Earlier this week I wrote about the farewell show of stephaniesid, a local band I’ve loved for more than a decade. You can read the full story here. I’m very passionate about local art, though, and I wanted to share some of my feelings about the connection between the musicians and fans on the Asheville music scene. Here’s a bit of that:

Photo by Michael Oppenheim Photography

To those who had been listening — remember stephaniesid classing up Bele Chere on the Battery Park stage? Launching Downtown After 5 during a warm spring rain? Workshopping an album’s worth of music during a monthlong residency at Isis Restaurant & Music Hall? — there was raw edge. The sound filled the auditorium, Tim Haney’s drum kit propelled each song forward, Chuck Lichtenberger’s piano was mostly lovely and occasionally wild. Vocalist Stephanie Morgan (who has always explored the capabilities of her voice, cajoled it like an untamed horse, with its danger and might equal to its grace and beauty) danced her way through each song, shaking the lyrics from out of her own being.

Because I can’t be objective — I love these musicians and want to cheer for them as much as I want to weep for them (read their personal blogs and Facebook posts if you want to know the story behind the band’s breakup) — I’ll say this: I wonder what shape hole the absence of stephaniesid will leave in the fabric of Asheville.

Not everyone will feel it. And no band is responsible for forever composing the soundtrack to the town that birthed it. Asheville is a launching pad for those who dare to dream and try and leap; those who leap must make that jump count. So Steph and Chuck and Tim are in mid-leap now. Those of us at Diana Wortham got to see them unfurl their wings and take to the air. I suspect everyone in the crowd felt the liftoff, our own hearts jarred and swayed in that break with gravity.

… Here’s the thing: We Asheville music fans have a special relationship with our bands. They’re our neighbors, our friends, our collaborators. We come to know them and we’re (knowingly or unknowingly) contributors to their sound. We move around, swimming in the same stream of inspiration. We share a language. We touch those who touch us. These songs aren’t just markers of a place in time, they actually tell us something about ourselves. So to love a band in Asheville really means something, because that love comes back to us. And to participate in that chain reaction, to feed art and be fed by it, is a miraculous thing.