I look around, this place is familiar. Same bar stools, same slight smell of damp and same horseshoe style.
This used to be a great bar for day drinking. Tuesday afternoon, 2pm. In for a drink. Always something happening. Always some kind of buzz.

Rab behind that bar, keeping it running.

And tonight they have got the Kirkentoun 3 playing.

A Johnny Cash covers band.

Played by a band that looks impossibly young.

Like they were just being born when Cash died.

Weird.

Might be the shots. Might be the smoke I got from Eddie on the way down the road.

What is strange though is that there are 4 of them on stage.

Now that’s a power trio.

Rab slides over another beer and nods.

The couple in front of me are arguing about something, and when the band finishes playing a song you can hear them.

Rab’s at them.

“Take that shite outside, or shut the fuck up.”

A few grins around the bar and the couple fall quiet.

The lassie on bass steps to the mic and says this is “one of our favourites.”

The drummer starts a beat and they start playing, but it doesn’t sound like Johnny Cash, it sounds like the Ramones fighting with some stray cats in the alley.

And it sounds.
It sounds.
Fucking glorious.

I’m watching the guitar player as he picks out arpeggios. Eyes closed. Leaning back.

Alright pal, you’re playing Eddies, not Hampden.

Fuck they sound good though.

The singer is smiling, moving and clapping as the guitar player takes a solo. The bass player looks intense, just pounding out the notes.

I remember Rachel and me cranking out the guitar lines as we swapped riffs. Georgie on the drums, whatever happened to him.

The fight that broke out right in front of us and fuck it, we kept playing.

Suddenly the music stops and I look up.

The drummer hits the beat.

The whole band stops.

There’s a pause and it is a pause. Like time stopped. The band holds it and we are right there with them.

Moments.
Pass.

And then they hit the beat like they never stopped. The guitarist lets fly and I cheer.

I fucking cheer.

Good fucking band this. The couple in front start kissing like they have been separated for two years.
Get a room.

They hit the dance floor.

The band roars on, the whole bar moving now.

The guitar stops.
The bass stops.

Everyone is looking at the drummer.

The beat.
The beat .

The drummer looks up.
He shouts, “Let’s fucking go”
And the band hits it one more time.

(c) Paul Andrew Sneddon