‘Movin’ Out’

My father named me, in part, after an Elvis Costello song. I know this both because he tells me and because he shows me, a microphone in one hand and a beer in the other, any time he finds himself within 10 feet of a karaoke machine. On one particular family vacation to New Hampshire, my eight-year-old self knew instantly that when the restaurant host announced karaoke, nothing would stop him from going up at least once. I peered through the cracks between my fingers — hiding my face from the diners who turned to smile at me as I was serenaded — but I wasn’t embarrassed. Nothing made me happier than when my father sang. As soon as he finished “Alison” he waited a requisite few turns before jumping back up to sing Elton John’s “Daniel” for my younger brother.

Long past are the days of family vacations and karaoke lunches. It is too difficult now to plan around work, school, and the unexpected responsibilities that come with adult life. When I return home, the room I sleep in is not my own. That space is my brother’s, and soon it will belong to no one. In my absence I have come to treasure a new tradition, one which takes place on the long drives that transport me from one home to the other along the twists and turns of the Massachusetts Turnpike. My father and I do not travel alone. Through the speaker we are joined by a cast of classic rockers including Bob Dylan, Rick Springfield and, most often, Billy Joel. We sip coffee and slip from conversation to song and back. My father may not know how to use Spotify — or even what Spotify is — but there’s no one I trust more with the aux cord.

The playlist on my dad’s phone grows a few songs longer with each trip we make. I request “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield and plug in my own phone to play it. Between that drive and the next it is added to the playlist. Below it is the song “867-5309 / Jenny.” Each time I hear “Jenny,” I am brought back to the first time my dad showed it to me. I had asked if he would mind if I gave out his cell phone number when a man asked for mine and I didn’t want to share it. He said yes and launched into a story about how — back in the day — girls would do the same with the phone number 867-5309. He’s the perfect confidant. Every time I get carried away complaining about someone or something he asks “Have you heard the ‘put down’ song?’” before inevitably playing the opening line of Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street”: “You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend / When I was down you just stood there grinning.”’

Before the days of aux cords and iTunes, Billy Joel’s “Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II” was the most sought after CD in our house for car rides. To move the discs from their case, or take them from the car, and forget to put them back was criminal. When we play “Vienna” and Joel sings “Slow down, you crazy child / You’re so ambitious for a juvenile” my father looks over at me and says, “That’s you Ally!” Without him, I would have no ambition in the first place. When we listen to “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” and “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” it is clear that I am the second generation of a Billy Joel song. I am the product of the hard work and sacrifice of a real life Brenda, Eddie, or Anthony — the characters of the working class Joel celebrated so often. When I remind my dad that “Workin’ too hard can give you a heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack,” I am only partially joking.

It is in transit, as we watch the Boston city lights fade to stars or the forests of Western Massachusetts fade back into Fenway Park, that the distance between us is smallest. Once we arrive at our destinations, his work and my commitments pull us in different directions. When the destination is school, we part ways entirely. These roadtrips are the bridge between my lives, new and old, between where I am from and where I am going. It is hard to feel complete in either one. In the car with just my father, the radio, and the highway ahead of us, I feel like I am right where I belong.

—​Staff writer Allison J. Scharmann's column, "Music as Memory," explores music through personal narratives.