Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. If I ever
Speaker 1: ran into my father, would either of us recognize each other?
Speaker 1: If I saw someone who I was positive was him,
Speaker 1: would I approach him or would I let it go
Speaker 1: in order to save myself the humiliation of not being
Speaker 1: recognized or a brief, hurried encounter. There was always the
Speaker 1: chance that I'd catch him at the perfect time when
Speaker 1: he was available and interested, even if only for a
Speaker 1: few minutes.
Speaker 2: That's Nobile Airs, music industry entrepreneur, podcast host, musician and
Speaker 2: author of the recent memoir My Life in the Sunshine.
Speaker 2: Nobiles is a story full of grace and grit and
Speaker 2: talent and the many ways longing can shape us over
Speaker 2: the course of a lifetime. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this
Speaker 2: is family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 2: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 2: keep from ourselves. So I usually begin by asking my
Speaker 2: guest to describe the landscape of her childhood, but in
Speaker 2: your case, I'm actually going to start by asking about
Speaker 2: the landscape of your mother's life in the couple of
Speaker 2: years before you were born.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. I've
Speaker 1: learned so much about it in recent years. She would
Speaker 1: say that she had a fairly unhappy childhood. She was
Speaker 1: a you know, on paper two parents, a father was
Speaker 1: a lawyer in New York City that lived in Long Island,
Speaker 1: had a younger brother, you know, very sort of picture perfect.
Speaker 1: But I think she just had a hard time as
Speaker 1: a teenage ballet answer who had her teacher who you know,
Speaker 1: as I think, physically abusive. I think would hit her
Speaker 1: with the yardstick that stuff that she wanted to do,
Speaker 1: but that didn't turn out the way she wanted. And
Speaker 1: when soon as she was eighteen, moved to New York City,
Speaker 1: and this is nineteen sixty nine, kind of an incredible
Speaker 1: time to be able to do that, you know, by
Speaker 1: yourself as a teenager, and had an apartment in Greentted Village.
Speaker 1: She's very close with her younger brother. My uncle Alan
Speaker 1: was two years younger, so he would come visit her.
Speaker 1: So I think the way she describes those years is
Speaker 1: that she was kind of lost, just had sort of
Speaker 1: you know, normal jobs. They worked in movie theaters. So
Speaker 1: she had a great apartment in a great neighborhood and
Speaker 1: was just trying to figure out what to do and
Speaker 1: didn't really feel any direction. Was done with dancing, kind
Speaker 1: of retired already, and the way she divisited, really wanted
Speaker 1: to give someone a better childhood than she had and
Speaker 1: wanted a best friend. In this park Ampton Square and
Speaker 1: still there in Grantwich Village, and she would walk by
Speaker 1: and see kids and see parents playing with those kids,
Speaker 1: and she said to herself, Wow, I really want to
Speaker 1: be a young single mother, and I want to give
Speaker 1: somebody a really great life, and I want to have
Speaker 1: a best friend. So that was the sort of seed
Speaker 1: that she planted, and that kind of became what her
Speaker 1: life was about. But she wasn't looking. She wasn't actively
Speaker 1: looking for a father or me or a husband. I
Speaker 1: think she wasn't even concerned with a relationship at the time.
Speaker 1: And she was nineteen twenty. And when she was twenty one,
Speaker 1: she was at a jazz club, the Village Gate, very
Speaker 1: famous jazz club with my uncle who was a jazz musician,
Speaker 1: and they ran into Roy Ayers, who at the time
Speaker 1: was already pretty well known jazz musician, and Alan met
Speaker 1: him a few times. I think they've even played together.
Speaker 1: So they were talking and my mother's words are that
Speaker 1: the second she saw him, she just thought, that's him.
Speaker 1: This is the person I'm going to have my child with,
Speaker 1: and very clearly not this is the person I want
Speaker 1: to marry, or this is the person that I want
Speaker 1: to be with. But really like she saw the father
Speaker 1: of her child and that is where things kind of
Speaker 1: changed for her.
Speaker 2: It's such an extraordinary thing, and I think it really
Speaker 2: bears talking about how incredibly unusual that would have been
Speaker 2: for a young, middle class Jewish young woman in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine to sort of have that vision for her life.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, I mean, what's funny, It didn't seem
Speaker 1: that strange to me. I always knew that story until
Speaker 1: I finally really sat down and started getting more details
Speaker 1: and learning more about her her mindset at the time.
Speaker 1: So only recently did I even consider, wow, that's wild.
Speaker 2: You know, well, I think we almost never think that
Speaker 2: about our own lives or our own childhoods, maybe until
Speaker 2: we get old enough to have some perspective on them
Speaker 2: in sort of the wider world. But you know, my
Speaker 2: senses that she was she had such certainty about what
Speaker 2: she was doing. So she and Roy have you know,
Speaker 2: something of a relationship. I mean, they see each other
Speaker 2: on and off right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think barely. I think I think three times
Speaker 1: over the course of a year or so, like really
Speaker 1: not dating, and she would say that she was, she
Speaker 1: was in love with them at the time, but she
Speaker 1: was also very very aware that that's not where he was.
Speaker 1: I think he was very upfront about it. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a bit older at the time. If she was
Speaker 1: twenty one, I think he was about thirty. His star
Speaker 1: was really rising, he was touring, he was doing all
Speaker 1: these things, and I think he was very clear that
Speaker 1: he wasn't looking for a relationship. I wondered if maybe
Speaker 1: she would have been more into it had he been
Speaker 1: into it, But it didn't change the fact that there
Speaker 1: was one thing that she wanted from him, and it
Speaker 1: was a child. The story is that she and my
Speaker 1: uncle left an event one night and she realized, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm really close to Roe's apartment. I wonder if he's home,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get pregnant tonight.
Speaker 2: Noabille's mom's plan worked. She indeed got pregnant that very night,
Speaker 2: and Nabil was born in New York City in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two.
Speaker 1: He lived on Downing Street in Greenwich Village. I know
Speaker 1: the exact building. We walk by it all the time now,
Speaker 1: which is great. And then when I was one, I
Speaker 1: think we moved to Boston or Cambridge, Massachusetts. My uncle
Speaker 1: Alan was going to Berkeley School of Music. He was
Speaker 1: in college at this point, so we moved there to
Speaker 1: be with him and so he could kind of help
Speaker 1: with me. There's lots of pictures some then, but I
Speaker 1: don't remember that. But what I do think, I remember
Speaker 1: I was always into music. I mean, at a very
Speaker 1: young age, there were always records on. We were always
Speaker 1: hanging out with musicians. I saw live music certainly before
Speaker 1: I can remember. We know I was at concerts as
Speaker 1: a baby. So I was playing drums a lot, on
Speaker 1: pots and pants and on like a big African drum
Speaker 1: that the friend gave us. And so my uncle Alan
Speaker 1: bought me a drum set when I was two and
Speaker 1: a half years old. But this is like a real
Speaker 1: drum set, not like a kid's drum set. It was
Speaker 1: a full sized adult drum set that was really beat
Speaker 1: up and had some sharp edges and it was kind
Speaker 1: of rough. But I remember him. We had a basement
Speaker 1: apartment and I remember him walking the drums down the
Speaker 1: stairs one at a time, putting them on the ground
Speaker 1: and be hitting them. And I have a memory of
Speaker 1: what one of the symbols sounded like because I was
Speaker 1: so surprised when I hit it, and it was so
Speaker 1: loud and it really scared me and it created this
Speaker 1: kind of ringing in my ear. And that was, I mean,
Speaker 1: even at two and a half, a turning point in
Speaker 1: my life, and that, you know, established who I was.
Speaker 1: And if anything, he didn't do it to make me
Speaker 1: a drummer. He knew that it was already happening. I
Speaker 1: think he did it to sort of facilitate what existed.
Speaker 2: I love that and it makes me laugh because in
Speaker 2: many other families, the idea of you know, an uncle
Speaker 2: bringing a drum set to a two and a half
Speaker 2: year old child.
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks uncle, Thanks so.
Speaker 2: Much, uncle, Alan. But your mother was it, doesn't It
Speaker 2: sounds like she was completely on board.
Speaker 1: She was completely loved it. It would always encourage me
Speaker 1: to play. It didn't again. Another one of those things
Speaker 1: that in my mind doesn't seem strange at all until
Speaker 1: I really look back and think about it. Decades later.
Speaker 2: When no Bille is a child in Cambridge, his mom
Speaker 2: attends community college. She's dedicated to giving her son the
Speaker 2: best life possible. She's determined to secure a more stable
Speaker 2: financial future for them, so they moved to Amherst, where
Speaker 2: she finishes her undergraduate degree at UMass and then gets
Speaker 2: her MBA. Nabiel calls these the golden years. His beloved
Speaker 2: uncle Allan has relocated to New York, but Nabil and
Speaker 2: his mom still get to see him regularly. They travel
Speaker 2: back and forest into New York City as much as possible,
Speaker 2: And keep in mind, this is the seventies and New
Speaker 2: York City is a particularly cool place to be, but
Speaker 2: Amherst is a great place to be too. Nabil goes
Speaker 2: to an incredibly diverse and wonderful public school, and though
Speaker 2: he and his mom are on welfare eating off food stamps,
Speaker 2: to Nobiel, it never feels like they're poor. To Nabiel,
Speaker 2: it feels rich, golden.
Speaker 1: We lived in this development called North Village Departments, which
Speaker 1: was UMass sort of university funded student housing. So it
Speaker 1: was maybe one hundred and fifty or two hundred of
Speaker 1: these like almost like barracks. I think, you know, we
Speaker 1: would call them projects now, but it didn't feel like
Speaker 1: projects because they weren't tall, brick buildings. They were single story,
Speaker 1: kind of connected at the sides. It almost looked like
Speaker 1: condos really not quite as nice with big shared backyards.
Speaker 1: And the only people who could live there were either
Speaker 1: students at UMAs or professors at UMAs or someone who
Speaker 1: had something to do with the university, and you had
Speaker 1: to have children. So it was sort of this wild
Speaker 1: free for all again seventies, no bike helmets, no you know,
Speaker 1: no police, no concerns about anything. No one got hurt,
Speaker 1: nothing bad was happening, So it was amazing. There was
Speaker 1: children of all races, of all religions. It was so
Speaker 1: truly diverse in every way, and so many kids who
Speaker 1: had single parents who were going back to school. So
Speaker 1: it was weird for me as a kid. For you know,
Speaker 1: I'd be seven years old and amrist with a single
Speaker 1: white mother who was still in her twenties and on
Speaker 1: welfare and a black father who wasn't in the picture.
