You Think You Hear: A Novel: Amazon.ca: Matt O'Keefe: Books

From Publishers Weekly

This engaging if callow debut novel by a North Carolina pop music buff chronicles the adventures of 20-something Lou Farren, a Newark, Del., rock musician wannabe who signs on as roadie ("I prefer... Tour Manager") for the Day Action Band. Made up of three of Lou's cronies from student days at the U. of Delaware guitarist/composer Tim; bass guitarist Joey; and drummer Cree, Tim's former girlfriend TDAB is a smalltime rock band. Its latest album, You Think You Hear, is about to be released, and the band has finally landed a big-time gig, as the opening act for a hot British group called the Radials. Though Lou was charismatic Tim's first mentor, he was cast aside when Tim formed the group. Now, in lust with Cree, Lou swallows his pride and allows himself to be treated as a subspecies in the superficial rock music hierarchy. Sex kitten Cree, meanwhile, fawns over Radials singer Brant Adman, who is billed as a reincarnation of Beatles icon Paul McCartney. Over nearly three weeks of one-nighters in cities across the U.S., Cree finds fantasy fulfillment on the Radials' bus with Brant while Tim and Joey bask in reflected glory. With a subtly satisfying twist at the end, the novel succeeds creditably as entertainment, though an overload of road-trip details may give nongroupies travel fatigue.

From Booklist

In an amiable, conversational style, 21-year-old Lou Farren relates his experiences as a roadie for the Day Action Band, composed of three of his college friends. The bad food, fights, transcendent music, hassles, and band hierarchy are all recorded as Lou falls in love with the female drummer, Cree, and struggles with envy over the fact that the three friends he first saw play at a frat party might very well be on the verge of fame. This is O'Keefe's first novel, and although his narrative is sometimes plagued by a tedious recitation of detail, his characters are smart and funny, his love of rock 'n' roll is ever-present, and his descriptions of live music are impressive. Although it's not quite in the same league as Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (1995) or Tom Perrotta's The Wishbones (1997), O'Keefe's tale ultimately works pretty well as a road novel with a good soundtrack. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Reading Matt O'Keefe's debut novel, I felt lie I was back in the tour van. You Think You Hear is a pitch-perfect portrayal of the giddy enthusiasm and drama of a band on the road." --Shivika Asthana, drummer for Papas Fritas

"Oh, to be young and on tour with a cool band...Matt O'Keefe has written the definitive road novel of the indie punk generation. Touching, sweet, perfectly detailed, You Think You Hear is a beautiful rendering of what has become a rite of passage among America's more restless and creative young people." --Blake Nelson, author of Girl

"Get in the van with roadie Lou Farren-indie rock's Nick Carraway-for a wry backstage look at rock and roll. O'Keefe's debut novel is that rare animal-a smart book about the music scene." --Elwood Reid, author of Midnight Sun and If I Don't Six

Book Description

Lou Farren loves two things in life: rock and roll and his friend Cree, a beautiful drummer in a pop band who has no idea how he feels. Adrift in a post-college world of boring computer jobs, Lou agrees to be the roadie for the Day Action Band, a brilliant but unknown ensemble made up of Cree, bassist Joey, and Lou's best friend, Tim, on guitar. Opening for the Radicals, a British group with a single climbing the charts, the band travels coast to coast, moving closer and closer to fame. As Lou drives the Day Action Band's van, sells their T-shirts, and mediates their arguments, he learns what it's like to stand just outside the spotlight. He watches Tim charm women from the stage, sees Joey achieve the coolness he's always wanted, and tries unsuccessfully to look away when Cree falls into a tour romance with the lead singer of the Radicals. Every night Lou sits at a table in the back of the club, envying his friends and facing the idea that his life might be significant only for its relationship to theirs. When the band comes close to breaking up, Lou is forced to confront what he really wants for them, and for himself.

Reminiscent of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, Matt O'Keefe's hilarious and poignant debut is the story of a young man coming to grips with the distance between his dreams and his reality. You Think You Hear is about unrequited love, a romance with pop music, and the search for moments in life as satisfying as a perfect song.

