, Hank had returned home to Detroit the Christmas of his senior year with expectations of continuing his education that fall. The glitch in the plan came when Hank stopped over at the O'Dooley's on New Year's for the first time in years and found Ian, 18 years old and a semester out of high school, strumming on a new acoustic guitar, humming a few melodies.

The following three years became a blur. After informing his parents that he would indeed not be attending grad school as they had hoped, but that he was going to form a band with the youngest O'Dooley and a couple others they had met through auditions, friends of friends of friends, and most important, through Ian's brothers (who happened to know the most rascally scoundrels who happened to be musical geniuses), Hank left the world of academia behind to pursue that of music with an old, damaged drum set and the determination to do something fun and risky, for the first time in his life. At first, it didn't seem likely they'd amount to anything. Ian spent half the time at their local gigs drunk and fighting with the patrons and Hank had a real job he had to keep up on the side. It was one of those "Aha!" moments when their demo had landed in the right hands and suddenly they were in a studio laying down tracks to songs they had written years ago, tweaking and perfecting until their self-titled debut could be released.

Since then, Hank has put his bachelor's of arts to good use, using what he knew of the romantics to help the writing process along, even coming up with the name for the band. Though not quite as dangerous as he would like to be, unable to leave the literary snob behind him yet still preferring drums to books, now at 27, Hank has found himself the perfect place among his band-mates, even if his parents still refuse to acknowledge it.




The Albatross Is Dead
with august