Lesley Yates
Austin, Texas“Who is this?”
“Vienna Teng.”
“I’ve never heard of her.”
“Well, you should listen to her. She’s got the most amazing voice I’ve ever heard.”
And so we sat, I at my computer and my sister at hers, as I streamed what she was listening to into my WinAmp application. And I’ll admit it; I wasn’t really listening. “Pah!”, I thought to myself. “Another chick on a piano; I highly doubt that I’ll find this useful for anything but sleeping.”
It was the winter of 2003, and my musical tastes at the time were very escapist, to say the least. I refused, for instance, to listen to my sister’s advice on music I had never heard of. She had just moved to Austin, TX—several thousands of miles away from my own location in Alabama—and was full of lofty ideas about how music should mean something, and have all sorts of complicated arrangements to back these weighted lyrics about love and death and everything in between. I was twenty years old, depressed, and in no mental state to try anything on for size. I would keep my Cure and Flogging Molly records close to my heart, thankyouverymuch.
Of course, she is my only, older sister, and so I always strove to impress her. So when she told me that Vienna Teng was coming to Birmingham, and offered to buy me a ticket and then make the sixteen-hour trek in the car to see her with me, I accepted. After all, I missed my sister dearly and clung closely to whatever normal human contact I could at the time. So what if the concert would be, at best, a huge snoozefest? I still got to go to Birmingham, and see my sister and her then-boyfriend, whom I had never actually met.
The day arrived without much fanfare, and in the afternoon, so did my sister. She was impatient to get on the road, which seemed odd to me, as she had already been driving for most of the day. I decided not to question it, though, and so we got in the car, Jessica and Scott talking throughout the two and a half hours it took to get to Birmingham, and me sitting in the back, thinking about various things that I can’t really recall anymore.
It was brisk, but not intolerably cold; winters in Alabama are usually only at an uncomfortable temperature for about a week or so, and then level back off to somewhere closer to in the fifties. What we did before the concert was an inconsequential amalgam of shopping, loitering, eating, and catching up. I was in a pretty good mood by the time we made it to the venue.
The Workplay Theater was unlike any other venue I had ever been to. It was small, intimate, had a bar in the lounge area outside of the main theater…heck, it had a lounge area outside of the main theater. After a bit of waiting, it was time to go inside.
We were three of maybe twenty people at that show, and the tickets had put my sister back a whopping fifteen bucks. I wasn’t really expecting much, and when the contemporary performer to Vienna took the stage, I was beginning to fear that my assumptions were correct. I didn’t much care for her, a woman-and-guitar outfit with hippie-esque lyrics and bare feet. All I can remember is ordering a coffee and waiting for this to be over.
Vienna took the stage, and without a word, she began to perform “The Tower” on a grand piano, her voice cutting through the stillness in the room unlike anything I’d ever heard at a concert. Her voice crept into my subconscious, and the lyrics began to make their home there. How could I have never listened to this before? I knew precisely what she was talking about. That was exactly how I felt. She knew me better than some of my best friends.
And so I began to cry.
And I didn’t stop crying. It was a soft rolling of tears down my face, at first, which progressed into a steady river that had to be constantly dabbed by my paltry bar napkin. Occasionally, I would let out a soft sob. My sister was a little worried about me, and her boyfriend was visibly uncomfortable. For once, I didn’t care what these people thought of me as I allowed the music to make me admit to the things that I had going on in my mind. I just sat, cried, and drank my coffee.
And then it was over. Just like that, as though we had gone to a movie or had a mediocre meal at a chain restaurant, it was over. I collected myself, and my sister and I went outside into the lounge area, though now I can’t remember why. What I do remember, however, is that Vienna Teng was standing out there, signing things and talking to people.
“We have to go talk to her!” I demanded, and without waiting for any agreement, I went over to her. I don’t remember what I said, and to be perfectly honest, I’m grateful to have lost that part of the experience. It was probably highly humiliating, and a bit blubbery. Vienna seemed surprised, but she was very grateful. I was still wrapping my mind around the fact that she was real.
She was most definitely real, I would discover, as I subsequently went to eleven of her shows over the next four years. Since that first show, I have learned that while my puerile belief that she was more than a mere mortal was admittedly a bit silly, the way that her music makes me feel hasn’t really changed at all. I’ve heard her songs evolve as she performed them, and when I hear the finished product on an album, I feel as though I’ve been let in on a secret. My life has changed over the last four years, as well. My sister married her boyfriend. I’ve moved, had loves and lost them, only to find new ones. That happens when one goes out and lives for a change.
Most interesting, though, is the fact that every time I hear “Lullabye for a Stormy Night,” one of the first songs of hers that I heard, I always find myself right back where I started from, in my room in Alabama. I would listen to that song whenever the circumstances of my life (far too boring and depressing to chronicle in this particular writing) would make me feel lost. Now, whenever I hear it, I remember feeling calmer and safer somehow. It’s a big thing, to know that someone else out there knows what it feels like—whatever it may be.