About the Author

Matt O'Keefe was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1995. He currently lives outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This is his first novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

boston

SOME FRIENDS OF MINE are in a pop band. When they first started out, their goal was to play a show at the Mutton and Hoover, a club that only booked hip local acts. At the time, their disdain for the Mutt’s hipster quotient was balanced by their awe of it. When they finally took the stage, after six months of playing frat houses and a regular Sunday night gig at the philosophy dorm, it was with a great deal of nervousness and satisfaction.

Now they have one album, two singles, and three national tours behind them. All three national tours were conducted in a customized blue and white Ford Econoline van from the middle of the last decade. They were not the ones who customized the van. And the shows they played took place in dingy bars where the band often outnumbered the audience and received fifty dollars and a fistful of drink tickets for payment.

But they are about to make their fourth trip around the country, this time as the opening act for a famous band from England. The lights will be brighter, the stage broader, and the drinks bestowed not by the ticket but by the case. The crowds will consist of hundreds and even thousands of people, so many that my friends won’t be able to remember a single face at the end of the night.

This is how it’s going to be: Tim driving, Joey shotgun, Cree in the chair in the middle row, her legs draped up on the captain’s table. From the back seat I will look nine feet forward to the windshield and then through it, and I will see America, parts familiar and unfamiliar, moving around me in a pattern that owes its logic to nothing more than the Rand McNally atlas in Joey’s lap. I will arrive in a town and haul amp and cowbell, hawk record and T-shirt, and afterwards, I will drive while they sleep.

The Day Action Band is going on the road. I’m going with them. I’m the roadie, but I prefer you call me “Lou Farren, Tour Manager.”

It is quarter past ten and Cree is not here yet. I have been waiting outside since nine-fifty, nudging my duffel bag back and forth along the pavement with my feet. Several times I have nudged the duffel bag in and out of the way of a group of truculent male college students carrying sofas into my apartment building. On their most recent pass one of these gentlemen nearly lost his footing, not because of anything I had done, and when he glared at me, I thought back at him, “Fuck you, I am about to have an adventure.”

We are traveling today from Newark, Delaware, to Boston, Massachusetts, site of the tour’s first show and also the town of my birth. Cree is picking me up first, Joey next, and Tim last. Tim lives the farthest north but also the farthest from the freeway; I would have designed the pickup differently, but it’s my first day as tour manager and I don’t have the authority to make those kinds of decisions yet.

The van rumbles into view and then out of it, stopping on the other side of the undergraduate moving truck. As I bring my bags around, the van’s sliding door opens from the inside and suddenly there she is. Her hair is short, black with reddish highlights, and comes to rest just above the light brown skin of her neck. She wears an untucked tan shirt with a pattern of intersecting squares and tight dark pants that flare at the ankle. Her toes poke out of a pair of thick-soled sandals, in pitiful rebellion against the coming cold. She says my name and leans down to give me a hug. When she puts her arms around my neck and presses her face against mine, I remember exactly why I have been looking forward to this trip for so long.

The van is packed already, the narrow trunk space piled high with drums and large cardboard boxes. The Day Action Band had a final preparatory practice two nights ago; they must have packed it then. I stuff my bags under the middle seat and take my place next to Cree in front. I have never been able to talk to her very easily, so on the short drive to Joey’s I reach for the neutral topic of my job. I quit it yesterday. It was a dull position involving computers, alumni recordkeeping, and the elaborate ways in which I deceived my superiors into thinking I was a productive employee.

“Yeah, but you’ll work there when you get back,” Cree says.

“No,” I say. “I told them they would never see me on the premises again.” Her eyes widen, and I add, “Well, I left a note to that effect.”

“Then what are you going to do?” she says.

“I haven’t thought about it,” I say. “I don’t want to think about it.”

