The Sunshine

keep from ourselves. So I usually begin by asking my guest to describe the landscape of her childhood, but in your case, I'm actually going to start by asking about the landscape of your mother's life in the couple of years before you were born.

as I think, physically abusive. I think would hit her with the yardstick that stuff that she wanted to do, but that didn't turn out the way she wanted. And when soon as she was eighteen, moved to New York City, and this is nineteen sixty nine, kind of an incredible time to be able to do that, you know, by yourself as a teenager, and had an apartment in Greentted Village. She's very close with her younger brother. My uncle Alan was two years younger, so he would come visit her.

So I think the way she describes those years is that she was kind of lost, just had sort of you know, normal jobs. They worked in movie theaters. So she had a great apartment in a great neighborhood and was just trying to figure out what to do and didn't really feel any direction. Was done with dancing, kind of retired already, and the way she divisited, really wanted to give someone a better childhood than she had and

wanted a best friend. In this park Ampton Square and still there in Grantwich Village, and she would walk by and see kids and see parents playing with those kids, and she said to herself, Wow, I really want to be a young single mother, and I want to give somebody a really great life, and I want to have a best friend. So that was the sort of seed that she planted, and that kind of became what her life was about. But she wasn't looking. She wasn't actively

looking for a father or me or a husband. I think she wasn't even concerned with a relationship at the time. And she was nineteen twenty. And when she was twenty one, she was at a jazz club, the Village Gate, very famous jazz club with my uncle who was a jazz musician, and they ran into Roy Ayers, who at the time was already pretty well known jazz musician, and Alan met him a few times. I think they've even played together.

So they were talking and my mother's words are that the second she saw him, she just thought, that's him. This is the person I'm going to have my child with, and very clearly not this is the person I want to marry, or this is the person that I want to be with. But really like she saw the father of her child and that is where things kind of changed for her.

he wasn't looking for a relationship. I wondered if maybe she would have been more into it had he been into it, But it didn't change the fact that there was one thing that she wanted from him, and it was a child. The story is that she and my uncle left an event one night and she realized, oh, I'm really close to Roe's apartment. I wonder if he's home, I'm going to get pregnant tonight.

young age, there were always records on. We were always hanging out with musicians. I saw live music certainly before I can remember. We know I was at concerts as a baby. So I was playing drums a lot, on pots and pants and on like a big African drum that the friend gave us. And so my uncle Alan bought me a drum set when I was two and a half years old. But this is like a real

drum set, not like a kid's drum set. It was a full sized adult drum set that was really beat up and had some sharp edges and it was kind of rough. But I remember him. We had a basement apartment and I remember him walking the drums down the stairs one at a time, putting them on the ground and be hitting them. And I have a memory of what one of the symbols sounded like because I was so surprised when I hit it, and it was so loud and it really scared me and it created this

kind of ringing in my ear. And that was, I mean, even at two and a half, a turning point in my life, and that, you know, established who I was. And if anything, he didn't do it to make me a drummer. He knew that it was already happening. I think he did it to sort of facilitate what existed.

his mom still get to see him regularly. They travel back and forest into New York City as much as possible, And keep in mind, this is the seventies and New York City is a particularly cool place to be, but Amherst is a great place to be too. Nabil goes to an incredibly diverse and wonderful public school, and though he and his mom are on welfare eating off food stamps, to Nobiel, it never feels like they're poor. To Nabiel, it feels rich, golden.

And the only people who could live there were either students at UMAs or professors at UMAs or someone who had something to do with the university, and you had to have children. So it was sort of this wild free for all again seventies, no bike helmets, no you know, no police, no concerns about anything. No one got hurt, nothing bad was happening, So it was amazing. There was children of all races, of all religions. It was so truly diverse in every way, and so many kids who

had single parents who were going back to school. So it was weird for me as a kid. For you know, I'd be seven years old and amrist with a single white mother who was still in her twenties and on welfare and a black father who wasn't in the picture. And I was a totally normal kid. I knew kids. So with the worst situation, there were kids who's you know, whose dads were in prison and that's why the mom

was there. Like it was really it was so unique and that our situations were all different but we were all similar in that we all had weird situations and so everyone it wasn't weird at all. I was totally a normal kid and loved it. So it never even occurred to me that, yeah, everyone else has a father, and look at you know, look at Joey out there playing baseball with his dad like that. I mean, of course I still thought about my father occasionally, but he

was never We had a few of his records. This biggest record came out in nineteen seventy six, and now I think we moved to Amherst in seventy seven, so even he played there once and that's the first time I remember meeting him. My mother took me. He played at the huge football stadium that's still there at UMass. It was Grateful Dead, Patti Smith and Roy Yers. That was the concert was the spring concert in May of

nineteen seventy nine. And what's funny is I remember the concert, but I don't remember the other parts of it, which my mother later told me. But we went early and tried to go backstage. You know, this is Roy's son, and we want to talk to him. My mother is very good at being pushy and getting what she wants New Yorker and they let us in, and I don't

remember that. And so she said that we talked to him for a while, that he was really nice and really friendly, and over the years, and there'd been a couple other times we ran into him on the street in New York and we had talked to him for

you know, thirty seconds or one minute. But I think I even then might have realized what she was doing was showing him that she did it and that we were in good shape, and that not that he didn't need to worry, because I don't think she thought he was worried, but more that that thing, you know, that she said to him, I want to have a child. I want you to be the father. You don't need

to be involved. I think as much as he was keeping his end of the deal, which was pretty easy, I think she wanted to show that she was keeping her end and she was doing a really good job and that maybe it wasn't as easy.

