Resident Rockstar. This quiet neighbor of mine lived across from me for a couple of years before I really got to know just how extraordinary he was. Unassuming, minimalist, and so habitual in nature (very Steve Jobs like) you can set a clock to his habits. Just when you feel like everything is out of control you take a peek out the window and know that on Sunday morning his trip to the grocery will happen, a declaration that the life will continue. I have come to realize that his calm and steadied life is paramount to achieve the creative output he consistently partakes in after sunset. Occasionally the beat of a drum can be heard drifting through our windows. More often than not the basement light is on late into the evening as he is plugged into the keyboard, taping away a new sound or riff that will make it onto an album...an album that will eventually make its way into our music collection. He has toured America and Europe with his band, Wheat. He throws out big names like Sony and Rolling Stone, but in such a casual and understated way that you miss the references the first time and make him repeat it. Throwing my elbows onto his counter and stirring my cup of french pressed coffee (his speciality) I listen to the stories of a career that has spanned 20 years. My ears are tuned into this world he inhabits on weekends and in the dead of night. We shake our heads and smile and ask for more...more gossip, more descriptions, more examples of a rockstar life. He laughs at the title. He is not impressed by the big names. It's the small venues and joints that the band cut their teeth on or the recording studio in Upstate NY that make his eye twinkle. His presence is infectious. His music is a culmination of a life of giving oneself to making art. He is Fall River born. He lives across the street. He is Brendan. He is our Rockstar.
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