This is a more emotional response than she was expecting, and I feel a little sorry to have given it. Nervous now, she starts chattering about their roadies from past tours. I’ve met all three at one time or another; like me, they are friends who were judged capable of interacting with the band in closed spaces for a long period of time. Two worked out well. The third, a woman primarily friends with Joey, caused such pervasive tension that actual physical barriers made from towels were erected inside the van.

“We don’t really talk about her anymore,” Cree says.

“After me,” I say, “you won’t be talking about any of them anymore.”

“Is that right?” she says, laughing.

“That is right,” I say. “You will refer to me as ‘The Roadinator,’ or perhaps, ‘Lord Roadinator.’”

Cree laughs harder and reaches out to touch my arm. Only five minutes into this trip and I have already had one of my all-time great conversations with her.

When she has composed herself she sets about putting the roadies in the context of how my experience is going to differ from theirs. On this tour all the shows will be over by eleven. No lingering in dirty, smoky clubs until two-thirty in the morning and then not getting to sleep until four. In fact, no dirty, smoky clubs period. Every venue on this tour has a capacity of at least seven hundred; the largest, Wonderland in L.A., can accommodate close to twenty-five hundred.

“All I can say is,” Cree says, steering the van into Joey’s driveway, “it’s about time.”

Joey lives in the same house he lived in when he was a student, a two-story building a few blocks from the University of Delaware campus. His roommates are the same too; it has been surmised that they won’t move out until he does. The members of the Day Action Band are local celebrities; living with one of them provides a certain notoriety and seems to be considered as good a post-collegiate occupation as anything else.

I am reaching for the latch on the screen door when Joey pushes it open from the inside. “Lou,” he says. “Lou Farren.” We shake hands. He and I are not great friends, but we have a routine in which we conduct our meetings with great formality.

“It’s good to see you, Joey,” I say, looking him in the eye. I have to tilt my chin upward to do this, as he is six feet, three inches tall. This total does not count the four-inch tufted mound of yellow curls that springs from his strangely angled head. If someone recognizes the band in public, it is usually because they have seen Joey. Since the onset of this minor fame, he has worked to accentuate his natural characteristics: the hair teased to its maximum dimension, the clothes selected to elongate and ganglify. In his acceptance of himself as a hopeless visual misfit, he has acquired a kind of crooked splendor.

“I’ve got some more stuff in my room,” Joey says. “You can wait in the kitchen if you want.”

I step inside as he disappears up a staircase to the left. One wall of the living room is dominated by a large poster of an orange car with the numerals “01” decalled on the side—the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard, caught in mid-air, Savannah dust flying. On the other wall someone has spray-painted the lines, “There’s a monster in my pants / And it does a naughty dance.” I hear a guitar skronking and some cymbals whishing beneath the floor, and then I reach the kitchen where two of Joey’s roommates, Levin and Holmes, sit at a faintly listing table, a tall blue water pipe made of glass between them.

We’ve met before; they can’t remember my name, but they’re perfectly friendly. I sit down at the table with them to wait. Normally I’d feel compelled to take part in the conversation, but these guys are so stoned they accept my silence as merely a more subtle means of social interaction. They both work nights at Mendenhall Inn parking cars, as does the third roommate, Mitchell, who presumably is the one making the noise in the basement. Joey used to work there too, but quit a few months ago when Tim said he needed him full-time for recording. The result of this is that no one in the house has a day job and that this scene I’ve walked in on could probably be duplicated any day of the week. “Pardon my rudeness,” Holmes says abruptly, turning from Levin and extending a book of matches. “Can I interest you in smoking some pot?” An image of Cree sitting impatiently in the van flashes through my brain, and I tell him no. I rest my arms on the table, comfortable with my decision. Holmes and Levin resume their discussion, a debate about the restrooms at Mendenhall and which one offers the finest environment in which to take a dump.

Joey walks in, holding a folder and a Magic Marker. He directs a nod to the table, a gesture that somehow acknowledges me at the same time that it expresses disgust with his roommates. I have an impulse to stand up and move away from them, but it fades before I ...