Speaker 1: And I was a totally normal kid. I knew kids.
Speaker 1: So with the worst situation, there were kids who's you know,
Speaker 1: whose dads were in prison and that's why the mom
Speaker 1: was there. Like it was really it was so unique
Speaker 1: and that our situations were all different but we were
Speaker 1: all similar in that we all had weird situations and
Speaker 1: so everyone it wasn't weird at all. I was totally
Speaker 1: a normal kid and loved it. So it never even
Speaker 1: occurred to me that, yeah, everyone else has a father,
Speaker 1: and look at you know, look at Joey out there
Speaker 1: playing baseball with his dad like that. I mean, of
Speaker 1: course I still thought about my father occasionally, but he
Speaker 1: was never We had a few of his records. This
Speaker 1: biggest record came out in nineteen seventy six, and now
Speaker 1: I think we moved to Amherst in seventy seven, so
Speaker 1: even he played there once and that's the first time
Speaker 1: I remember meeting him. My mother took me. He played
Speaker 1: at the huge football stadium that's still there at UMass.
Speaker 1: It was Grateful Dead, Patti Smith and Roy Yers. That
Speaker 1: was the concert was the spring concert in May of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. And what's funny is I remember the concert,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember the other parts of it, which
Speaker 1: my mother later told me. But we went early and
Speaker 1: tried to go backstage. You know, this is Roy's son,
Speaker 1: and we want to talk to him. My mother is
Speaker 1: very good at being pushy and getting what she wants
Speaker 1: New Yorker and they let us in, and I don't
Speaker 1: remember that. And so she said that we talked to
Speaker 1: him for a while, that he was really nice and
Speaker 1: really friendly, and over the years, and there'd been a
Speaker 1: couple other times we ran into him on the street
Speaker 1: in New York and we had talked to him for
Speaker 1: you know, thirty seconds or one minute. But I think
Speaker 1: I even then might have realized what she was doing
Speaker 1: was showing him that she did it and that we
Speaker 1: were in good shape, and that not that he didn't
Speaker 1: need to worry, because I don't think she thought he
Speaker 1: was worried, but more that that thing, you know, that
Speaker 1: she said to him, I want to have a child.
Speaker 1: I want you to be the father. You don't need
Speaker 1: to be involved. I think as much as he was
Speaker 1: keeping his end of the deal, which was pretty easy,
Speaker 1: I think she wanted to show that she was keeping
Speaker 1: her end and she was doing a really good job
Speaker 1: and that maybe it wasn't as easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's something that's really moving about that that
Speaker 2: throughout it, it feels like both you and your mother
Speaker 2: when it comes to Roy, there's this sense of look
Speaker 2: how it turned out, Look how it turned out?
Speaker 3: And you could be proud. We're proud, all right.
Speaker 2: No Bil is seven years old when he and his
Speaker 2: mom go to that concert, and even though he didn't
Speaker 2: retain much memory about the encounter, there is a memento
Speaker 2: of that concert that he or perhaps his mom kept
Speaker 2: for years, tucked away in a photo album, a backstage
Speaker 2: pass on which no Bil evaluated the performers. In his
Speaker 2: Little Boy script, next to Patti Smith and The Grateful Dead,
Speaker 2: he wrote boo, and next to Roy Ayer's name, na
Speaker 2: Bil wrote, yay.
Speaker 1: That's such a funny detail to look at years later.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, when I sort of tried to convince
Speaker 1: myself that actually I had a great childhood and it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like he was missing, and all these things
Speaker 1: that said for so long, that is this weird little
Speaker 1: bit of you know, three letter proof. That's at least
Speaker 1: how I felt, whether it's true. The fact that I
Speaker 1: wrote yeah next to his name meant he's on my
Speaker 1: team or I'm on his team, and those other two
Speaker 1: teams are the opposing teams and a child brain.
Speaker 2: The following year, Nobul is eight when he sees his
Speaker 2: father again. Alan knows Roy a bit, and he brings
Speaker 2: Nobile to Electric Lady Recording studio where Roy's recording. This time,
Speaker 2: the visit leaves more of an impression.
Speaker 1: I can see it so well, I can smell it,
Speaker 1: I can really remember it. Between seven and eight was
Speaker 1: when my brain developed in such a way that memories
Speaker 1: are different or emotions are different. The UMass thing was
Speaker 1: no big deal. It was fun to see. I don't
Speaker 1: even remember talking to him, which I apparently did. But
Speaker 1: one year later, I was with Alan in New York Allan,
Speaker 1: I guess ran into Roy on the street and happened
Speaker 1: to mention that I was in town, and Roy said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm recording an Electric Lady. Bring him by. So one
Speaker 1: night we just showed up. I was so excited because
Speaker 1: I was so into music. I was eight years old,
Speaker 1: so I was a huge Kiss fan. This is you know,
Speaker 1: if you were a boy in the music in the seventies.
Speaker 1: That was my band and all of their albums. So
Speaker 1: maybe not all of them, but definitely those early seventies
Speaker 1: albums were recorded electric ly. They said so on the
Speaker 1: album covers. So I was going in. I was not thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is such a big deal. I'm going to meet
Speaker 1: my father. It was nothing like that because my mother
Speaker 1: Alan never made it a big deal because I think
Speaker 1: they didn't want it to be. So I remember being
Speaker 1: so nervous that I might meet Kiss, Like, surely they're here.
Speaker 1: They just work here, right, all their albums say so,
Speaker 1: and I didn't. But we walked into this room, into
Speaker 1: one of the studios, and there's kind of a lounge outside,
Speaker 1: and it's like a classic and I guess the recording studio.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of the most famous in the world,
Speaker 1: but something you would see in a movie where you
Speaker 1: go into this lounge and you can see the mixing
Speaker 1: board and then there's this huge wall of kind of
Speaker 1: soundproof glass. So there's music happening there but I can't
Speaker 1: hear it. But I see Roy in there with headphones on,
Speaker 1: singing into a microphone. I'm so excited again, more about
Speaker 1: the music in the fact of that where we are
Speaker 1: and what's happening. That's the thing at that point. But
Speaker 1: when he comes out, it's no big deal. There's lots
Speaker 1: of people there, people from his band. They're all super
Speaker 1: cool and I'm sure talented. It feels very like sort
Speaker 1: of special charismatic room, and he kind of just like
Speaker 1: points to everyone. They're obviously ordering dinner, and he points
Speaker 1: at me and he says, do you want some tempora?
Speaker 1: And I remember him pointing at me, and I just
Speaker 1: remember thinking, like you know that feeling, and like you
Speaker 1: end up in a conversation with someone and you feel like, wait,
Speaker 1: did I forget that we've already been introduced and all
Speaker 1: these things have already happened. How is this person so
Speaker 1: far ahead in the conversation? And that's what I remember feeling, like,
Speaker 1: just thinking like, well, do do you even know who
Speaker 1: I am? Or should I know who you are? You're
Speaker 1: just asking me if I want tempora? And I said no,
Speaker 1: and then he kind of just bounced around. He's, you know,
Speaker 1: very charismatic center of attention, especially at his recording session,
Speaker 1: and I remember not speaking to him anymore, and eventually
Speaker 1: with Alan just leaving, and much like my mother the
Speaker 1: times we met him, it wasn't a big deal to Alan.
Speaker 1: He never there was no like so sorry, I wish
Speaker 1: your father was more interested in your life. There's never
Speaker 1: anything like that. It was really just like cool, that
Speaker 1: was fun. What do you want to eat? Or where
Speaker 1: do you want to go? I think everyone was sort
Speaker 1: of careful to not let me be disappointed, but still
Speaker 1: let me kind of have whatever limited window I could
Speaker 1: into my father's life. But I do remember that feeling
Speaker 1: disappointing or at least very confusing, like knowing, well, he
Speaker 1: invited me here, but he didn't seem at all interested
Speaker 1: in talking to me. That's very strange, and that felt
Speaker 1: like a lot to process for an eight year old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huge, and you know he doesn't even say.
Speaker 1: Hello, right exactly. It's a big word to miss.
Speaker 2: Do you think that Alan and your mother that either
Speaker 2: of them or both of them felt, you know, privately
Speaker 2: felt like, oh, that's fucked up, but wouldn't want you
Speaker 2: to experience them feeling that way, or do you think
Speaker 2: that they didn't feel that way.
Speaker 1: I think I thought it was fucked up. I think
Speaker 1: my mother maybe felt a little more in disbelief that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be more interested because I'm so fascinating, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you her, but I think that's what she felt.
Speaker 1: Necessarily mad or not that it was crazy, but just
Speaker 1: just like really, yeah, disbelief is the word, Like, don't
Speaker 1: you get this, this thing that you helped to make
Speaker 1: is sitting here like you should be more engaged and
Speaker 1: I think Alan, he's not like this, But I mean
Speaker 1: he is lifelong used to musicians, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them are narcissists, and a lot of them are only
Speaker 1: doing the thing that progresses their thing, And so to him,
Speaker 1: I think that's just who he was, and he wasn't
Speaker 1: surprised by that, and even knew that before it existed.
Speaker 2: It seems like it contributed to some really healthy bedrock
Speaker 2: of for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I never ever heard a bad word about my father.
Speaker 1: There was never like, oh, he doesn't send money, and
Speaker 1: if your father weren't around, we could have a better house.
Speaker 1: Like There's just nothing like that. All the things that
Speaker 1: I think people think I was feeling or hearing this
Speaker 1: didn't exist. And the rare instances that he did come
Speaker 1: up in conversation, my mother or uncle would say things like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the talented, wonderful, charismatic guy who helped bring you
Speaker 1: into the world.
Speaker 2: When Nabile is nine, he and his mom moved back
Speaker 2: to New York City with her newly minted MBA. She
Speaker 2: gets a job at American Express, and when Nobile is ten,
Speaker 2: his mom takes him to hear Roy play at the Village.
Speaker 1: Gate was really close to where we lived, so we
Speaker 1: just went there early, thinking of course he'll be there early.
Speaker 1: And we were inside the club. There's nobody there. The
Speaker 1: club was empty, maybe they were just practicing or sound checking.