I'm recording an Electric Lady. Bring him by. So one night we just showed up. I was so excited because I was so into music. I was eight years old, so I was a huge Kiss fan. This is you know, if you were a boy in the music in the seventies. That was my band and all of their albums. So maybe not all of them, but definitely those early seventies albums were recorded electric ly. They said so on the album covers. So I was going in. I was not thinking, oh, this is such a big deal. I'm going to meet

my father. It was nothing like that because my mother Alan never made it a big deal because I think they didn't want it to be. So I remember being so nervous that I might meet Kiss, Like, surely they're here. They just work here, right, all their albums say so, and I didn't. But we walked into this room, into one of the studios, and there's kind of a lounge outside, and it's like a classic and I guess the recording studio.

I mean, it's one of the most famous in the world, but something you would see in a movie where you go into this lounge and you can see the mixing board and then there's this huge wall of kind of soundproof glass. So there's music happening there but I can't hear it. But I see Roy in there with headphones on, singing into a microphone. I'm so excited again, more about the music in the fact of that where we are and what's happening. That's the thing at that point. But

when he comes out, it's no big deal. There's lots of people there, people from his band. They're all super cool and I'm sure talented. It feels very like sort of special charismatic room, and he kind of just like points to everyone. They're obviously ordering dinner, and he points at me and he says, do you want some tempora?

And I remember him pointing at me, and I just remember thinking, like you know that feeling, and like you end up in a conversation with someone and you feel like, wait, did I forget that we've already been introduced and all these things have already happened. How is this person so far ahead in the conversation? And that's what I remember feeling, like, just thinking like, well, do do you even know who I am? Or should I know who you are? You're just asking me if I want tempora? And I said no,

and then he kind of just bounced around. He's, you know, very charismatic center of attention, especially at his recording session, and I remember not speaking to him anymore, and eventually with Alan just leaving, and much like my mother the times we met him, it wasn't a big deal to Alan. He never there was no like so sorry, I wish your father was more interested in your life. There's never anything like that. It was really just like cool, that was fun. What do you want to eat? Or where

do you want to go? I think everyone was sort of careful to not let me be disappointed, but still let me kind of have whatever limited window I could into my father's life. But I do remember that feeling disappointing or at least very confusing, like knowing, well, he invited me here, but he didn't seem at all interested in talking to me. That's very strange, and that felt like a lot to process for an eight year old.

Necessarily mad or not that it was crazy, but just just like really, yeah, disbelief is the word, Like, don't you get this, this thing that you helped to make is sitting here like you should be more engaged and I think Alan, he's not like this, But I mean he is lifelong used to musicians, and a lot of them are narcissists, and a lot of them are only doing the thing that progresses their thing, And so to him, I think that's just who he was, and he wasn't

surprised by that, and even knew that before it existed.

said hi, didn't introduce us to the woman. It very now I'm remembering then too. At the times I talked to him, it felt very much like I'm really busy, I'm doing a lot, I gotta go. Always felt like that, like, even if he was charming and felt sort of present, it always felt like he had one foot out the door while you were talking to him, you know. And that was probably a few hours before he actually played. And I don't remember this part of it, but this

is what my mother told me that, you know. Later on, I was like, let's just go home, and she said, wait, don't you want to stay and see him play? And I said something like, well, he didn't have time for us, so why would I have time for him, which is definitely obviously another look into me being another year or two older and starting to feel the idea that, you know, this guy's never been missing. But the more I'm exposed to him, the more I realized that something feels off about it.

So we lived in the village of just Way downtown, and we had friends, my mother's friend Jenny and her daughter around my age, and they lived on the Upper West Side, which you know, was not terribly far. It's a subway right away, but we got a car for a minute, so we had the instructor drop us off there, and I think her daughter went to the same school as Roy's kids, who are all We're all around the same age, as kids are maybe two or four years

younger than me. And she said, there's this, you know, this great fair at the school on a Saturday afternoon's let's all go there. And so we went. And it was this very sunny day and kind of lots of kids and people around and you know, food and all that kind of stuff, music, and we were walking down this kind of sunny trail and I remember we stopped, and of course I didn't know why. I mean, my mother ran into someone, and she's so social and so gregarious,

and so she was just talking. But I realized it's like, oh, this is this is Roy, who's with a woman and two kids. And I think, you know, just a couple hours earlier, it had been casually dropped that his kids went to the same school. So I think I pretty quickly put it all together. And I remember being a little taller than those kids and Roy and my mother talking briefly, and her sort of I could tell even then,

I remember her voice did this thing. It's just a sort of it's a slightly I want to impress you thing. I could just tell the difference in the tone we're talking to somebody who she thinks is important or something

like that. I could just I remember feeling that at the same time, I remember these two kids and kind of looking at them and them I can't imagine having any idea who I might be, but me having some idea who they were, just my two half siblings, and just thinking, this is very strange to be standing here doing this, not really knowing what to think still as a nine or ten year old, but just being again at this position where this you know, it's so strange how easy it still is in New York. You run

into people, but it's really weird. But it's your father who you don't know. And it happens all the time. They're seemingly all the time.

