BATON ROUGE, La. — Memory doesn’t always return in order. Sometimes, it comes in bass lines.
I’m driving alone through Louisiana, the heat leaking through my open windows, my Mini Cooper’s disco ball swinging gently from the rearview mirror. I’m on my way to Shreveport — I woke up nostalgic and queued up my “born in the ’90s” playlist.
My tattooed fingers are tapping the steering wheel, and suddenly — as if on cue — My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” starts to play.
And I’m not on the road anymore.
I wake up in the backseat of my mom’s tan minivan, heat pressed into the cloth seats, body stuck to everything. It’s April 15, 2007. I’m eleven and about to attend my first rock festival, Edgefest, in Frisco, Tex. We drove nearly 500 miles from our house in Denham Springs, La.
I remember how my stomach fluttered with a kind of nervous magic. My dad in the driver’s seat, his shirt wrinkled, his hair not quite awake. He looked like someone who’d slept in a parking lot — because he had. My mom, younger than he was, wore a band graphic tee.
They didn’t just let me skip school for a music festival. They made it feel normal.
We drove through the night, slept in the car, woke up in the heat, and walked into the most extraordinary lineup of my life like it was no big deal.
I wore new Tripp pants from Hot Topic, a My Chemical Romance tee, and studded bracelets stacked halfway up both arms. Pink highlights framed my face. I felt like I belonged.
This was the lineup: Papa Roach, Saosin, Say Anything, The Almost, The Killers, My Chemical Romance, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Muse, AFI, Blue October, Bowling for Soup, Bullet for My Valentine, Finger Eleven, Forever the Sickest Kids.
And if you were a punk kid in the 2000s, this was everything.
As we waited in line, a 17-year-old girl turned, gave me a once-over — Tripp pants, bracelets, pink streaks, the works — and said, “You’re the coolest kid I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, clutching my Sex Pistols satchel stuffed with a camcorder, too many tapes, and my stash of merch money.
My parents caught each other’s eyes and smiled. Mission accomplished.
Inside, the bass hit me before I even saw a stage. The air was a swamp of sunscreen, beer, and teenage adrenaline. My feet vibrated with the music. My heart was already syncing to the rhythm.
At the time, I didn’t really think about what it meant for my parents. I thought it was cool that I was doing something other kids weren’t. Only later did I realize this wasn’t spontaneous. This was a blueprint.
They bought expensive tickets, packed the car, made the drive, shared the space, and gave up sleep.
“Concerts were always mine and dad’s thing,” my mom told me years later. “So it was like a right of passage when you turned old enough to take you to your first concert.”
And then she reminded me of the story I still tell my friends: how she once snuck backstage.
“I talked the guard into letting me sneak behind the stage so I could find Blue October,” she said, grinning. “You and Dad kept telling me, ‘They’re not going to let you do it.’ And, the next thing you know, from across the concert backstage, I’m waving at y’all.”
She didn’t find Blue October right away.
“But I did meet Papa Roach,” she said. “And then I talked this guy into letting me take his best friend’s spot for the Blue October meet and greet. Got all their autographs.”
My dad just shook his head, smiling. “Your mom getting backstage like she belonged there. No kidding.”
While she was off collecting autographs, I watched the concert with my dad, my arms straining to hold up my camcorder during My Chemical Romance’s set.
When they played “I’m Not Okay (I Promise),” their first-ever MTV music video, a song I’d blasted in my room for years, I thought my heart might explode.
Those tapes are gone now — lost in a move. Occasionally, I still Google “Edgefest 2007 footage,” hoping someone else caught it. But I’ve never found it. The whole thing lives only in my head.
“It was cool watching you tell people about going,” my mom told me recently. “AFI, Red Jumpsuit, My Chemical Romance. Everyone was jealous because, believe it or not, they thought you had cool parents.”
My dad laughed at the memory. “The drive was long, the car became our one room resting place but all of this was worth it just to see your excitement.”
And it wasn’t a one-time thing.
“Once mom and I saw how much fun you had,” he said, “We knew we would have to take you to other music festivals. Next was Voodoo Fest.”
That night ended in flashes of color. I walked from the stadium to The Killers playing “Somebody Told Me.” The lights blurred everything. My feet hurt, but my heart was whole.
They weren’t just letting me skip school. They were giving me the soundtrack to my life.
And now, whenever I hear those songs — usually on a playlist or mid-drive with the windows down — I can still feel it. The bass hits, the lights explode, your body feels like it has room for nothing but sound.
I feel my childhood.
My parents didn’t just raise a music fan. They raised someone who years later still chases that feeling. Not because I’m trying to relive it but because I know what it taught me: to say yes to adventure, recognize magic, and know when something ordinary is about to become a story I’ll tell forever.
That’s why I keep seeing shows. Not because they are all the festival of a lifetime. I always have a playlist, a camcorder app on my phone, and the kind of hope you pack just in case.
It was never just a concert. I was never just a kid in the backseat.
I was becoming someone. Maybe I still am.
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