Speaker 1: And ran right into Roy and a woman who I
Speaker 1: think we assume was his wife. He was married soon
Speaker 1: after I was born, and they're still together, but I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure who that was, but it seemed
Speaker 1: like it, and it was this really quick moment just
Speaker 1: said hi, didn't introduce us to the woman. It very
Speaker 1: now I'm remembering then too. At the times I talked
Speaker 1: to him, it felt very much like I'm really busy,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a lot, I gotta go. Always felt like that, like,
Speaker 1: even if he was charming and felt sort of present,
Speaker 1: it always felt like he had one foot out the
Speaker 1: door while you were talking to him, you know. And
Speaker 1: that was probably a few hours before he actually played.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember this part of it, but this
Speaker 1: is what my mother told me that, you know. Later on,
Speaker 1: I was like, let's just go home, and she said, wait,
Speaker 1: don't you want to stay and see him play? And
Speaker 1: I said something like, well, he didn't have time for us,
Speaker 1: so why would I have time for him, which is
Speaker 1: definitely obviously another look into me being another year or
Speaker 1: two older and starting to feel the idea that, you know,
Speaker 1: this guy's never been missing. But the more I'm exposed
Speaker 1: to him, the more I realized that something feels off
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: And then another New York run in, not just with
Speaker 2: Roy this time, but also with his children. Now Bale's
Speaker 2: have siblings.
Speaker 1: So my mother had never driven in her life, was
Speaker 1: taking driving lessons in New York City, which is I
Speaker 1: just can't imagine doing that as like, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: year old or something. And so sometimes we would have
Speaker 1: the instructor wherever we felt like going. I would come along,
Speaker 1: of course, because I went to everything, and the lesson
Speaker 1: would end at some destination since we had a car.
Speaker 1: So we lived in the village of just Way downtown,
Speaker 1: and we had friends, my mother's friend Jenny and her
Speaker 1: daughter around my age, and they lived on the Upper
Speaker 1: West Side, which you know, was not terribly far. It's
Speaker 1: a subway right away, but we got a car for
Speaker 1: a minute, so we had the instructor drop us off there,
Speaker 1: and I think her daughter went to the same school
Speaker 1: as Roy's kids, who are all We're all around the
Speaker 1: same age, as kids are maybe two or four years
Speaker 1: younger than me. And she said, there's this, you know,
Speaker 1: this great fair at the school on a Saturday afternoon's
Speaker 1: let's all go there. And so we went. And it
Speaker 1: was this very sunny day and kind of lots of
Speaker 1: kids and people around and you know, food and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, music, and we were walking down
Speaker 1: this kind of sunny trail and I remember we stopped,
Speaker 1: and of course I didn't know why. I mean, my
Speaker 1: mother ran into someone, and she's so social and so gregarious,
Speaker 1: and so she was just talking. But I realized it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is Roy, who's with a woman and
Speaker 1: two kids. And I think, you know, just a couple
Speaker 1: hours earlier, it had been casually dropped that his kids
Speaker 1: went to the same school. So I think I pretty
Speaker 1: quickly put it all together. And I remember being a
Speaker 1: little taller than those kids and Roy and my mother
Speaker 1: talking briefly, and her sort of I could tell even then,
Speaker 1: I remember her voice did this thing. It's just a
Speaker 1: sort of it's a slightly I want to impress you thing.
Speaker 1: I could just tell the difference in the tone we're
Speaker 1: talking to somebody who she thinks is important or something
Speaker 1: like that. I could just I remember feeling that at
Speaker 1: the same time, I remember these two kids and kind
Speaker 1: of looking at them and them I can't imagine having
Speaker 1: any idea who I might be, but me having some
Speaker 1: idea who they were, just my two half siblings, and
Speaker 1: just thinking, this is very strange to be standing here
Speaker 1: doing this, not really knowing what to think still as
Speaker 1: a nine or ten year old, but just being again
Speaker 1: at this position where this you know, it's so strange
Speaker 1: how easy it still is in New York. You run
Speaker 1: into people, but it's really weird. But it's your father
Speaker 1: who you don't know. And it happens all the time.
Speaker 1: They're seemingly all the time.
Speaker 2: And once again there's no hello, like there's no introduction. Now,
Speaker 2: not that it would have been really likely or feasible
Speaker 2: for him to say, you know, this is not he's
Speaker 2: your half brother, but no, just absolutely no, you know,
Speaker 2: no need to make everybody comfortable.
Speaker 1: No. And I remember my mother complimenting him and him
Speaker 1: sort of doubling down more like, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: the equivalent of her saying, well, you look great, and
Speaker 1: him saying, like, I know I looked great, don't I
Speaker 1: look great and tell me more about how great I look.
Speaker 1: That's what it felt like. That's what it felt like.
Speaker 1: The conversation was not like, oh, so do you what
Speaker 1: if you went up to It wasn't reciprocal in that way.
Speaker 2: So shortly thereafter you and your mom moved to Salt
Speaker 2: Lake City. Yeah, and that was precipitated by a job
Speaker 2: for her and also kind of a desire to get
Speaker 2: out of the city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the big thing. I think she know,
Speaker 1: she got her MBA. She did everything she was supposed to.
Speaker 1: She had not she wasn't rich, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: a much more high paying job in New York. We
Speaker 1: had a great apartment in the village. I went to
Speaker 1: Little at Schoolhouse. This an incredible liberal private school. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we were doing it. Four years ago we'd
Speaker 1: been on welfare and now we're living in New York
Speaker 1: City doing everything. But she really hated American Express. She
Speaker 1: was not built for corporate life and was wearing suits
Speaker 1: every day, and it was very high pressure and people
Speaker 1: worked late, and everyone was trying to get ahead and
Speaker 1: she wasn't. She just wanted to have a job and
Speaker 1: got paid and come home. So they moved a big
Speaker 1: part of the company to Salt Lake City and sort
Speaker 1: of offered anyone who was willing to go. This is
Speaker 1: great incentive. I think it was the same or more
Speaker 1: money in a city that at the time probably cost
Speaker 1: significantly less to live in and the kind of the
Speaker 1: most family city in America. So the promise of like true,
Speaker 1: nine to five people leave work. It's very family based.
Speaker 1: So we went and visited, and I remember that took
Speaker 1: very well, and I really surprised to how much we
Speaker 1: liked it. So we moved there, which was a crazy,
Speaker 1: crazy thing to do for our you know, for who
Speaker 1: we were and what our life was. To pick up
Speaker 1: and move to Salt Lake City in nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: is just a massive change.
Speaker 2: That's something that really struck me, you know, when I
Speaker 2: think about what you were talking about about Amherston and
Speaker 2: the way that you grew up until age seven in
Speaker 2: this world where you didn't have any concerns about being different,
Speaker 2: or about racial identity, or about kids don't really as
Speaker 2: a rule want to be seen as as different or
Speaker 2: even special, you know, just they just don't want that.
Speaker 2: And that was so foundational for you getting all the
Speaker 2: way to age seven, really in this kind of weird utopia.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then you.
Speaker 2: Get to Salt Lake City, which has got to be
Speaker 2: one of the whitest places on that on the planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even more than that, so not only one
Speaker 1: of the whitest places, but I mean truly the most
Speaker 1: family places because of the Mormon Church. So everybody had
Speaker 1: a mother and a father, and lots of people had
Speaker 1: three or four siblings and so that so it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the having the black father thing, but also just
Speaker 1: having one parent, just the two of us. That was
Speaker 1: really I feel like we stood out just by existing
Speaker 1: anywhere in the grocery store, at the bank, you know,
Speaker 1: it was really so different.
Speaker 2: So was that a change for you, like emotionally and
Speaker 2: you know, sort of interest in the realm of feeling,
Speaker 2: you know, going from you'd been in amatest, you'd been
Speaker 2: in New York City.
Speaker 3: Both were places that made a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now you're in this place where you you know,
Speaker 2: you really have to kind of fight to belong.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. Yeah, it definitely was. And I don't know
Speaker 1: where this instinct came from. If it's from my mother,
Speaker 1: if it's somehow genetically from my father, if it's from
Speaker 1: my uncle. But I think I'm because I never thought
Speaker 1: about these things and amhers and even New York, of course,
Speaker 1: was totally very diverse, and there are lots of kids
Speaker 1: so single parents, and suddenly I definitely noticed I was different.
Speaker 1: I mean simply visually, my skin was darker. I had
Speaker 1: a pretty big afro at the time, so it was
Speaker 1: much more I think, noticeably black than I am now,
Speaker 1: where I'm largely balding in my fifties. It was very obvious.
Speaker 1: And then, of course my name Deal, which is Arabic
Speaker 1: and has nothing to do with my race, but the
Speaker 1: assumption is constantly there. So you know, you have this
Speaker 1: ten year old kid from New York with darker skin
Speaker 1: and afro and an exotic name. To my mother's credit,
Speaker 1: we were in the best place you could be in
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City, the best neighborhood, really close to the
Speaker 1: University of Utah. That there's anything wrong with the Mormon
Speaker 1: churchs I had incredible experiences with all my Mormon friends,
Speaker 1: but the least Mormon part of the state that you know,
Speaker 1: where eventually there was an openly gay mayor and the
Speaker 1: sort of you know, the blue dot in the Red
Speaker 1: state is exactly where we were. We were in the
Speaker 1: right place. But kids would just ask me things that
Speaker 1: didn't feel like they were making fun of me. It
Speaker 1: didn't feel malicious, but they were so curious because I
Speaker 1: was so exotic, and this is, you know, again like
Speaker 1: before the internet, before so many things, So where's your father?
Speaker 1: Can I touch your afro? What's your name mean? And
Speaker 1: I just, amazingly was never used to those questions at
Speaker 1: ten years old. No one was really asking me those
Speaker 1: things because it wasn't special, and I loved that. So
Speaker 1: suddenly I realized, Okay, no one's being mean to me,
Speaker 1: but they're really curious. So I was always open about
Speaker 1: my race. I would say my father's black and my
Speaker 1: mother's white. I definitely said that they're divorced, which of
Speaker 1: course wasn't true. They were never married, they were never together,
Speaker 1: and I think even at that age, it felt like
Speaker 1: a betrayal to my mother. I felt terrible saying that,
Speaker 1: because she'd done such an incredible job and carried through
Speaker 1: with everything she'd planned with flying colors. Felt like, this
Speaker 1: feels bad that I have to say this thing that's
Speaker 1: not true, that is so much less impressive than proof.
Speaker 1: But it was the easiest way to stop the conversation,
Speaker 1: and that was the goal at ten years old, not
Speaker 1: to explain, you know, it was my whole life story,
Speaker 1: So divorce shut it down. No one would ask questions
Speaker 1: about that because as a kid in the eighties, people
Speaker 1: were at least sort of used to divorce. They fell
Speaker 1: bad for you, and they moved on. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of it was the first time in my life when
Speaker 1: I sort of found myself, you know, sort of lying
Speaker 1: about who I was to shut down the conversations. What
Speaker 1: was so fun is that Alan would come visit us
Speaker 1: all the time in Salt Lake and I would go
Speaker 1: to New York all the time to visit him. That
Speaker 1: was sort of part of the deal when my mother
Speaker 1: and I moved there and I would go to New York,
Speaker 1: I don't know, sometimes four or five times a year,
Speaker 1: I feel like. And it was so fun because then
Speaker 1: it was like, Wow, there were these move movies that
Speaker 1: haven't even opened in Salt Lake that I can see.
