A few years back, I was asked to write a bio for a singer-songwriter by the name of Derik Hultquist. I accepted the assignment on one condition. I’d do it, just as long as they allowed me to write it as a poem. I interviewed Derik at one of my favorite haunts in Nashville, a basement bar called The Fox.
Derik had demons. But, what I admired about him was his refusal to hide them. I’ve always said there is no such thing as good people or bad people. There are only honest people and dishonest people. Derik was honest. I noticed this trait the moment I sat down across from him and he said, “I’m sorry if I seem out of sorts.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “I walked out of jail about 12 hours ago.”
I haven’t spoken to Derik in a while. However, last time we caught up, he was nearly a year sober, madly in love with a woman in Montreal and writing music again.
Nashville, Tennessee, is filled with jarringly talented singer-songwriters who never get the applause they deserve. I’d count Derik among them.
While I’m a mediocre songwriter at best, I’ve listened to enough music over the years to know a good song when I hear one. The Bounty is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.
This is the bio I wrote for Derik, disguised as a poem: Pain recognizes pain.
i found him hiding from the wolves in the back of a dimly lit bar, licking his wounds after a night in jail, white-knuckling a heavy glass marked with foam rings where the beer had been it wasn’t thirty seconds after shaking hands with derik hultquist that he told me he had relapsed on what, exactly? i do not know but i hadn't noticed the shot glass standing lifeless beside his beer until the bartender swung by to collect it derik looked at him with a faraway twinkle in his eye and said: i swear to god it was full a moment ago —i don’t know what happened derik was born and raised in eastern tennessee on a patch of land named after an aluminum company that once called the town home sitting across from him, i got the feeling walking across the town’s sixteen square miles felt like walking atop a star mined of all its resources; mined of all its former glory derik’s daddy says the town of alcoa is a tough place to live but a good place to be from men raised in hell, with the heat of a forge roaring upon their backs are impossible to burn; impossible to drown in flame three hours later i discover derik loves his father, refuses to talk about his mother, compares himself to his brother, loathes his ex-lover, misses the days whenhe was a winner, thought a time or two about crossing the river, makes the most of being a sinner and—despite having every reason on earth not to be —finds a way to remain a believer and further into the night we journey to duke’s where the bar tops are worn to the wick and the music is so loud we can’t hear ourselves think we end up outside on the patio where beside us four friends play a game of craps where the dice are not dice but miniature pigs and a homeless woman with gaunt cheeks sunken in where her teeth used to be asks derik to spare her some change so he gives her a twenty, he shakes her right hand and he squeezes it the way you'd squeeze the hand of a queen, a president, a god and i’ll be damned if she didn’t say ow