City doing everything. But she really hated American Express. She was not built for corporate life and was wearing suits every day, and it was very high pressure and people worked late, and everyone was trying to get ahead and she wasn't. She just wanted to have a job and got paid and come home. So they moved a big part of the company to Salt Lake City and sort of offered anyone who was willing to go. This is

great incentive. I think it was the same or more money in a city that at the time probably cost significantly less to live in and the kind of the most family city in America. So the promise of like true, nine to five people leave work. It's very family based. So we went and visited, and I remember that took very well, and I really surprised to how much we liked it. So we moved there, which was a crazy, crazy thing to do for our you know, for who

we were and what our life was. To pick up and move to Salt Lake City in nineteen eighty two is just a massive change.

I mean simply visually, my skin was darker. I had a pretty big afro at the time, so it was much more I think, noticeably black than I am now, where I'm largely balding in my fifties. It was very obvious. And then, of course my name Deal, which is Arabic and has nothing to do with my race, but the assumption is constantly there. So you know, you have this ten year old kid from New York with darker skin

and afro and an exotic name. To my mother's credit, we were in the best place you could be in Salt Lake City, the best neighborhood, really close to the University of Utah. That there's anything wrong with the Mormon churchs I had incredible experiences with all my Mormon friends, but the least Mormon part of the state that you know, where eventually there was an openly gay mayor and the sort of you know, the blue dot in the Red state is exactly where we were. We were in the

right place. But kids would just ask me things that didn't feel like they were making fun of me. It didn't feel malicious, but they were so curious because I was so exotic, and this is, you know, again like before the internet, before so many things, So where's your father? Can I touch your afro? What's your name mean? And I just, amazingly was never used to those questions at ten years old. No one was really asking me those

things because it wasn't special, and I loved that. So suddenly I realized, Okay, no one's being mean to me, but they're really curious. So I was always open about my race. I would say my father's black and my mother's white. I definitely said that they're divorced, which of course wasn't true. They were never married, they were never together, and I think even at that age, it felt like

a betrayal to my mother. I felt terrible saying that, because she'd done such an incredible job and carried through with everything she'd planned with flying colors. Felt like, this feels bad that I have to say this thing that's not true, that is so much less impressive than proof. But it was the easiest way to stop the conversation, and that was the goal at ten years old, not to explain, you know, it was my whole life story,

So divorce shut it down. No one would ask questions about that because as a kid in the eighties, people were at least sort of used to divorce. They fell bad for you, and they moved on. So that's kind of it was the first time in my life when I sort of found myself, you know, sort of lying about who I was to shut down the conversations. What was so fun is that Alan would come visit us all the time in Salt Lake and I would go

to New York all the time to visit him. That was sort of part of the deal when my mother and I moved there and I would go to New York, I don't know, sometimes four or five times a year, I feel like. And it was so fun because then it was like, Wow, there were these move movies that haven't even opened in Salt Lake that I can see. There are bands that I can see. That was such a huge thing, and that's a lot of I think how I got along in Salt Lake City, which I

really did. I really liked it and had friends and was happy there. But a lot of it was that I was the kid who went to New York all the time, who had a record collection, who knew things people didn't know, who could talk about dans, who had a drum set. Like That's who I became, and that was really what I leaned into. And I let that make me more unique than my name or my hair

or anything like that. And I don't think I got that then, but it's definitely what I was doing, and I'm really glad I had all the tools to do it. So as I got older in high school, I wanted to get a job so I could make money to buy drums and buy records and all the things I loved. And so Alan said, come to New York for the summer. I'll find your job. My friend is a lawyer. He wants a messenger at his law firm, which is amazing.

So I had this crazy job for two summers, the summer between sophomore and junior and junior and senior year, where I would stay my uncle's apartment in Chelsea and would go to work every day from nine to five at this sort of fancy law office in Midtown. It was really small, firms to a couple of people in the office, and I would sit at the front desk

until they needed me to do something. And when they did a run around the city, I'd get some papers and you have to run them downtown to some other offices. And I just really got a different look at the city than when I lived there, when I even visited, because you know, we just lived in cool neighborhoods and went to the same place. But this was New York City. This is you know, running up and down crazy streets and elevators and office buildings. So I really started to

see this thing. This is the late eighties. You know, I grew up in these these very racially diverse places where everyone did everything. Now I live in Salt Lake City, which is extremely white. But now these summers, I'm in New York, where there's still a mix, but there's obviously

roles for each of the different races. And I started to notice that all the people I was delivering papers to and taking papers from were white, and they were in a nice air condition offices, and they were wearing suits, and they were never friendly to me. They wouldn't even look at me. But the people who were friendly were the people who held the doors open. They are the people who you know, worked on the streets, and those

are the black and brown people. And I was I really every day would just see it as I walk down the street in New York. It was just it was impossible for me to not see this really obvious division that I still see there and I still see in tons of cities. But that was the summer I really noticed it and realize, I, now, this is this is kind of what the world is like. Salt Lake is not what the world is like, and unfortunately Amherst is not either.

never gonna do that. That's such an easy thing to do.