Speaker 1: There are bands that I can see. That was such
Speaker 1: a huge thing, and that's a lot of I think
Speaker 1: how I got along in Salt Lake City, which I
Speaker 1: really did. I really liked it and had friends and
Speaker 1: was happy there. But a lot of it was that
Speaker 1: I was the kid who went to New York all
Speaker 1: the time, who had a record collection, who knew things
Speaker 1: people didn't know, who could talk about dans, who had
Speaker 1: a drum set. Like That's who I became, and that
Speaker 1: was really what I leaned into. And I let that
Speaker 1: make me more unique than my name or my hair
Speaker 1: or anything like that. And I don't think I got
Speaker 1: that then, but it's definitely what I was doing, and
Speaker 1: I'm really glad I had all the tools to do it.
Speaker 1: So as I got older in high school, I wanted
Speaker 1: to get a job so I could make money to
Speaker 1: buy drums and buy records and all the things I loved.
Speaker 1: And so Alan said, come to New York for the summer.
Speaker 1: I'll find your job. My friend is a lawyer. He
Speaker 1: wants a messenger at his law firm, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: So I had this crazy job for two summers, the
Speaker 1: summer between sophomore and junior and junior and senior year,
Speaker 1: where I would stay my uncle's apartment in Chelsea and
Speaker 1: would go to work every day from nine to five
Speaker 1: at this sort of fancy law office in Midtown. It
Speaker 1: was really small, firms to a couple of people in
Speaker 1: the office, and I would sit at the front desk
Speaker 1: until they needed me to do something. And when they
Speaker 1: did a run around the city, I'd get some papers
Speaker 1: and you have to run them downtown to some other offices.
Speaker 1: And I just really got a different look at the
Speaker 1: city than when I lived there, when I even visited,
Speaker 1: because you know, we just lived in cool neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: went to the same place. But this was New York City.
Speaker 1: This is you know, running up and down crazy streets
Speaker 1: and elevators and office buildings. So I really started to
Speaker 1: see this thing. This is the late eighties. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in these these very racially diverse places
Speaker 1: where everyone did everything. Now I live in Salt Lake City,
Speaker 1: which is extremely white. But now these summers, I'm in
Speaker 1: New York, where there's still a mix, but there's obviously
Speaker 1: roles for each of the different races. And I started
Speaker 1: to notice that all the people I was delivering papers
Speaker 1: to and taking papers from were white, and they were
Speaker 1: in a nice air condition offices, and they were wearing suits,
Speaker 1: and they were never friendly to me. They wouldn't even
Speaker 1: look at me. But the people who were friendly were
Speaker 1: the people who held the doors open. They are the
Speaker 1: people who you know, worked on the streets, and those
Speaker 1: are the black and brown people. And I was I
Speaker 1: really every day would just see it as I walk
Speaker 1: down the street in New York. It was just it
Speaker 1: was impossible for me to not see this really obvious
Speaker 1: division that I still see there and I still see
Speaker 1: in tons of cities. But that was the summer I
Speaker 1: really noticed it and realize, I, now, this is this
Speaker 1: is kind of what the world is like. Salt Lake
Speaker 1: is not what the world is like, and unfortunately Amherst
Speaker 1: is not either.
Speaker 2: And you also promised yourself that you weren't going to
Speaker 2: be like that when you became successful.
Speaker 1: It was just like I wasn't visible. I was just
Speaker 1: the person holding the paper that needed to be signed.
Speaker 1: But you know, I would get to some hot shot
Speaker 1: and they would sign the papers, but they wouldn't look
Speaker 1: at me, they wouldn't say hello, they wouldn't do anything.
Speaker 1: And I just thought like, this is so weird. Why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you I'm standing here, can you say hi? Or
Speaker 1: or something like that? And it, yeah, it really did
Speaker 1: sort of create this feeling and be like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: never gonna do that. That's such an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2: There's this echo there of I mean, who else who
Speaker 2: else didn't say hello? And who else was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I gotta go, I gotta go, you know, and didn't
Speaker 2: look you in the eye. So it's interesting, like you were,
Speaker 2: you're kind of continuing to play that out in a
Speaker 2: totally different way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is really easy to see that parallel. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are very They all sort of become big moments
Speaker 1: that have something to do with each other, even though
Speaker 1: you know, one person is my father and other people
Speaker 1: are completely faithless. It's a kind of similar feeling. And
Speaker 1: it's weird because it's not it's not necessarily a feeling
Speaker 1: like I'm super important, don't you see me. It's just
Speaker 1: a feeling of like, don't be an asshole, I'm here.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: As Nobille nears the end of high school, his mom
Speaker 2: suggests to him he might want to change his last name.
Speaker 2: She's recently changed hers from Brausman to Blair.
Speaker 1: She was working at I Think Fidelity Investments. She moved
Speaker 1: around to jobs in Salt Lake, but was working in
Speaker 1: HR and I think was doing a lot of exit
Speaker 1: interviews with people at layoffs. They would lay them off
Speaker 1: and realize like, oh, I don't like everyone who just
Speaker 1: got fired knowing my name potentially coming after me, which
Speaker 1: is you know, some New York street smarts. So she
Speaker 1: just started using a fake name for fun, and Blair
Speaker 1: sounded like a soap opera star.
Speaker 2: So why did she think that you should change your surname.
Speaker 1: I was born to Bill Braufman, so that was, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my name till I was seventeen, and I remember,
Speaker 1: of course it was hard to spell. Always be r
Speaker 1: au f as in frank m a n. Still, you know,
Speaker 1: it took three times to get through that, and I
Speaker 1: think when she changed it to Blair, even fictitiously, she
Speaker 1: realized like, oh, wow, you say it. No one even
Speaker 1: asks how to spell it, let alone. You know what
Speaker 1: makes you repeat it? It was she realized how hard her
Speaker 1: real name was when she started using a fake name.
Speaker 1: And so that was right around the time I got
Speaker 1: accepted to college outside of Seattle. I was planning to
Speaker 1: move and a place where I really didn't know anybody.
Speaker 1: I was kind of in a way starting a new life,
Speaker 1: and she just said, you know, you should think about this.
Speaker 1: It's been really great for me. Your life could be
Speaker 1: much easier. You're going someplace where you don't know anyone,
Speaker 1: it's a totally clean slate. What do you think? And
Speaker 1: I was open to the idea, and I remember thinking
Speaker 1: about making up names and thinking like, huh, well, Airs,
Speaker 1: I like it sounds really good. I remember very specifically,
Speaker 1: thinking sort of mathematically, which is the way my brain is.
Speaker 1: My first name is Nippil, it's five letters. My middle
Speaker 1: name mall that's five letters, and Airs is five letters.
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, that's kind of cool, five five
Speaker 1: and five. And of course it's the only name that
Speaker 1: there actually is a connection. But it wasn't to actually
Speaker 1: connect myself to my father. I mean, in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight or eighty nine in Salt Lake City, he was invisible.
Speaker 1: He did not play there. There wasn't a huge jazz
Speaker 1: scene in Salt Lake. I'm sure a few people knew
Speaker 1: who he was, but nobody ever asked me about it.
Speaker 1: You know, he was not part of my life in
Speaker 1: Salt Lake. He was almost forty then, so as someone
Speaker 1: who was into music and was a teenager, in my mind,
Speaker 1: I would have thought like, wow, well, forty, his career
Speaker 1: is obviously over. It beaked in the seventies. I had
Speaker 1: no idea how much bigger he'd become, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: at all, Oh, well, people will know that I'm his son,
Speaker 1: That's why I want to do this. In fact, I
Speaker 1: assumed that had nothing to do with it. No one
Speaker 1: would ever know who he was. He was done. It
Speaker 1: was really just that it sounded good and I liked it,
Speaker 1: and I trusted my mother. The way I remember it
Speaker 1: was so simple and felt so transactional as opposed to emotional.
Speaker 1: It really felt like, this is easy, this makes sense,
Speaker 1: and there's no risk, so sure, let's do it, I
Speaker 1: think at that time and the last time I actually
Speaker 1: encountered him in person very soon after we moved to
Speaker 1: Salt Lake when I was still ten, and now I'm seventeen.
Speaker 1: I definitely have not run into him in New York
Speaker 1: this whole time. Don't hear his music in Salt Lake
Speaker 1: City like he really Seven years is a long time
Speaker 1: for a seventeen year old from ten to seventeen, so
Speaker 1: in my mind, he was pretty non existent.
Speaker 2: When Nabil is away at college, his mom falls in
Speaker 2: love with a man named Jim She hadn't been dating
Speaker 2: or prioritizing her personal life over the years, but now
Speaker 2: that Nobil has grown, it's her turn. At their wedding,
Speaker 2: an unexpected feeling overcomes Nobil. I wish Roy could see this.
Speaker 2: He thinks. He doesn't really wish that Roy were there
Speaker 2: per se, but he does wish Roy could see how
Speaker 2: happy his mother is, how happy they both are, how
Speaker 2: well they're doing. Of course, Nobil is reminded that this
Speaker 2: is just what his mother had always done too, wanting
Speaker 2: to prove to Roy somehow that life had marched tolly
Speaker 2: on without him. After the wedding, life continues to march on.
Speaker 2: Nabielle finishes school, he plays and tours with successful bands.
Speaker 2: He opens his own record store in Seattle, Sonic Boom Records,
Speaker 2: which becomes a big deal. Things are really taking off now.
Speaker 2: Bille registers that he has a very strong drive to
Speaker 2: succeed creatively, to make things happen, and he finds himself
Speaker 2: wondering where does it come from. His mother and Alan
Speaker 2: had been ambitious in their own ways, but this propulsive
Speaker 2: energy is something different.
Speaker 1: As I get into my thirties, I guess even the
Speaker 1: late twenties to think I start to realize, like, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm at a point in my career, in my life
Speaker 1: too where a lot of people are asking or commenting
Speaker 1: saying the sort of how do you do all these
Speaker 1: different things? And to me, it never felt like I
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of different things. It always feels
Speaker 1: like these are all the same thing. There's just these
Speaker 1: different facets of it, are different versions. But for a
Speaker 1: long time I coloonna record store my friend and business partner, Jason,
Speaker 1: and that was great and I loved it, and that
Speaker 1: was I guess what I would call my real job
Speaker 1: at the time. But also played in bands and always
Speaker 1: toured and loved doing that and that was the really
Speaker 1: fun part of things, being able to leave town for
Speaker 1: a month and drive around the country and play drums
Speaker 1: and come back and still have a job. And I
Speaker 1: was also I started my own record label, so I
Speaker 1: was putting out records by other bands that I liked,
Speaker 1: and it was all to me, it's all this music.
