The singalong that owed me nothing

Third set at a ring-side layover bar — the kind with warm amber lamps and a treaty seal on the wall nobody has read since the paint dried. I hit the downstrum and the room answered like they'd been rehearsing in cargo elevators all week between bad coffee and worse news. No cue card. No polite clap that means please stop. Just voices stacking on a hook that was never fancy enough to need permission from a label scout.

That's acoustic rock when it behaves: not a lecture, not a confession booth, not a Net clip begging for tears. A surname you can shout without knowing the paperwork behind it. I grinned like an idiot into the mic and kept the band tight so the drunken harmony wouldn't fall off the edge of the bar and take the tip jar with it. Brushed snare. Melodic bass when it earned space. Twelve-string doing the honest work.

Afterward a kid in a courier vest said they'd learned the chorus off a bunk speaker that rattled every time the hull flexed. I told them that was the whole job — write something that survives bad speakers and worse weeks. Play the album when the freights get quiet. Or don't. The lounge will still be humming somebody else's night either way, and that's fine by me.