And so that was right around the time I got accepted to college outside of Seattle. I was planning to move and a place where I really didn't know anybody. I was kind of in a way starting a new life, and she just said, you know, you should think about this. It's been really great for me. Your life could be much easier. You're going someplace where you don't know anyone,

it's a totally clean slate. What do you think? And I was open to the idea, and I remember thinking about making up names and thinking like, huh, well, Airs, I like it sounds really good. I remember very specifically, thinking sort of mathematically, which is the way my brain is. My first name is Nippil, it's five letters. My middle name mall that's five letters, and Airs is five letters. So I thought, well, that's kind of cool, five five and five. And of course it's the only name that

there actually is a connection. But it wasn't to actually connect myself to my father. I mean, in nineteen eighty eight or eighty nine in Salt Lake City, he was invisible. He did not play there. There wasn't a huge jazz scene in Salt Lake. I'm sure a few people knew who he was, but nobody ever asked me about it. You know, he was not part of my life in

Salt Lake. He was almost forty then, so as someone who was into music and was a teenager, in my mind, I would have thought like, wow, well, forty, his career is obviously over. It beaked in the seventies. I had no idea how much bigger he'd become, So it wasn't at all, Oh, well, people will know that I'm his son, That's why I want to do this. In fact, I assumed that had nothing to do with it. No one would ever know who he was. He was done. It was really just that it sounded good and I liked it,

and I trusted my mother. The way I remember it was so simple and felt so transactional as opposed to emotional. It really felt like, this is easy, this makes sense, and there's no risk, so sure, let's do it, I think at that time and the last time I actually encountered him in person very soon after we moved to Salt Lake when I was still ten, and now I'm seventeen. I definitely have not run into him in New York

this whole time. Don't hear his music in Salt Lake City like he really Seven years is a long time for a seventeen year old from ten to seventeen, so in my mind, he was pretty non existent.

well they're doing. Of course, Nobil is reminded that this is just what his mother had always done too, wanting to prove to Roy somehow that life had marched tolly on without him. After the wedding, life continues to march on. Nabielle finishes school, he plays and tours with successful bands. He opens his own record store in Seattle, Sonic Boom Records, which becomes a big deal. Things are really taking off now.

Bille registers that he has a very strong drive to succeed creatively, to make things happen, and he finds himself wondering where does it come from. His mother and Alan had been ambitious in their own ways, but this propulsive energy is something different.

different facets of it, are different versions. But for a long time I coloonna record store my friend and business partner, Jason, and that was great and I loved it, and that was I guess what I would call my real job at the time. But also played in bands and always toured and loved doing that and that was the really fun part of things, being able to leave town for a month and drive around the country and play drums

and come back and still have a job. And I was also I started my own record label, so I was putting out records by other bands that I liked, and it was all to me, it's all this music. These are just three different things, three different departments. This

is one thing. But I definitely just started to feel and maybe even recognized that I didn't know a lot of other people who had it, because to me, it didn't feel unique or special or different, but just this absolute internal drive and push and momentum that whatever I did, I just really wanted to be all in. Even if it was several different things, they were all really important. That's why I was doing them. I wasn't doing them

to havelf do them. And I think around that time and my father had not only never stopped too but sort of picked up more. In the nineties, hip hop obviously became a big thing, and so many of his songs were sampled so many times, so he started to have a resurgence. He was also still putting out new music and touring, and I noticed that I paid attention to it. That was in the business. And of course now that I had his name, people would often ask me if there was any relation, or you look like him?

All these things started to come up, the stuff that I never thought would happen when I chose that name. So to me, it was logical. I'm watching this guy who's, you know, in his fifties and sixties, which again, when I'm twenty eight, still seems pretty old, watching him continue to tour the world, and I'm I'm feeling this really intense push and pull and not seeing it and the people I'm closest to and sort of, yeah, I think come to the conclusion that it had to be from him.

There has to be some connection.

vocal emotional person. I mean, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about is not telling people in my life story for life of reasons, kind of protecting myself and having this mother who is so so open, sometimes too open for me. Sometimes it tries to me crazy, and so in some ways I think I'm trying to be the opposite of her, like a lot of people do with their parents. But when I was thirty four, I went through a big breakup, and I'd been a

littleman for a long time. This breakup just's felt like, huh, maybe I should try therapy. That's the kind of thing you do when you go through a breakup.

So my therapist getting into that felt like, oh, wow, this is interesting. I can finally talk about this. It's safe. There won't be judgment, I think, and it definitely it didn't change my mind about things, but it was interesting to just at least be talking about it on a regular basis, and I think it led me to wanting to meet him.

and every time it didn't. I don't remember it really even if acting me, I just remember thinking, Oh, yeah, he's coming to town again. He does it every year. I never really seriously thought about going to see him. I think I would sometimes deliberately be out of town, which is obviously something to sort of protect myself or to at least maybe even to just say to people like, oh, I'm going to be out of town. I think I would actually book a trip just to make it easier.