Speaker 1: These are just three different things, three different departments. This
Speaker 1: is one thing. But I definitely just started to feel
Speaker 1: and maybe even recognized that I didn't know a lot
Speaker 1: of other people who had it, because to me, it
Speaker 1: didn't feel unique or special or different, but just this
Speaker 1: absolute internal drive and push and momentum that whatever I did,
Speaker 1: I just really wanted to be all in. Even if
Speaker 1: it was several different things, they were all really important.
Speaker 1: That's why I was doing them. I wasn't doing them
Speaker 1: to havelf do them. And I think around that time
Speaker 1: and my father had not only never stopped too but
Speaker 1: sort of picked up more. In the nineties, hip hop
Speaker 1: obviously became a big thing, and so many of his
Speaker 1: songs were sampled so many times, so he started to
Speaker 1: have a resurgence. He was also still putting out new
Speaker 1: music and touring, and I noticed that I paid attention
Speaker 1: to it. That was in the business. And of course
Speaker 1: now that I had his name, people would often ask
Speaker 1: me if there was any relation, or you look like him?
Speaker 1: All these things started to come up, the stuff that
Speaker 1: I never thought would happen when I chose that name.
Speaker 1: So to me, it was logical. I'm watching this guy who's,
Speaker 1: you know, in his fifties and sixties, which again, when
Speaker 1: I'm twenty eight, still seems pretty old, watching him continue
Speaker 1: to tour the world, and I'm I'm feeling this really
Speaker 1: intense push and pull and not seeing it and the
Speaker 1: people I'm closest to and sort of, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that it had to be from him.
Speaker 1: There has to be some connection.
Speaker 2: There's also this great irony that happens a little bit later,
Speaker 2: which is that as you become more and more successful
Speaker 2: and you do have the Air's last name, and people
Speaker 2: you know know or assume that he's your father, of
Speaker 2: people thinking that there was nepotism involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's the funny thing that there are points when
Speaker 1: I've never been as upfront and truthful about the story
Speaker 1: with my mother and my father, simply to defend anyone
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh, oh, your job in the music business,
Speaker 1: right your father's Oh no, no, it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: When Nobil is in his mid thirties, he starts to
Speaker 2: see a therapist to help him unpack the myriad layers
Speaker 2: of life.
Speaker 1: My mother was in therapy for a long time when
Speaker 1: I was growing up, the whole time we were in
Speaker 1: Salt Lake and I was and this is in the eighties,
Speaker 1: this is before everyone was in therapy. And she was
Speaker 1: very open about it, and I think it helped her.
Speaker 1: And so I was always kind of fascinated by it
Speaker 1: and sort of wanted to do it. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's because I'm not the most sort of
Speaker 1: vocal emotional person. I mean, a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we're talking about is not telling people in my
Speaker 1: life story for life of reasons, kind of protecting myself
Speaker 1: and having this mother who is so so open, sometimes
Speaker 1: too open for me. Sometimes it tries to me crazy,
Speaker 1: and so in some ways I think I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be the opposite of her, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: do with their parents. But when I was thirty four,
Speaker 1: I went through a big breakup, and I'd been a
Speaker 1: littleman for a long time. This breakup just's felt like, huh,
Speaker 1: maybe I should try therapy. That's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you do when you go through a breakup.
Speaker 2: Well, and as is the case with any therapist, your
Speaker 2: father's story would be total catnip for a therapist who
Speaker 2: would want to dig into what that felt like for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, exactly. Session one minute, one second one was
Speaker 1: let's talk about your father. As soon as I started
Speaker 1: doing it, and I assume that that's so we del
Speaker 1: at the same time. It was, you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: like no, I don't want to talk about that. I
Speaker 1: think I was interested in again this very positive idea
Speaker 1: of therapy. It didn't mean anything was wrong with me.
Speaker 1: It was a place to safely talk about the things
Speaker 1: I've never felt safe talking about, and that's top of lists.
Speaker 1: So my therapist getting into that felt like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. I can finally talk about this. It's safe.
Speaker 1: There won't be judgment, I think, and it definitely it
Speaker 1: didn't change my mind about things, but it was interesting
Speaker 1: to just at least be talking about it on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, and I think it led me to wanting
Speaker 1: to meet him.
Speaker 2: So then you hear that Roy's playing in Seattle at
Speaker 2: the Triple Door. It also occurs to you that you know,
Speaker 2: you're you're in your mid thirties, he's nearing seventy, okay,
Speaker 2: and there's a little bit of a feeling I think of,
Speaker 2: you know, if not now when?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was it. I mean, he would play in
Speaker 1: Seattle pretty much every year, as I recall, I would
Speaker 1: see it listed in the in the paper. Sometimes people
Speaker 1: would say something, you know, oh, I see your dad's
Speaker 1: playing again. I own a record store. All I'd do
Speaker 1: all day long is talk to people customers, regulars who
Speaker 1: come in. So it's not like I was hanging out
Speaker 1: in the law firm hearing these things. Like I was
Speaker 1: in the place where people are going to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and every time it didn't. I don't remember it really
Speaker 1: even if acting me, I just remember thinking, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's coming to town again. He does it every year.
Speaker 1: I never really seriously thought about going to see him.
Speaker 1: I think I would sometimes deliberately be out of town,
Speaker 1: which is obviously something to sort of protect myself or
Speaker 1: to at least maybe even to just say to people like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be out of town. I think I
Speaker 1: would actually book a trip just to make it easier.
Speaker 1: So obviously the therapy dug up all of this, and
Speaker 1: pretty soon in I saw the listing or someone told
Speaker 1: me that he's coming, and for some reason, when she
Speaker 1: said that it was someone in the store, it just
Speaker 1: hit me differently. All these new thoughts came up, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't like, oh I better book a trip out
Speaker 1: of town or I don't care. It was huh, I
Speaker 1: need to figure out how to see him. It totally flipped.
Speaker 1: It was one eighty. Definitely part of it was the
Speaker 1: age thing that he was nearing seventy. It's sure he
Speaker 1: comes back every year, but one of these years he
Speaker 1: might not. And it wasn't even necessarily he's going to die,
Speaker 1: but it was seventy, like, certainly he might not tour
Speaker 1: again next year. That's getting pretty old. So I decide
Speaker 1: it's time. And it's very easy to sort of justify
Speaker 1: my need or my want by the very pragmatic logical stuff.
Speaker 1: My thinking was, you know, every time I go to
Speaker 1: a doctor and he asks about my family history, I
Speaker 1: can't tell him anything about my father's side. And now
Speaker 1: I'm thirty five, and these are things I'm going to
Speaker 1: want to know someday. So for those reasons alone, it
Speaker 1: would be great to talk to him and try to
Speaker 1: get some medical history and family history. So that was
Speaker 1: at least the easy thing to tell myself, and probably
Speaker 1: not tell other people, because I definitely I'm not that
Speaker 1: kind of person. I doubt I told anyone I was trying,
Speaker 1: because that would make me feel bad if I didn't
Speaker 1: see him, to have to tell people that. But I
Speaker 1: decided to try to reach him, and I told my mother.
Speaker 1: We still talked all the time, and we still do now,
Speaker 1: and I'd never heard her. She turned into a totally
Speaker 1: different person. She was so worried and so protective and
Speaker 1: warned me of so many different things, and like she's
Speaker 1: been hiding all this stuff for thirty five years waiting
Speaker 1: for this moment, which was just like, Oh, why are
Speaker 1: you going to do that? I put yourself out there
Speaker 1: like that, even if you get a hold of him,
Speaker 1: he's not going to show up. He's so flaky, You're
Speaker 1: really setting yourself up. It was I could really hear
Speaker 1: in her voice how scared she was for what I
Speaker 1: was going to encounter. And she definitely always talked about
Speaker 1: him as like he's a musician, he's kind of flaky.
Speaker 1: He was always hard to pin down. But it really
Speaker 1: came out in a much much stronger way on this
Speaker 1: phone call when I decided I wanted to.
Speaker 3: Meet him, because she was protective of you.
Speaker 1: So protective. It was so obvious, and it also then
Speaker 1: really just colored in for me a bit more about
Speaker 1: her relationship with him, and maybe I remember thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I think maybe she was a little bit more into
Speaker 1: him than she kind of led on. But regardless, I
Speaker 1: just said I think I actually told her not so
Speaker 1: much because I wanted her to know but because I
Speaker 1: wanted to know if she knew how to get a
Speaker 1: hold of him, and she was the logical first step,
Speaker 1: and she said no, I found his booking agent online
Speaker 1: and email and sent this sort of very safe email,
Speaker 1: knowing that if he saw it, he would know who
Speaker 1: I was. I said, you know, my name's Nabia. My
Speaker 1: mother was Louise. She used to know Roy back in
Speaker 1: the early seventies, and they were kind of dropped all
Speaker 1: these clues, but that's it, and just said, I see
Speaker 1: he's coming to town soon. I'd love to get together.
Speaker 1: Can you give him my number or whatever. I didn't
Speaker 1: hear back, but I mean the feeling of sending that
Speaker 1: email was just like, I can't I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: my heart was racing. I can't believe I just sent
Speaker 1: it and now, and I was so nervous right after
Speaker 1: I sent it, of all the things that might happen,
Speaker 1: and the biggest of which what my mother won me,
Speaker 1: of setting something up but him not following through and
Speaker 1: me standing there, you know, waiting for him, or something
Speaker 1: like that. I really really felt terrible, and I was
Speaker 1: angry at myself for trying. Why did you put yourself
Speaker 1: out there so much. What do you open to get?
Speaker 1: All this stuff was going through my head to the
Speaker 1: point where when I hadn't heard back, maybe even the
Speaker 1: next day, the first thing I did was email my
Speaker 1: friend who was the promoter at the show at the
Speaker 1: Triple Door, and I just said, you know, spilled this
Speaker 1: out an email. I was like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this. Roy is my father. The show is happening.
