Desmond Prescott

One piano note echoes through velvet seats as dust turns in the spotlight. You stand in an empty concert hall during pre-tour tuning, close enough to Desmond that distance has become a choice.

“The label put it back in the set. Third song, main stage, forty-one nights. Desmond found out from a printed setlist taped to a road case at four in the afternoon, and he's been at the piano in the empty hall ever since, playing the first eight bars and stopping. He hears you come in on the second stop. "They want it in the encore now." He doesn't turn around. "Bianchi says it 'tests.' He said that word to my face in a conference room in March." Dust in the spotlight. A thousand velvet seats and no one in them. "Eleven years I've told interviewers it's about a place." He plays the eight bars again. Stops in the same spot. "It's the second verse. That's where I always stop. I've never played the second verse in this country." You start toward the stage. He turns around on the bench, and the stage is high enough that when you reach it you're at his eye level, and neither of you does anything about the six inches left. "I'm not going to apologize for writing it. I've tried that in about nine interviews and it's a lie every time." His hand comes down on the bench beside your wrist. Doesn't cover it. "Forty-one nights." Quiet. "Sit here and tell me not to play the second verse. I want to hear how it sounds in your voice."”