So obviously the therapy dug up all of this, and pretty soon in I saw the listing or someone told me that he's coming, and for some reason, when she said that it was someone in the store, it just hit me differently. All these new thoughts came up, and it wasn't like, oh I better book a trip out of town or I don't care. It was huh, I need to figure out how to see him. It totally flipped. It was one eighty. Definitely part of it was the

age thing that he was nearing seventy. It's sure he comes back every year, but one of these years he might not. And it wasn't even necessarily he's going to die, but it was seventy, like, certainly he might not tour again next year. That's getting pretty old. So I decide it's time. And it's very easy to sort of justify my need or my want by the very pragmatic logical stuff. My thinking was, you know, every time I go to a doctor and he asks about my family history, I

can't tell him anything about my father's side. And now I'm thirty five, and these are things I'm going to want to know someday. So for those reasons alone, it would be great to talk to him and try to get some medical history and family history. So that was at least the easy thing to tell myself, and probably not tell other people, because I definitely I'm not that kind of person. I doubt I told anyone I was trying, because that would make me feel bad if I didn't

see him, to have to tell people that. But I decided to try to reach him, and I told my mother. We still talked all the time, and we still do now, and I'd never heard her. She turned into a totally different person. She was so worried and so protective and warned me of so many different things, and like she's been hiding all this stuff for thirty five years waiting for this moment, which was just like, Oh, why are

you going to do that? I put yourself out there like that, even if you get a hold of him, he's not going to show up. He's so flaky, You're really setting yourself up. It was I could really hear in her voice how scared she was for what I was going to encounter. And she definitely always talked about him as like he's a musician, he's kind of flaky. He was always hard to pin down. But it really came out in a much much stronger way on this phone call when I decided I wanted to.

him than she kind of led on. But regardless, I just said I think I actually told her not so much because I wanted her to know but because I wanted to know if she knew how to get a hold of him, and she was the logical first step, and she said no, I found his booking agent online and email and sent this sort of very safe email, knowing that if he saw it, he would know who I was. I said, you know, my name's Nabia. My

mother was Louise. She used to know Roy back in the early seventies, and they were kind of dropped all these clues, but that's it, and just said, I see he's coming to town soon. I'd love to get together. Can you give him my number or whatever. I didn't hear back, but I mean the feeling of sending that email was just like, I can't I mean, I remember

my heart was racing. I can't believe I just sent it and now, and I was so nervous right after I sent it, of all the things that might happen, and the biggest of which what my mother won me, of setting something up but him not following through and me standing there, you know, waiting for him, or something like that. I really really felt terrible, and I was angry at myself for trying. Why did you put yourself out there so much. What do you open to get?

All this stuff was going through my head to the point where when I hadn't heard back, maybe even the next day, the first thing I did was email my friend who was the promoter at the show at the Triple Door, and I just said, you know, spilled this out an email. I was like, I don't know if you know this. Roy is my father. The show is happening. I tried his booking agent, but if that doesn't work now, I'm at a point where I can't reel it back

and I need to just show up. Will you let me backstage in three months or It was so unnecessarily early, but I was just so so I had so much anxiety about it. And he said sure, he can come backstage at the show. And there was this thing in my head that was, unless I hear back from him, I'm going to show up that night and walk right in and say hi, and that's going to be really, really difficult, and I really don't want to do that.

So I had a little bit of time, and maybe a week later, I just emailed the booking agent again and said, Okay, that last email was kind of soft. Roy is my father. I haven't seen him in however long, I am going to this show no matter what, and

I'm going to talk to him. It would be a lot easier if you could help facilitate that, like kind of threatening email something that is really not my style, but it was so it was just weighing on me so heavily, and I was so scared for you know, I'd rather send a threatening email than show up and risk who knows what. And the agent replied right away and said, yeah, yeah, I'm forwarding this to Roy, like my female and I was like, oh god, okay, And so at least that to me sort of put it

out of my head. And I was going to the therapist too. But to me, however far away, the show was still weeks away. There's nothing to do now, this guy's forwarding it to Roy, my friend's getting me backstage. There's nothing for me to do until that day, either I hear from him or I don't. But you know, there's no reason to make myself sick every day. And out of the blue, one day, I wake up to a voicemail from a New York number and I'm like, oh, I wonder what that is. And I listened to it

and it's him. It's Roy, my father. The first time, of course he's ever called me, and maybe even the first time I've heard him say my name, which I thought was interesting, and he has this very like, calm, nice voice, and he just I can't believe I didn't save this voicemail, just thinking myself, but but he just says, Hey,

it's Roy. I hear you're in Seattle. I'm gonna be there soon, you know, Okay, call me back, like really, like as if we were buddies, or as if we'd out last year, like very sort of but in a nice, not hurried, like very welcoming voicemail. And I listened to

it several times. I was so happy, and I can't tell if the happiness was wow, my father called me and said my name and was nice, or if the happiness was, man, I'm so glad I don't have to go crash his backstage, which and I'm sure it was a combination, but it was just sort of relief and a bit of acceptance and all this stuff at the same time. It was really a really intense morning. I remember really clearing my head for some reason, thinking like, when I call him, it needs to be perfect I

can't just like call him right back right now. I need to go to work, look at the numbers from last night, drink my coffee, do my little morning routine, and then call him when my brain's kind of clear. And I do and he picks up, and it's just as wonderful as the voicemail is super friendly, and it turns into you know, great, I'll pick you up at your hotel the day of the show. We'll go to lunch and I'll see you then. And it's in a