Speaker 1: I tried his booking agent, but if that doesn't work now,
Speaker 1: I'm at a point where I can't reel it back
Speaker 1: and I need to just show up. Will you let
Speaker 1: me backstage in three months or It was so unnecessarily early,
Speaker 1: but I was just so so I had so much
Speaker 1: anxiety about it. And he said sure, he can come
Speaker 1: backstage at the show. And there was this thing in
Speaker 1: my head that was, unless I hear back from him,
Speaker 1: I'm going to show up that night and walk right
Speaker 1: in and say hi, and that's going to be really,
Speaker 1: really difficult, and I really don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: So I had a little bit of time, and maybe
Speaker 1: a week later, I just emailed the booking agent again
Speaker 1: and said, Okay, that last email was kind of soft.
Speaker 1: Roy is my father. I haven't seen him in however long,
Speaker 1: I am going to this show no matter what, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to him. It would be a
Speaker 1: lot easier if you could help facilitate that, like kind
Speaker 1: of threatening email something that is really not my style,
Speaker 1: but it was so it was just weighing on me
Speaker 1: so heavily, and I was so scared for you know,
Speaker 1: I'd rather send a threatening email than show up and
Speaker 1: risk who knows what. And the agent replied right away
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, yeah, I'm forwarding this to Roy, like
Speaker 1: my female and I was like, oh god, okay, And
Speaker 1: so at least that to me sort of put it
Speaker 1: out of my head. And I was going to the
Speaker 1: therapist too. But to me, however far away, the show
Speaker 1: was still weeks away. There's nothing to do now, this
Speaker 1: guy's forwarding it to Roy, my friend's getting me backstage.
Speaker 1: There's nothing for me to do until that day, either
Speaker 1: I hear from him or I don't. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's no reason to make myself sick every day. And
Speaker 1: out of the blue, one day, I wake up to
Speaker 1: a voicemail from a New York number and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wonder what that is. And I listened to it
Speaker 1: and it's him. It's Roy, my father. The first time,
Speaker 1: of course he's ever called me, and maybe even the
Speaker 1: first time I've heard him say my name, which I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting, and he has this very like, calm,
Speaker 1: nice voice, and he just I can't believe I didn't
Speaker 1: save this voicemail, just thinking myself, but but he just says, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's Roy. I hear you're in Seattle. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: there soon, you know, Okay, call me back, like really,
Speaker 1: like as if we were buddies, or as if we'd
Speaker 1: out last year, like very sort of but in a nice,
Speaker 1: not hurried, like very welcoming voicemail. And I listened to
Speaker 1: it several times. I was so happy, and I can't
Speaker 1: tell if the happiness was wow, my father called me
Speaker 1: and said my name and was nice, or if the
Speaker 1: happiness was, man, I'm so glad I don't have to
Speaker 1: go crash his backstage, which and I'm sure it was
Speaker 1: a combination, but it was just sort of relief and
Speaker 1: a bit of acceptance and all this stuff at the
Speaker 1: same time. It was really a really intense morning. I
Speaker 1: remember really clearing my head for some reason, thinking like,
Speaker 1: when I call him, it needs to be perfect I
Speaker 1: can't just like call him right back right now. I
Speaker 1: need to go to work, look at the numbers from
Speaker 1: last night, drink my coffee, do my little morning routine,
Speaker 1: and then call him when my brain's kind of clear.
Speaker 1: And I do and he picks up, and it's just
Speaker 1: as wonderful as the voicemail is super friendly, and it
Speaker 1: turns into you know, great, I'll pick you up at
Speaker 1: your hotel the day of the show. We'll go to
Speaker 1: lunch and I'll see you then. And it's in a
Speaker 1: week or something. And I call my mother all excited,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a nicer version of you know,
Speaker 1: everything you're worried about is not going to happen. He's
Speaker 1: so great, and she's just like, he's not gonna come.
Speaker 1: And this is, you know, this is not who my
Speaker 1: mother is. This is not me with like god, Mom,
Speaker 1: you always do that. It's the opposite of that. So
Speaker 1: it still really shakes me, just that, just about this
Speaker 1: specific thing and a specific person, how little she believes
Speaker 1: in him and how worried she is about me. But
Speaker 1: he does. And I remember weirdly pulling up to the
Speaker 1: hotel and thinking I should be so nervous right now,
Speaker 1: but I'm not even a little bit nervous, and maybe
Speaker 1: it was because of the ease of those phone calls,
Speaker 1: but I just parked the car, walked in and saw
Speaker 1: this guy who was obviously him, and we both kind
Speaker 1: of smiled and pointed each other out, and just like
Speaker 1: immediately it was easy. It just it really did feel natural,
Speaker 1: as if we'd talked before, or as if we'd hung
Speaker 1: out before, and this was a continuation of something something recent.
Speaker 1: There was no like, God, I can't believe him looking
Speaker 1: at you. It just wasn't that at all, very unique, weird,
Speaker 1: special experience. He said he wanted sushi, So there's lots
Speaker 1: of great sushi in Seattle, but we were supposed to
Speaker 1: go to my favorite place. We pulled up and it
Speaker 1: was closed on whatever day of the week that was,
Speaker 1: and I remember feeling so like I was trying to
Speaker 1: impress him, you know, with great sushi in Seattle. Now
Speaker 1: I have to go to this other place that's still
Speaker 1: really good, but not as good. So definitely these funny
Speaker 1: things of like do I care that he's my father
Speaker 1: or do I not? I'm not sure, But to me
Speaker 1: that was a moment of me caring that I was
Speaker 1: trying to impress my father, and we so we have sushi,
Speaker 1: and I just kind of launch in till I mean,
Speaker 1: I brought a notebook and I said, you know, do
Speaker 1: you mind if I take some notes. I have a
Speaker 1: lot of questions. He was like, yeah, that's fine. He
Speaker 1: was very calm, very present, didn't feel like he wanted
Speaker 1: to leave or had to leave. And I asked about family,
Speaker 1: and I asked about medical history, and he told me everything,
Speaker 1: told me about his three sisters and as much as
Speaker 1: he could about his parents, and I was furiously writing.
Speaker 1: And also when I would look at him, it was
Speaker 1: just so intense to sit across the table from this
Speaker 1: person who looked so much like me. He was thirty
Speaker 1: years older, but he would like even just like scratch
Speaker 1: his eye or laugh or make some kind of gesture,
Speaker 1: and it was seriously like looking into a mirror. And
Speaker 1: I just couldn't believe for how little time we'd spent together,
Speaker 1: which was seriously, what maybe five minutes of my life
Speaker 1: in five different spurts up to that point, to look
Speaker 1: at him and see how insanely much not looked, but
Speaker 1: how much he felt like me, and how wild it
Speaker 1: was to see that, and feel that it was really
Speaker 1: intense and incredible and really cool. And I think he
Speaker 1: noticed it too, and he pointed at me and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh you got He pointed to his head and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh you got You lost your hair before I did,
Speaker 1: said things like that. But also what was happening He
Speaker 1: pointed to his cheek bones, He's like, oh, you got
Speaker 1: these two Native American blood. So what was happening for
Speaker 1: me was not just the connection thing, but he was
Speaker 1: absolutely confirming that I was his son, which I didn't doubt,
Speaker 1: but I wondered if he doubted. And the fact that
Speaker 1: he was saying, oh, you got this from me, you
Speaker 1: got this from me, and surely saw the same manners
Speaker 1: and things that I saw, I think made it undeniable.
Speaker 1: And he was just very obviously you know, knew it.
Speaker 1: And so those things were great. I mean I really
Speaker 1: was trying to drag out the lunch. It was only lunch,
Speaker 1: but they were like, do you want dessert or coffee?
Speaker 1: And I would you know, at a meal like that,
Speaker 1: you look at the other person and say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: what do you think? I was just like, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you know. I keep bringing us things because I need
Speaker 1: to take this longer. Can you take a while, because
Speaker 1: I just wanted more information, and at the time, even
Speaker 1: though I wanted it to happen more, I think I
Speaker 1: knew this is it. This is never happening again. I
Speaker 1: really felt like that, like I have to get everything
Speaker 1: I can right now, because no matter how natural and
Speaker 1: great and this feels, and how much it feels like,
Speaker 1: I'll be able to do this from now on, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's true. I think I knew that, and
Speaker 1: so I was just trying to get it all in.
Speaker 1: And there's a moment towards the end where he looked
Speaker 1: at me and he said, you know, I'm proud of you.
Speaker 1: And it really hit me in the wrong way. It
Speaker 1: didn't hit me, especially after everything I was feeling and
Speaker 1: feeling connected and seeing are similar mannerisms and everything. It
Speaker 1: just went through my brain too quickly. It went right
Speaker 1: to the other side. It didn't go to my heart.
Speaker 1: It went to my brain. And I didn't say this,
Speaker 1: of course, but what I thought was, Oh, you should
Speaker 1: really just say you're proud of yourself, because you're just
Speaker 1: looking at me thinking you did a good job and
Speaker 1: you got away with a lot. That's what it felt like,
Speaker 1: but I didn't say that. Of course.
Speaker 2: Well, it's so interesting because you know, for your whole life,
Speaker 2: when it came to your father, both for you and
Speaker 2: your mother, there always was this feeling of, you know,
Speaker 2: wanting him to see, look how well we did. But
Speaker 2: it didn't have the quality of so that you'll be proud,
Speaker 2: like it's actually not about you, right, So it was
Speaker 2: more like you and your mom. It was about your
Speaker 2: mom saying or showing that she had done this amazing thing.
Speaker 2: She had had this vision for the way she wanted
Speaker 2: to live her life and what she wanted to do
Speaker 2: that was very much out of step with the times
Speaker 2: that she was living in, and she did it. So
Speaker 2: for him to turn to you and say I'm proud
Speaker 2: of you almost has like a whiff of ownership exactly.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it felt like. And my initial knee
Speaker 1: jerk was you don't get to take any of this.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: This lunch strikes another sour note when Nabil's have siblings
Speaker 2: and to May and Ayana come up in conversation.
Speaker 1: That's the first moment where I feel sort of non openness.
Speaker 1: I suppose everything else I've asked you know, tell me
Speaker 1: about your mother, tell me about how you got into music.
Speaker 1: It was really just like an interview, and he just
Speaker 1: mat went into it, told me everything, and I asked
Speaker 1: about family. Another kid, you know, one is in North
Speaker 1: Carolina in two May, and so I wasn't as focused
Speaker 1: on him because I've lived in Seattle and I was
Speaker 1: in New York a lot. And Iana is in New York.
Speaker 1: And I said, wow, I'd love to meet her. I'm
Speaker 1: in New York all the time. And he sort of
Speaker 1: physically I could see it, like, you know, that's that
Speaker 1: was the first thing I said that just gave him
Speaker 1: some reservation, and he kind of he said something I
Speaker 1: don't remember exactly what, but it's something like, oh, that
Speaker 1: might take some time, or something that was, you know,
Speaker 1: a bit political and not no and maybe even reasonable too.
