Eggy, Dripping Rizz
Eggy, dripping rizz, arrives at 5:06 PM sharp.
Two hours and six minutes late, or exactly just right on time, if you account for a morning switcheroo of plans to accommodate a video interview with a band member. They arrive, a scene from Reservoir Dogs, pouring out across the Santa Fe Meow Wolf parking lot, a slow motion saunter in zig zags and criss crosses. Everyone is accounted for except keyboardist Dani, who remains in the van, on the phone, nearly always late, a recurrence of introversion and individuality — one that, due to an immense sense of camaraderie, rarely seems to give anyone pause. There is no conflict. It's not that complicated.
Under a rising moon, Dani arrives to a house party late, quietly dissolving into the room like a church mouse sneaking from a baseboard crevice for a hunk of cheese. At the kitchen counter he flickers in existence, building a three-story castle of cards, pyramids stacked precariously one on top of the other; he's patient, focused, unfazed by the noise, unfazed by beer bottles and seltzers and ashtrays crowding his space, by the smoke, by the revolving dance of lights from the disco ball swirling overhead. Dani, he's good at everything, or so remarks Jake, as Dani puts the finishing card on the top and, in a flourish of humility, sweeps the whole thing into a pile.
Earlier Eggy arrived (dripping rizz) because it didn't even cross Dani's mind that we could be weirdos, or serial killers or creepshows. Or so he offered over dinner, when asked point blank why he would respond to a random DM for a VIP tour of Meow Wolf during their day off in Santa Fe. Didn't we have the same birthday or something? he contemplates, as if that makes the potential for us to lock them in a cage while offering a boot as a latrine utterly incomprehensible. No matter, because we weren't serial killers or cage maintainers anyway.
Eggy. A band at the precipice. Eggy, whose timing may be nothing short of impeccable. Eggy who is peerless, even in a sea of neo-jam bands making their way with improvisational setlists and long musical sojourns. Eggy who fucks. Eggy from New Haven, CT. Eggy who is 500+ shows and eight years in. Eggy who tours incessantly. Eggy who is built on a foundation of high school friendship. Eggy whose schedule was defined for two years while their drummer Alex finished Berklee College of Music. You can go, they said, you should go and we'll wait. But after that, you're ours.
Befriending a band is a thing, I guess. Years ago, I paced impatiently at SFO for a flight to Miami, to cross the country to see the brownest of bands, Ween. Dave Dreiwitz, the band's bassist, unassuming and all grins plunks down across from me, ineffectively anonymous in a sloping knit cap. Years later and we're guffawing in Boston during an aftershow, where I'd delivered some customized Ween cupcakes to delight the band. Dean Ween eyeballed them warily as he entered the venue, and later Driewitz inquires to ensure they weren't laced (they weren't) as backstage remains drug-free.
Being in Ween is hard, offers Dreiwitz. When pressed, he delivers a thoughtfully obscure, it's complicated. Down the road some, mid-set in Portchester, NY, Dean peers side-eyed over at partner-in-crime Gene Ween, grins broadly and mumbles into the microphone, "feeling conflicted."
Then they all make magical music together. Conflicts and complications; tempests in their midst.
The Eggy Meow Wolf tour is fits and starts, beginning awkwardly as a group of nine, eventually splintering into subgroups who each lose themselves among psychedelic art and secret entrances in the form of refrigerator doorways. There's dinner after (Dani is late), where everyone recommits there isn't a serial killer among us, and the band relaxes into the fact that we're fellow East Coasters and good people. After dinner, an awkward pause as everyone considers whether we should continue, whether the evening is approaching its finish or just getting started. We soldier on.
At the house party kitchen table, sometime after midnight, Jake admits that being on the road can offer a different form of complication. Earlier in their career, when they weren't staying consistently in Quintana Inns and the like, fans would offer a free place to crash, in a roundabout apartment, on a sagging couch in a living room with tapestries draped over the windows.
It's 4 AM and we just wanted to sleep, a conflicted Jake moans throwing his arms up, and they were interested in keeping us awake to party.
Eggy. A band as committed to the craft as they come. A band who communally shares driver duties. A band who switches to management that understands them. A band who has an instragram influencer managing the merch booth before and after the show. Eggy, who stole Interior People before Phish could cover it. Eggy who isn't afraid of Emily King or Paul McCartney or Big Thief. Eggy whose jams turn on a dime. Eggy, who is really Mike and the Goodmans.
Eggy, it's obvious, is different from all the rest. They aim to write songs with depth, songs that can be observed as well-designed, as catchy, as having merit, as standing as tall as the musical journeys that follow. Eggy has more pop than most. More harmonies. Deep empathy. They deliver social media with savvy. They' re sharp-dressed in tank tops and baggy pants and flowy shirts, in tribal patterns, in necklaces that rarely get removed.
The drip is real.
It's just past 1 AM and there have been multiple rounds of magic and sleight of hand card tricks. Mike particularly seems well tuned to the craft, dazzling with misdirection, until Alex steps in, offering a broken toothpick napkin trick that he's required to repeat 4 or 5 times, as everyone tries to figure out the grift. He doesn't let on, instead distracting us by fake snorting a sharpie and pulling it out of his mouth with a sound akin to a small plane taking off.
A pause in the laughter and Alex turns serious, asking how late we may want to be up, a kind and supremely conscious offering given their history of being forced into all nighters. Which, if anything, seems to describe Eggy to a tee: thoughtful, self aware, considerate. There is brotherhood. Jake speaks of their art, of protecting it, of its power and of its fragility.
Right now, at this very moment, things aren't all that complicated. And there are limited contradictions.
This is that moment, when things crystalize, where the opportunity is bigger than even they might expect. This is Eggy, at the edge of the cliff, about to cross the threshold, nearing ignition — on the knife's edge to becoming a 10 year overnight success.