And In The End...

This time it came through Facebook. We’ve gotten the news first hand, second hand, over the phone, via email, pretty much any communication medium we humans possess. “Hey, Chris, did you hear? One of your friends died.”

The worst is finding out how.

There’s a certain schadenfreude to be had in passing the news along. You don’t want to be tail-end Charlie, the last one in line, because that guy has to carry the burden or something. So you have to get rid of the news as soon as you can. With today’s instant communication, bad news travels fast (much faster, it seems, than good news) and one can divest oneself of this terrible thing in a hurry. Everyone in my circle of peers in the music industry has had to go through this multiple times, and we all have a pretty advanced skill set for dealing with it. That doesn’t make it any easier, any time. But this time… fuck.

To say Jamie Duffy was my friend is to greatly devalue the word “friend,” and also to claim possession of something that was shared by virtually everyone in the Chicago music scene for the last 20-odd years. He wasn’t my friend any more than he was anyone else’s friend. He just was. Everybody’s. Friend.

I’m trying to come up with some sort of anecdote that I can point to and say “Jamie Duffy was X because Y.” But there’s not any particular scenario I can put my finger on. I can’t even recall how many tours we were on together, or how many times he mixed a band or played at Metro while I was doing lights, or how many of my shows he did sound for, or how many songs of mine he engineered or seconded on, or how many times I ran in to him at Dome Room or Neo or Crowbar or House of Blues…

I am, however, thinking of this one night at Crowbar, October 12th, 1995. He and I are leaning against the bar, and I’m eyeballing this girl I’ve been eyeballing for a couple weeks at various clubs around Chicago. Jamie leans over to me and says “dude, if you don’t fucking talk to that chick soon, I swear to god…” And I’m all “fine, okay, I’m going.” And I go over and introduce myself to the woman I’ve been married to for 17 years.

I would like to think every music scene, in every city around the world, has a Jamie. That guy that just makes things happen. The dependable, nice guy that maybe drinks a bit too much, but it’s okay, because he’s Jamie. That dependable guy who can get a bit moody, but hey, everyone has bad days, and that’s just Jamie. That guy you could depend on.

We lost our Jamie. Don’t you lose yours. Stay frosty. If someone’s asking for help, even if they don’t know they’re asking, give it to them. You depend on them, but they’re depending on you too. If you miss it, you’ll hate yourself later. Trust me on this.

Please read Jim Marcus’ lovely piece about Jamie and all of us. I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but Jim said it for me.