Waiting In Vain (I Don't Want To)

On the way home from seeing Dean and Britta at the super-plush National Arts Club last night (more on that tomorrow, but check out Lorenzo’s pics here), I was delighted to come upon my favorite subway musician, Corey Frye, on the platform of the Union Square stop on the L. I’d first seen him last summer, on a Sunday afternoon in August when I’d been out too late the night before and the relentless summer heat had ceased to be something you could reckon with. It was the 14^th street stop on the Downtown F that day, and Frye was perched on a little stool, strumming his guitar and singing in a voice both plaintive and consoling, joyful and tremulous. It was that rare occasion where you’re glad the train takes forever to arrive. I can't quite recall the songs, but I think it was Van Morrison, Marley, the kind of things that sound nice around a campfire. He sang ‘Waiting In Vain’ that day, and the unfettered tenderness in his delivery caught the six or so of us standing around a little off guard. A lovely young woman with already-reddened eyes sitting alone on a bench began crying quietly.

I checked out Frye’s MySpace page and while his original compositions are sweet, on first listen they didn’t capture my imagination. However, I don’t think it’s his songwriting that lacks. Frye needs an audience to connect with, and even the harried, disinterested iPodded drones of the subway seem to respond to him, and he in turn opens up. A current is passed, and exchange completed. Like James Baldwin said about jazz music in a nightclub, ‘it was made and used on the spot’.

I saw him on one particularly raw day in early February and he looked sad and lost, as did everyone else. But last night he turned his face upwards when he sang, and his eyes radiated kindness, and his feet twisted and turned as he navigated the chords. I thought of the Joni Mitchell line:

Kids with the jitters in their legs
And those wide, wide open stares

Perhaps I was particularly attuned to such magic after the show I'd just seen, but as the Brooklyn-bound L and the 8^th Avenue-bound L both pulled in on opposite sides of the platform I could barely hear them, and Frye kept right on singing.