ALBUMS

Juliet

“Atria with his 18-piece choir and orchestra leaves us in pieces.” — American Blues Scene

Many years ago, in a used bookstore called BookLover’s Cafe, I found an old box containing sixteen miniature, leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare. Written inside each book, in elegant calligraphy, was an inscription to Evelyn from Ralph with the month and the year 1914.

Late one night, taking a volume from the shelf, I studied the inscription and wondered about Ralph and Evelyn. Who were they? What happened to them? I knew, sadly, they must forever remain a mystery. But an idea came to mind: if I couldn’t know their story, I could imagine it. I could write it. So Juliet was born.

Everything that happens to Ralph and Evelyn is true, though none of it really happened to them. It happened to my grandfather and my father; to my great uncle, the son of Syrian immigrants, who watched his best friend die in the war and came home a different man; to the woman who gave me the Orpheum acoustic guitar she bought her husband on their first anniversary in 1941 and as payment asked for a recording of “You Are My Sunshine,” the song he used to sing to her with it; to the family friend, nostalgic for the halcyon days when her boyfriend called her Cherry, who said the wonderfully odd phrase, “I’ve been dreaming Cherry”; and to me. Maybe some of it happened to you, too. If music be the food of love, play on.