We are all where we belong...

Quiet Company soundchecking for their house show at Haley's.

It occurred to me Saturday night as I sat outside in the summer heat, enjoying Quiet Company's first-ever house show, that it's been nearly a year since I first fell for this band at the Granada Theater in Dallas. It doesn't feel possible that it's been that long, yet it feels like I've been listening to them for so much longer.

I'm a firm believe in music - the kind that makes a difference in your life, soundtracks a year or truly moves you - finding you, not the other way around. Quiet Company could not have 'found' me at a more perfect time: I was in the middle of major life upheaval. Prior to my musical road trip that landed me at a show they were opening, I was deep in the throes of job hunting. I wanted a single, permanent job instead of running 17 hours between two part-time positions. Nothing about my life was certain, everything was constantly changing, and I craved the stability I had before the economy bottomed-out, rendering me jobless.

Music has always been one of the few constants in my life. The band may change, but the fact that music gets me through everything has never changed - and probably never will. For the past year, my musical stability has come from Quiet Company.

A month after my first show, I found a job I loved - on paper at least. The adjustment period has been much longer than I'd hoped for. The people I work with are, for the most part, my complete polar opposite. They're all buying Katy Perry tickets and new dresses with nail polish, shoes and purses to match, while I'm silently counting down the hours to when I can run downtown and hideout in one of my favorite music venues with local bands none of them have ever heard of. To be the emo kid: I don't feel like I belong.

Haley & Koda's awesome house show artwork.

It was around 1:30 a.m. Saturday night/Sunday morning, well after we'd all sweated out the evening together and sang along to some of our favorite QC songs and their spot-on covers, that it clicked why I've babbled about this band non-stop since discovering them; why I've written so many blog posts about their shows and music that they're threatening to take over the top tag spot; why I am anxiously counting down to October 4 when their next album "We Are All Where We Belong" will be release.

Because they make me feel like I belong.

So much of their music is about questioning this need to belong we all have as human beings (namely through religion) and how rejecting a conventional way to be a part of the masses might not be such a bad thing. There's plenty of songs about having such an intense love for one person, or person, that everything else pales in comparison. (All so beautifully worded, it hurts.) There's several of their lines that run through my head on any given day when I need a reminder that there's so much more to life than what's on the surface:

You better stop and smell the roses
You better love the life you live
And you better take note of when it's killing you
We all end up in the cemetery

- "It's Better to Spend Money Like There's No Tomorrow..."

All these themes are the exact things I've been facing down, which is why Quiet Company has become the soundtrack to the past year of my life. Without the music to listen to or the promise of a show just around the corner, I'm not sure I would have made it through having to question the girl I am (because everyone else is) as easily.

That's what I love about music: being able to point to one band or one album and say "That's what got me through it."

For that, I'm forever grateful to these lovely gentlemen from Austin who have allowed me to become a part of their band's family, as it were, and for making me feel like I have a little place in the world, even if it's just standing in front of a stage and singing my heart out to their songs as they play.


You can watch Quiet Company's entire house show from Saturday right here on YouTube - thank you Lori for recording it all for us! My favorite tune from the evening? Their beautiful cover of The Smiths' "Ask." Skip ahead to 3:30 if you want to bypass the banter. (Video is a bit dark because the stage lights wouldn't stay on, but the audio is perfection.)