Speaker 1: But it was just the first thing that I'd sort
Speaker 1: of felt like, oh, Okay, I'm definitely not just getting everything
Speaker 1: I want from sitting here for an hour an hour
Speaker 1: and a half. And I really loved the idea of
Speaker 1: my half siblings, so that was disappointing.
Speaker 2: Later that evening, Roy plays his show No Bill attends
Speaker 2: but doesn't go backstage after all. He goes right home
Speaker 2: after the performance, feeling content he'd asked enough of the
Speaker 2: day and of his father. Things had mostly gone so
Speaker 2: well at lunch, Why risk heaven another interaction that might
Speaker 2: not go as smoothly, But quickly after this connective day
Speaker 2: with Roy, a tidal wave of longing comes crashing into nubil.
Speaker 2: That long, friendly lunch had unleashed something in him that
Speaker 2: was either really buried or not previously there at all,
Speaker 2: a longing for a relationship with his father.
Speaker 1: I was in New York easily five or six times
Speaker 1: probably that year, and so there was absolutely just like, wow,
Speaker 1: I need to not only do I want to meet
Speaker 1: my sister, but I would like to sit with him again.
Speaker 1: I want to learn more. And there weren't specific unanswered questions.
Speaker 1: I think I got everything specific in that one interview.
Speaker 1: It would have been very easy to say I did it.
Speaker 1: I don't need anything more. I have all the information
Speaker 1: I'm going to get. I met him, we connected, It
Speaker 1: was positive the end, and I know maybe I should
Speaker 1: have done that because what happened was, and I think
Speaker 1: I said to him at that lunch like I'm in
Speaker 1: New York all the time. It would be great to
Speaker 1: like get coffee, and really, what I was saying was like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm thirty five, you met me. I'm not crazy, I'm
Speaker 1: making you look good. I'm not asking for money. I'm
Speaker 1: not asking for anything. You got office Scott free let me,
Speaker 1: you know, hang out with me once in a while
Speaker 1: and give me some more information. That's I think what
Speaker 1: I was saying pretty plainly, and he said yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: And so to me, I was like, Wow, this will
Speaker 1: be cool. I'll get coffee with him again in New
Speaker 1: York and maybe I'll learn some more and maybe I'll
Speaker 1: eventually meet my half siblings, and connecting with him might
Speaker 1: be part of that, because really my target was the siblings.
Speaker 1: And so every time I went to New York, I
Speaker 1: would email him first, I would call him. I was
Speaker 1: really always trying to set it up, like are you
Speaker 1: in town, And that's when it kind of turned into
Speaker 1: he never emailed me that so I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if he's not good on email, that's fine. I would
Speaker 1: call or text and sometimes he would pick up and
Speaker 1: I would have to explain who I was. And that
Speaker 1: was maybe the worst feeling of all the bad feelings.
Speaker 1: It was felt more like being a kid at elected
Speaker 1: Lady or someplace where you know, it's hey, it's no Bill,
Speaker 1: and he'd say who is this? And I should just
Speaker 1: feel like the logical thing would be to say the
Speaker 1: Bill your son, but I was never gonna say that
Speaker 1: because that's not what I felt like, and so I
Speaker 1: would say the bille in Seattle or like in the
Speaker 1: Bille Louise's, like, you know, anything but your son. That'd
Speaker 1: have to do this weird, weird dance to try to explain,
Speaker 1: and then he'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, how's
Speaker 1: it going, you know, And it always really quick, always
Speaker 1: felt like he was doing seven other things at once,
Speaker 1: and it didn't even feel personal. It just felt like,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm like on the phone. I'm busy,
Speaker 1: and so I was always so nervous. I'd have to Rushian's,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna be in New York next week,
Speaker 1: I'm playing or I can come meet somewhere and he'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, oh, I'm gonna be in Russia and
Speaker 1: be like what, And then we'd hang up and I
Speaker 1: would go to Royers dot com and I would see
Speaker 1: who was playing Saint Petersburg next week, And so it
Speaker 1: was almost this thing where I felt like he was
Speaker 1: being dishonest because these crazy stories, except he was actually
Speaker 1: being honest. So sometimes it was true, but other time
Speaker 1: it was just like, Okay, call me when you get
Speaker 1: to town or something like that. But it was always
Speaker 1: a kind of brush off and it never culminated in anything.
Speaker 1: And every time on those trips I was thinking about
Speaker 1: him definitely sort of reverted it to a needy kid
Speaker 1: in some ways for the first time in my thirties.
Speaker 1: And eventually, almost exactly a year after that first Seattle night,
Speaker 1: I see that he's playing in Seattle again, and it's
Speaker 1: at a different club. It's one block from my apartment.
Speaker 1: So in my head, I'm like, Okay, let's reset everything.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's just not good when he's home. He travels
Speaker 1: a lot. It's been too much to try to do
Speaker 1: all these New York things. I'm just going to try
Speaker 1: to recreate last year because that works so well. So
Speaker 1: so I called him and said, you know, I live
Speaker 1: a block from the venue you're playing in Seattle. It
Speaker 1: would be great to see you that night. Maybe the
Speaker 1: whole band come up, come up, and I'll make dinner
Speaker 1: for everybody. And I was just thinking about how to
Speaker 1: make it easy and how to make something work. And
Speaker 1: he was very short, just kind of like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: kind of a crazy night, you know, to just come
Speaker 1: to the show. Just come to the show. I remember
Speaker 1: that's how the call ended exactly. He said that twice
Speaker 1: and I don't know if he hung up on me,
Speaker 1: but that's how it ended. And so, still being a
Speaker 1: person in the band, I was giving him credit. I
Speaker 1: thought like, Okay, you know, some people don't like to
Speaker 1: eat before concerts, some people don't like to make plans
Speaker 1: before concerts. All this. Come to the show as he suggested,
Speaker 1: and I did, but I didn't feel good at it.
Speaker 1: And I remember it sort of manifesting itself musically at
Speaker 1: the first pil concert. I loved the music. I was
Speaker 1: so amazed. I had so much fun watching the audience
Speaker 1: love it. I felt connected to it. And I think
Speaker 1: it's partially because I felt connected to him that day.
Speaker 1: And a year later, I was watching it and I
Speaker 1: just wanted it to end, and I remember thinking, man,
Speaker 1: is this the same band they felt sound as good?
Speaker 1: They're playing this song too fast, They're playing this song
Speaker 1: too slow. This crowd looks weird. Who are these people
Speaker 1: like that everything felt negative about the concert, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's because of my mindset and when it ended.
Speaker 1: This is more of a kind of small club. The
Speaker 1: other place was a theater. The band walked off the stage,
Speaker 1: and I had this terrible feeling like this is the
Speaker 1: only chance I'm going to get to talk to him.
Speaker 1: He might be walking into a backstae, but he also
Speaker 1: might be walking straight out to a car and that's it.
Speaker 1: So I thought that would be the only chance I
Speaker 1: had to talk to him. I didn't want to wait
Speaker 1: and see if he left and find out he did.
Speaker 1: So I touched his shoulder and he looked at me
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, wrong, it's no bill, and he said, hey,
Speaker 1: how you doing. I gotta go, and he pointed, you know, anywhere,
Speaker 1: and then just kind of walked off. And I remember
Speaker 1: the feeling. It felt like a movie. The way my
Speaker 1: hand felt and his shoulder left it. It was really
Speaker 1: just like that's it. That was like, that was the
Speaker 1: moment I get And I looked around with my two friends.
Speaker 1: So I'd brought my bandmate and his girlfriend. They knew
Speaker 1: the whole story, and they just had these really devastated
Speaker 1: faces on, which made me feel even worse, and that
Speaker 1: was it. That's the last time I saw him.
Speaker 2: Over the next several years now, Biale's life continues to
Speaker 2: evolve in wonderful ways. He moves back to New York,
Speaker 2: finds a place in Fort Greene, a neighborhood he loves.
Speaker 2: In two thousand nine, he takes a job as general
Speaker 2: manager of a UK record label called four AD, and
Speaker 2: eventually the label becomes part of a larger company with
Speaker 2: multiple record labels, and Nabil becomes us president of Beakers Group.
Speaker 2: All the success is the backdrop to a random voicemail
Speaker 2: one day, when Nabil is least expecting it, a message
Speaker 2: from Roy just calling to say, hey, thinking about you.
Speaker 1: It didn't make me feel good, and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: was how he thought it would make me feel, but
Speaker 1: it really immediately made me feel like maybe he just
Speaker 1: had some guilt and hadn't called me back. And there's
Speaker 1: no part of me wanted to call him and risk
Speaker 1: getting him at the wrong time, which was always be
Speaker 1: most of the time now and trying to make things worse.
Speaker 1: I think I decided to just leave that one as
Speaker 1: it was and not make any action. And there was
Speaker 1: no invitation. It didn't say call me or let's do something.
Speaker 1: It was just thinking about you.
Speaker 2: Though there's no part of Nabil that wants to call
Speaker 2: his and risk getting him at the wrong time. There's
Speaker 2: still the matter of his two half siblings, M two
Speaker 2: May and Ayana. Now Bil reaches out a number of
Speaker 2: times to Ayana, but she doesn't respond. He does meet
Speaker 2: M two May and finds himself thinking more deeply about
Speaker 2: what makes a family a family. Is it shared history,
Speaker 2: is it jeanes, Why does it matter or what really matters?
Speaker 2: And why he wants to know more so he sends
Speaker 2: away for a DNA test.
Speaker 1: The twenty three and me thing was so fascinating. I
Speaker 1: think it came from obviously it sort of failed attempts
Speaker 1: to connect further with my father, failed attempts to connect
Speaker 1: with my sister who just never got back to me.
Speaker 1: And then I did meet with him to May. He
Speaker 1: was actually quite open and we had lunch, and I
Speaker 1: think it was actually just the idea that we got
Speaker 1: along fine and he was very nice. I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like a connection, and that really surprised me, and so
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like, so that's it, that's everyone
Speaker 1: I'm ever going to meet, and everything I'm ever going
Speaker 1: to know about that side of my family. That seems impossible.
Speaker 1: And I know so much about my mother's side, she's
Speaker 1: so good at keeping track. I have pictures, family trees,
Speaker 1: and my father's side. That's it. So let's try twenty
Speaker 1: three in me this thing that everyone's doing, just to
Speaker 1: see what happens. It wasn't an actual goal. It wasn't
Speaker 1: let me find out about this person. It was really
Speaker 1: just like, let's see what it yields. And I did
Speaker 1: it and got the sort of grid back and the
Speaker 1: graph and everything telling me that I was fifty one
Speaker 1: percent Ashkenazi Jewish, which was pretty fascinating and which means
Speaker 1: my mother is like one hundred two percent. Yes, And
Speaker 1: you know, nothing surprising at all, nothing that interesting. It
Speaker 1: was like, ah, this is fun. And then got a message.