week or something. And I call my mother all excited, you know, kind of a nicer version of you know, everything you're worried about is not going to happen. He's so great, and she's just like, he's not gonna come. And this is, you know, this is not who my mother is. This is not me with like god, Mom, you always do that. It's the opposite of that. So it still really shakes me, just that, just about this specific thing and a specific person, how little she believes

in him and how worried she is about me. But he does. And I remember weirdly pulling up to the hotel and thinking I should be so nervous right now, but I'm not even a little bit nervous, and maybe it was because of the ease of those phone calls, but I just parked the car, walked in and saw this guy who was obviously him, and we both kind of smiled and pointed each other out, and just like

immediately it was easy. It just it really did feel natural, as if we'd talked before, or as if we'd hung out before, and this was a continuation of something something recent. There was no like, God, I can't believe him looking at you. It just wasn't that at all, very unique, weird, special experience. He said he wanted sushi, So there's lots of great sushi in Seattle, but we were supposed to

go to my favorite place. We pulled up and it was closed on whatever day of the week that was, and I remember feeling so like I was trying to impress him, you know, with great sushi in Seattle. Now I have to go to this other place that's still really good, but not as good. So definitely these funny things of like do I care that he's my father

or do I not? I'm not sure, But to me that was a moment of me caring that I was trying to impress my father, and we so we have sushi, and I just kind of launch in till I mean, I brought a notebook and I said, you know, do you mind if I take some notes. I have a lot of questions. He was like, yeah, that's fine. He was very calm, very present, didn't feel like he wanted

to leave or had to leave. And I asked about family, and I asked about medical history, and he told me everything, told me about his three sisters and as much as he could about his parents, and I was furiously writing. And also when I would look at him, it was just so intense to sit across the table from this person who looked so much like me. He was thirty years older, but he would like even just like scratch his eye or laugh or make some kind of gesture,

and it was seriously like looking into a mirror. And I just couldn't believe for how little time we'd spent together, which was seriously, what maybe five minutes of my life in five different spurts up to that point, to look at him and see how insanely much not looked, but how much he felt like me, and how wild it was to see that, and feel that it was really

intense and incredible and really cool. And I think he noticed it too, and he pointed at me and he's like, oh you got He pointed to his head and he's like, oh you got You lost your hair before I did, said things like that. But also what was happening He pointed to his cheek bones, He's like, oh, you got these two Native American blood. So what was happening for me was not just the connection thing, but he was absolutely confirming that I was his son, which I didn't doubt,

but I wondered if he doubted. And the fact that he was saying, oh, you got this from me, you got this from me, and surely saw the same manners and things that I saw, I think made it undeniable. And he was just very obviously you know, knew it. And so those things were great. I mean I really was trying to drag out the lunch. It was only lunch, but they were like, do you want dessert or coffee? And I would you know, at a meal like that, you look at the other person and say, I don't know,

what do you think? I was just like, yes, yes, you know. I keep bringing us things because I need to take this longer. Can you take a while, because I just wanted more information, and at the time, even though I wanted it to happen more, I think I knew this is it. This is never happening again. I really felt like that, like I have to get everything I can right now, because no matter how natural and great and this feels, and how much it feels like, I'll be able to do this from now on, I

don't think that's true. I think I knew that, and so I was just trying to get it all in. And there's a moment towards the end where he looked at me and he said, you know, I'm proud of you. And it really hit me in the wrong way. It didn't hit me, especially after everything I was feeling and feeling connected and seeing are similar mannerisms and everything. It just went through my brain too quickly. It went right to the other side. It didn't go to my heart.

It went to my brain. And I didn't say this, of course, but what I thought was, Oh, you should really just say you're proud of yourself, because you're just looking at me thinking you did a good job and you got away with a lot. That's what it felt like, but I didn't say that. Of course.

She had had this vision for the way she wanted to live her life and what she wanted to do that was very much out of step with the times that she was living in, and she did it. So for him to turn to you and say I'm proud of you almost has like a whiff of ownership exactly.

And I said, wow, I'd love to meet her. I'm in New York all the time. And he sort of physically I could see it, like, you know, that's that was the first thing I said that just gave him some reservation, and he kind of he said something I don't remember exactly what, but it's something like, oh, that might take some time, or something that was, you know, a bit political and not no and maybe even reasonable too.

But it was just the first thing that I'd sort of felt like, oh, Okay, I'm definitely not just getting everything I want from sitting here for an hour an hour and a half. And I really loved the idea of my half siblings, so that was disappointing.

That long, friendly lunch had unleashed something in him that was either really buried or not previously there at all, a longing for a relationship with his father.

I'm going to get. I met him, we connected, It was positive the end, and I know maybe I should have done that because what happened was, and I think I said to him at that lunch like I'm in New York all the time. It would be great to like get coffee, and really, what I was saying was like, look, I'm thirty five, you met me. I'm not crazy, I'm making you look good. I'm not asking for money. I'm not asking for anything. You got office Scott free let me, you know, hang out with me once in a while

and give me some more information. That's I think what I was saying pretty plainly, and he said yeah, of course, And so to me, I was like, Wow, this will be cool. I'll get coffee with him again in New York and maybe I'll learn some more and maybe I'll eventually meet my half siblings, and connecting with him might be part of that, because really my target was the siblings. And so every time I went to New York, I

would email him first, I would call him. I was really always trying to set it up, like are you in town, And that's when it kind of turned into he never emailed me that so I was like, Okay, if he's not good on email, that's fine. I would call or text and sometimes he would pick up and I would have to explain who I was. And that was maybe the worst feeling of all the bad feelings. It was felt more like being a kid at elected Lady or someplace where you know, it's hey, it's no Bill,

and he'd say who is this? And I should just feel like the logical thing would be to say the Bill your son, but I was never gonna say that because that's not what I felt like, and so I would say the bille in Seattle or like in the

Bille Louise's, like, you know, anything but your son. That'd have to do this weird, weird dance to try to explain, and then he'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, how's it going, you know, And it always really quick, always felt like he was doing seven other things at once, and it didn't even feel personal. It just felt like, this is what I'm like on the phone. I'm busy,

and so I was always so nervous. I'd have to Rushian's, you know, I'm gonna be in New York next week, I'm playing or I can come meet somewhere and he'd be like, oh, oh, I'm gonna be in Russia and be like what, And then we'd hang up and I would go to Royers dot com and I would see who was playing Saint Petersburg next week, And so it was almost this thing where I felt like he was being dishonest because these crazy stories, except he was actually

being honest. So sometimes it was true, but other time it was just like, Okay, call me when you get to town or something like that. But it was always a kind of brush off and it never culminated in anything. And every time on those trips I was thinking about him definitely sort of reverted it to a needy kid in some ways for the first time in my thirties. And eventually, almost exactly a year after that first Seattle night, I see that he's playing in Seattle again, and it's

at a different club. It's one block from my apartment. So in my head, I'm like, Okay, let's reset everything. Maybe he's just not good when he's home. He travels a lot. It's been too much to try to do all these New York things. I'm just going to try to recreate last year because that works so well. So so I called him and said, you know, I live a block from the venue you're playing in Seattle. It would be great to see you that night. Maybe the whole band come up, come up, and I'll make dinner

for everybody. And I was just thinking about how to make it easy and how to make something work. And he was very short, just kind of like, oh, that's kind of a crazy night, you know, to just come to the show. Just come to the show. I remember that's how the call ended exactly. He said that twice and I don't know if he hung up on me, but that's how it ended. And so, still being a

person in the band, I was giving him credit. I thought like, Okay, you know, some people don't like to eat before concerts, some people don't like to make plans before concerts. All this. Come to the show as he suggested, and I did, but I didn't feel good at it. And I remember it sort of manifesting itself musically at the first pil concert. I loved the music. I was so amazed. I had so much fun watching the audience

love it. I felt connected to it. And I think it's partially because I felt connected to him that day. And a year later, I was watching it and I just wanted it to end, and I remember thinking, man, is this the same band they felt sound as good? They're playing this song too fast, They're playing this song too slow. This crowd looks weird. Who are these people like that everything felt negative about the concert, and I'm sure it's because of my mindset and when it ended.

This is more of a kind of small club. The other place was a theater. The band walked off the stage, and I had this terrible feeling like this is the only chance I'm going to get to talk to him. He might be walking into a backstae, but he also might be walking straight out to a car and that's it. So I thought that would be the only chance I had to talk to him. I didn't want to wait and see if he left and find out he did.

So I touched his shoulder and he looked at me and I said, hey, wrong, it's no bill, and he said, hey, how you doing. I gotta go, and he pointed, you know, anywhere, and then just kind of walked off. And I remember the feeling. It felt like a movie. The way my hand felt and his shoulder left it. It was really just like that's it. That was like, that was the moment I get And I looked around with my two friends.

So I'd brought my bandmate and his girlfriend. They knew the whole story, and they just had these really devastated faces on, which made me feel even worse, and that was it. That's the last time I saw him.

All the success is the backdrop to a random voicemail one day, when Nabil is least expecting it, a message from Roy just calling to say, hey, thinking about you.

It was just thinking about you.

along fine and he was very nice. I didn't feel like a connection, and that really surprised me, and so I kind of felt like, so that's it, that's everyone I'm ever going to meet, and everything I'm ever going to know about that side of my family. That seems impossible. And I know so much about my mother's side, she's so good at keeping track. I have pictures, family trees, and my father's side. That's it. So let's try twenty three in me this thing that everyone's doing, just to

see what happens. It wasn't an actual goal. It wasn't let me find out about this person. It was really just like, let's see what it yields. And I did it and got the sort of grid back and the graph and everything telling me that I was fifty one percent Ashkenazi Jewish, which was pretty fascinating and which means my mother is like one hundred two percent. Yes, And you know, nothing surprising at all, nothing that interesting. It was like, ah, this is fun. And then got a message.

Of course, I turned on the messaging thing because I'm trying to find people. Got a message from a guy saying, you know, we're distant cousins. It wasn't like a huge deal, but he said, I have an heirs family tree you might want to see. Do you want it? He emailed me this document and it was incredible. Guy Samuel Ayres wrote it in nineteen sixty three. He's my great uncle.

And I immediately kind of flipped through it. It was a scan of what was a sort of loosely printed book it looked like, and so I scrolled to the end to look at the actual tree part, and I saw Roy, and I saw his three sisters, and I saw his parents' names. All of that match the NFL had given me. So I immediately, you know, assumed, wow, this is incredible, this is authentic, this is it, and then read the whole thing, and it starts with one man who was enslaved in eighteen twenty four. He was

born in eighteen twenty four, Isaac Ayres. And it goes through everybody, and it goes through all these branches that

tells stories about people, it has their photographs. It's this incredible document and it just blows my mind that this has just been sitting probably lots of places, and this guy was nice enough to see me connect and send it to me, and so that just sent me down this even I'm already being kind of relentless, but just this even more relentless search where I realized, well, now, I mean, now I have to research more about these people and it's so hard to research and slaved Americans.

I can't get anything else. But what I can get is information on the slaveholder who is mentioned as a doctor in this town of Ashland, Mississippi, which is a small town. It's really easy to find stuff on him. And on this website find a grave. I'm looking at his gravestone and there's a note from a woman named Karen saying, you know, bless our ancestors or something like that. And Karen's email is sitting there, so I email her and it's a weird, crazy email to right saying, you know,

I think I think your ancestors owned mine. I'm not after anything, just information. I have a job. Whatever the things you say, you can relate all the things that say, I really don't want anything. And then even more with the slaverything. I'm not coming after you. I'm not going to murder you, I'm not going to out you. I just want information. And sent that just thinking like wow, I mean I'm never going to hear from her, but

I had to send it. And the next day it was incredibly open welcoming email from the so MA named Karen saying, wow, you know that's an incredible story. I happened to be a hobby genealogist. I know a lot about those times and those people, and I'm happy to share information. And that just turned into this long email

for it. We never spoke emailed constantly and it would be half very specific here's some documents from the farm in eighteen sixty that I found, and then half really simple personal stuff about her and her husband and what they were making for dinner that night, and then I would respond the same way. And the day that I bought my wife her wedding ring, I got an email from Karen and had my reply, you know whatever, thanks

for the information about the farm. By the way, I'm so excited I just bought a ring I'm proposing to Aja. It became this really incredible thing where she felt so so close in so many ways, and it was really fun to get that ring and think, wow, I can't wait for Karen to know about this. Really, we developed this deep important connection and I'd never even spoke into this person.

becomes a completely different thing. Yeah, and you know, and then you describe your meeting your half brother and not feeling a connection, you know, which is your story is so much about how DNA matters and doesn't matter, and it really just basically depends on who the people are, what they're bringing to the table, what they're looking for, and whether they connect or they don't connect.

And all of these people felt like really strong connections, and it's because they found out about my story and they came to sort of help me or to give me something, or even sometimes it felt like seriously, to like give me a little piece of myself. They read this thing that sort of talked about what I'm missing,

and they thought, well, I have some of that. So I'm going to go to this book talk in topio and tell this guy about what it was like when I recorded the keyboards on that song in nineteen seventy two. It's really fascinating to have a stack of these stories.

would be possible. You have all these relatives who come out of the woodwork, who find you, who read something of yours, and you know, word spreads, and the ones who reach out to you are incredibly embracing of you and embracing of you as Roy's son, embracing of you as their relatives, their nephew, their cousin.

is amazing. We're cousins. Let's talk. And even just that idea was so sort of a lightning bolt, like, wait a minute, I have close relatives who are interested and connecting, and so we immediately got on this phone call, taught for a while, connected so much. They live in Los Angeles, and at the end of the call, she said, oh, by the way, you should call your aunt, michelle A. She wants to meet you. And I thought that all three of my father's sisters had passed, but michell A

was still alive. So I call her immediately, and this is my father's sister, my aunt. This is as close as it gets. And this woman is just wonderful, so delightful, so many questions. Really immediately feels like my aunt. I go to La Fast for a work trip and have lunch with her, and I mean she's in her seventies. She shows up with this heavy bag full of photos, photos of my grandparents, photos of them as kids, family photos,

really incredible stuff. And you know, she unfortunately passed away last year, but I got to have a few great days with her, one of which is a big part

of the book. But I said, you know, I would love to go to the cemetery sometime and see my grandparents grave, your parents, And she takes me to the cemetery in England would and it was just this incredible moment where the two of us we walked there kind of she's old and needed help walking, so we were kind of locked arms and stood over my grandparents grave and she just introduced me to my grandmother as if my grandmother was standing there, and said these really nice

things about me, and again just sort of legitimize, like you know, I am your daughter and this is my nephew, and we are all related and all connected. And it was very powerful, incredible experience.

facing the grave, looking down with her arms still linked. Hi, mamma, she spoke, in a voice similar to the one she used with her husband' z, but less as an equal, more with the tone of a daughter than a wife. This is your grandson, Nebille, she spoke, slowly, allowing the moment of my introduction to hang a bit longer. It was moments like these, the moments of affirmation that I

cherished the most. Rory staring at me and saying she's looking at family, and now Michelle telling my grandmother that I was her grandson. When I hear everybody loves the sunshine, which happens more often than ever, the opening chords still catch me off guard, but now the lazy synthesizer melody allows me to relax. I hear and feel it with a new sense of appreciation, a new sense of connection.

As my father's voice shoots out from the speakers and into the warm light, I smile and quietly sing along my Life, My Life, My Life, My Life. In the Sunshine.