Speaker 1: Of course, I turned on the messaging thing because I'm
Speaker 1: trying to find people. Got a message from a guy saying,
Speaker 1: you know, we're distant cousins. It wasn't like a huge deal,
Speaker 1: but he said, I have an heirs family tree you
Speaker 1: might want to see. Do you want it? He emailed
Speaker 1: me this document and it was incredible. Guy Samuel Ayres
Speaker 1: wrote it in nineteen sixty three. He's my great uncle.
Speaker 1: And I immediately kind of flipped through it. It was
Speaker 1: a scan of what was a sort of loosely printed
Speaker 1: book it looked like, and so I scrolled to the
Speaker 1: end to look at the actual tree part, and I
Speaker 1: saw Roy, and I saw his three sisters, and I
Speaker 1: saw his parents' names. All of that match the NFL
Speaker 1: had given me. So I immediately, you know, assumed, wow,
Speaker 1: this is incredible, this is authentic, this is it, and
Speaker 1: then read the whole thing, and it starts with one
Speaker 1: man who was enslaved in eighteen twenty four. He was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen twenty four, Isaac Ayres. And it goes
Speaker 1: through everybody, and it goes through all these branches that
Speaker 1: tells stories about people, it has their photographs. It's this
Speaker 1: incredible document and it just blows my mind that this
Speaker 1: has just been sitting probably lots of places, and this
Speaker 1: guy was nice enough to see me connect and send
Speaker 1: it to me, and so that just sent me down
Speaker 1: this even I'm already being kind of relentless, but just
Speaker 1: this even more relentless search where I realized, well, now,
Speaker 1: I mean, now I have to research more about these
Speaker 1: people and it's so hard to research and slaved Americans.
Speaker 1: I can't get anything else. But what I can get
Speaker 1: is information on the slaveholder who is mentioned as a
Speaker 1: doctor in this town of Ashland, Mississippi, which is a
Speaker 1: small town. It's really easy to find stuff on him.
Speaker 1: And on this website find a grave. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: his gravestone and there's a note from a woman named
Speaker 1: Karen saying, you know, bless our ancestors or something like that.
Speaker 1: And Karen's email is sitting there, so I email her
Speaker 1: and it's a weird, crazy email to right saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I think your ancestors owned mine. I'm not
Speaker 1: after anything, just information. I have a job. Whatever the
Speaker 1: things you say, you can relate all the things that say,
Speaker 1: I really don't want anything. And then even more with
Speaker 1: the slaverything. I'm not coming after you. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to murder you, I'm not going to out you. I
Speaker 1: just want information. And sent that just thinking like wow,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm never going to hear from her, but
Speaker 1: I had to send it. And the next day it
Speaker 1: was incredibly open welcoming email from the so MA named
Speaker 1: Karen saying, wow, you know that's an incredible story. I
Speaker 1: happened to be a hobby genealogist. I know a lot
Speaker 1: about those times and those people, and I'm happy to
Speaker 1: share information. And that just turned into this long email
Speaker 1: for it. We never spoke emailed constantly and it would
Speaker 1: be half very specific here's some documents from the farm
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty that I found, and then half really
Speaker 1: simple personal stuff about her and her husband and what
Speaker 1: they were making for dinner that night, and then I
Speaker 1: would respond the same way. And the day that I
Speaker 1: bought my wife her wedding ring, I got an email
Speaker 1: from Karen and had my reply, you know whatever, thanks
Speaker 1: for the information about the farm. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: so excited I just bought a ring I'm proposing to Aja.
Speaker 1: It became this really incredible thing where she felt so
Speaker 1: so close in so many ways, and it was really
Speaker 1: fun to get that ring and think, wow, I can't
Speaker 1: wait for Karen to know about this. Really, we developed
Speaker 1: this deep important connection and I'd never even spoke into
Speaker 1: this person.
Speaker 2: It's so extraordinary and like it so underscores the whole
Speaker 2: idea of you know, what is family? Who do we
Speaker 2: connect to and why? I mean the connection that you
Speaker 2: had with Karen, is that, as you said, her ancestors
Speaker 2: owned your ancestors, and then all of these generations later
Speaker 2: because of generosity of spirit and curiosity and openness, it
Speaker 2: becomes a completely different thing. Yeah, and you know, and
Speaker 2: then you describe your meeting your half brother and not
Speaker 2: feeling a connection, you know, which is your story is
Speaker 2: so much about how DNA matters and doesn't matter, and
Speaker 2: it really just basically depends on who the people are,
Speaker 2: what they're bringing to the table, what they're looking for,
Speaker 2: and whether they connect or they don't connect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's that's really where I've landed.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, when my book came out in
Speaker 1: June twenty twenty two, and I did a lot of
Speaker 1: book to her in because I'm a and person and
Speaker 1: really wanted to do that. I wanted to meet people,
Speaker 1: and it was fascinating when you know, sometimes I'd meet
Speaker 1: someone who was a cousin, which was great. Sometimes I'd
Speaker 1: meet someone who was in my father's band and just
Speaker 1: came to tell me some story from him about the seventies.
Speaker 1: And all of these people felt like really strong connections,
Speaker 1: and it's because they found out about my story and
Speaker 1: they came to sort of help me or to give
Speaker 1: me something, or even sometimes it felt like seriously, to
Speaker 1: like give me a little piece of myself. They read
Speaker 1: this thing that sort of talked about what I'm missing,
Speaker 1: and they thought, well, I have some of that. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to this book talk in topio
Speaker 1: and tell this guy about what it was like when
Speaker 1: I recorded the keyboards on that song in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: It's really fascinating to have a stack of these stories.
Speaker 2: Now, that's so beautiful, Nobil. The idea that people were
Speaker 2: showing up to give you little pieces of your life
Speaker 2: or your history, like to sort of, yeah, to gift
Speaker 2: you with these memories and these moments. But it also
Speaker 2: comes from having done the writing, you know, having put
Speaker 2: the story out there in the world so that that
Speaker 2: would be possible. You have all these relatives who come
Speaker 2: out of the woodwork, who find you, who read something
Speaker 2: of yours, and you know, word spreads, and the ones
Speaker 2: who reach out to you are incredibly embracing of you
Speaker 2: and embracing of you as Roy's son, embracing of you
Speaker 2: as their relatives, their nephew, their cousin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So as a result of the family tree in
Speaker 1: the Karen story. I wrote the story for NPR code
Speaker 1: Switch that they published on Thanksgiving, and that got kind
Speaker 1: of shared and some cousins read it. And these are
Speaker 1: very close cousins. This is Roy's sister's daughter, so my
Speaker 1: first cousin, and she messaged me on Facebook saying, this
Speaker 1: is amazing. We're cousins. Let's talk. And even just that
Speaker 1: idea was so sort of a lightning bolt, like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I have close relatives who are interested and connecting,
Speaker 1: and so we immediately got on this phone call, taught
Speaker 1: for a while, connected so much. They live in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the call, she said, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, you should call your aunt, michelle A.
Speaker 1: She wants to meet you. And I thought that all
Speaker 1: three of my father's sisters had passed, but michell A
Speaker 1: was still alive. So I call her immediately, and this
Speaker 1: is my father's sister, my aunt. This is as close
Speaker 1: as it gets. And this woman is just wonderful, so delightful,
Speaker 1: so many questions. Really immediately feels like my aunt. I
Speaker 1: go to La Fast for a work trip and have
Speaker 1: lunch with her, and I mean she's in her seventies.
Speaker 1: She shows up with this heavy bag full of photos,
Speaker 1: photos of my grandparents, photos of them as kids, family photos,
Speaker 1: really incredible stuff. And you know, she unfortunately passed away
Speaker 1: last year, but I got to have a few great
Speaker 1: days with her, one of which is a big part
Speaker 1: of the book. But I said, you know, I would
Speaker 1: love to go to the cemetery sometime and see my
Speaker 1: grandparents grave, your parents, And she takes me to the
Speaker 1: cemetery in England would and it was just this incredible
Speaker 1: moment where the two of us we walked there kind
Speaker 1: of she's old and needed help walking, so we were
Speaker 1: kind of locked arms and stood over my grandparents grave
Speaker 1: and she just introduced me to my grandmother as if
Speaker 1: my grandmother was standing there, and said these really nice
Speaker 1: things about me, and again just sort of legitimize, like
Speaker 1: you know, I am your daughter and this is my nephew,
Speaker 1: and we are all related and all connected. And it
Speaker 1: was very powerful, incredible experience.
Speaker 2: Here's Nobiel reading one last passage from his remarkable memoir
Speaker 2: My Life in the Sunshine.
Speaker 1: Beloved father and mother lay below airs. Their names and
Speaker 1: dates were below that roy E nineteen oh five to
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine and Ruby m nineteen oh seven to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. They were close in age, I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, But Ruby outlived Roy by a long time years.
Speaker 1: As if at a ceremony, Michelle and I stood naturally
Speaker 1: facing the grave, looking down with her arms still linked. Hi, mamma,
Speaker 1: she spoke, in a voice similar to the one she
Speaker 1: used with her husband' z, but less as an equal,
Speaker 1: more with the tone of a daughter than a wife.
Speaker 1: This is your grandson, Nebille, she spoke, slowly, allowing the
Speaker 1: moment of my introduction to hang a bit longer. It
Speaker 1: was moments like these, the moments of affirmation that I
Speaker 1: cherished the most. Rory staring at me and saying she's
Speaker 1: looking at family, and now Michelle telling my grandmother that
Speaker 1: I was her grandson. When I hear everybody loves the sunshine,
Speaker 1: which happens more often than ever, the opening chords still
Speaker 1: catch me off guard, but now the lazy synthesizer melody
Speaker 1: allows me to relax. I hear and feel it with
Speaker 1: a new sense of appreciation, a new sense of connection.
Speaker 1: As my father's voice shoots out from the speakers and
Speaker 1: into the warm light, I smile and quietly sing along
Speaker 1: my Life, My Life, My Life, My Life. In the Sunshine.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 3: If you have a.
Speaker 2: Family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a
Speaker 2: voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode.
Speaker 2: Our number is one eight eight eight Secret zero. That's
Speaker 2: the number zero. You can also find me on Instagram
Speaker 2: at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like to know more
Speaker 2: about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my
Speaker 2: memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeart