Did you grow up with anyone that became famous?
It’s an odd thing to witness — someone who you know from the playground or the grocery store suddenly popping up on movie posters and TV screens.
However, when it does happen, for the people it happens to, The Show's Sam Dingman finds himself going back to his earliest experiences with them, and trying to figure out if there were clues that this is how their story was going to go.
Earlier this summer, Dingman got an important reminder that sometimes, those clues can be misleading.
It’s early June at the Arizona Financial Theater, and the Grammy-winning rock band Vampire Weekend is playing to a sold-out crowd of about 5000 people. Even though I was explicitly told not to, I’m recording on my phone. It’s early in the show, and one of the members of the band picks up his saxophone and plugs it into an effects pedal.
(Vampire Weekend’s live version of “New Dorp. New York” plays)
When he finishes his solo, the crowd goes nuts.
Now, I did not make this recording because I’m a huge Vampire Weekend fan. I like their music, but to be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about Vampire Weekend.
I do, however, know the guy who played that sax solo. His name is Colin Killalea, and we have been friends since we were 12. I met up with him backstage a few hours before the show, and we hadn’t seen each other in years.
There was a lot to catch up on.
SAM DINGMAN: I’m not trying to James Lipton here right now, but I want to play you something. My mom found this.
(Saxophone music plays)
That is Colin and me in sixth grade, playing our saxophones in the basement of his mom’s house in Virginia. At the time, we knew each other a little bit from school and little league baseball. But in my memory, this tape is the sound of us becoming friends.
DINGMAN: I don’t know if you remember, but we had a name for that called Gliss.
COLIN KILLALEA: We did?
DINGMAN: That was Gliss. And wow.
KILLALEA: Wow, edgy.
DINGMAN: Edgy stuff.
I don’t blame Colin if he doesn’t remember Gliss. He’s been in a lot of bands since then. But for me, that day in the basement was special. When Colin and I were kids, I always had this feeling like I was hanging out with a celebrity who wasn’t famous yet.
The day the Red Hot Chili Peppers album “Californication” came out, Colin came over to my house, and I put the CD into my parents stereo. And without a word, Colin picked up a guitar and just started playing along. Even though he had never heard any of the songs before.
DINGMAN: It always seemed like it was second nature to you. It just always seemed like you just like, already knew it somehow. Did it ever feel that way to you?
KILLALEA: I had good ears early on, and I knew that. That was always, I guess, my secret superpower.
After high school Colin and I fell out of touch for a while. But his mom and my mom stayed close. Every now and then, I’d hear stories about the artists Colin was touring or recording with. At one point, his mom sent me a CD in the mail of something called the Devil’s Workshop Big Band.
(Improvisational music from the Devil’s Workshop Big Band plays)
DINGMAN: She had said like, “Oh, it’s a it’s a big band, but they improvise their songs.” And I was like, what? Like what? That felt like you had ascended to, like, the level of wizardry to me. And I remember putting it in and it starts off and it’s this kind of like murky, exploratory …
KILLALEA: Wow. You remember it well.
DINGMAN: … atonal. I’ve listened to that CD hundreds of times. All the other projects I ever heard you play on, I felt like I could hear your sound. And in this, I was like, actually, I don’t know if I can hear which one’s Colin. And I knew that as a compliment.
KILLALEA: Oh, I take it as a compliment. Yeah.
DINGMAN: It was like, he’s just a part of this organism.
For a while in our 20s, Colin and I both lived in New York City. I was trying to be an actor, and he was trying to be a saxophonist. I always meant to reach out, but I never did. I felt embarrassed that my creative career wasn’t going anywhere, and I imagined Colin was taking Greenwich Village by storm, playing jazz gigs every night of the week.
In all the years we both lived there. I only saw him once.
DINGMAN: There was this one night where I had this terrible argument with my girlfriend at the time, where she was justifiably like, “Look, you gotta figure something out here. Like, this isn’t going to work.” It was one of those where you kind of like shout and cry yourself to a place where it’s like, “I don’t even really have anything else left to say. Let’s go get some ice cream.” So we leave the apartment and we walk down the block into this bodega, and you’re there with your guitar on your shoulder. And I was like, “Oh my God, there’s Colin. He’s here in New York. He’s got his gig bag. Like, he’s doing the thing. I can’t believe he’s seeing me right now, like at this moment.”
KILLALEA: Well, it was probably leaving the apartment that I shared with my girlfriend, where it felt like every other conversation led to a fight and oftentimes coming down to, “You need you need to figure out a plan for this. Like if it’s to be music” — I mean of course, that’s classic. Like you see me with the gig bag.
DINGMAN: And I’m like, “You probably just played at Lincoln Center.”
KILLALEA: Yeah of course. Of course. It’s something huge, right? I’m like going down to set up my horn and busk.
Turns out, Colin was not playing gigs in Greenwich Village every night. His career wasn’t going the way he wanted either. And not long after I saw him in the bodega that night, he left New York.
KILLALEA: I rode my bike to Prospect Heights, chained it up and had a goodbye New York moment. Left the bike there and rented an SUV and drove myself down to Virginia to lick the wounds.
Colin moved to Charlottesville and started producing albums at a recording studio.
KILLALEA: It felt like a new chapter in my life, and I was no longer at instrumentalist at that point. I was a producer, and the saxophones went in the closet.
DINGMAN: Years went by. Colin met a woman, had a couple kids. And one night he was working in the studio with a trumpeter, and he realized something.
KILLALEA: There wasn’t a single part of me that thought — I was wondering, “Is there going to be a part of me that wishes I was playing on these songs? Oh, I’m not lying to myself.” I was like, “I am exactly where I want to be. I want to be hearing how we capture this, this, these, these musicians.”
DINGMAN: Obviously, though, at some point — I mean, we’re sitting here today because you decided to get the instruments back out, so how did that happen?
Earlier this year, Colin got a call from Chris Baio, the bassist in Vampire Weekend. They were looking for a sax player. Someone gave him Colin’s name. And when I found out Colin was on tour with one of the biggest rock bands in the world, I thought, “Well, it finally happened. Colin became a rock star.” But then I saw this video of the band playing at Coachella.
DINGMAN: You pick up the saxophone and you start playing, and the camera goes behind you, and there’s 100,000 people in a field in front of you. The thought I had in that moment, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to articulate it. The look on your face was not, “I’ve arrived.” I’m obviously just watching you and trying to figure out what you’re thinking. It didn’t even really seem like you were thinking about all the people. It seemed like you were just like, “What am I going to play here?” It seemed like you were so much more focused on the gig. Just stay within yourself and hit the notes.
KILLALEA: One-hundred percent. What I’ve really been looking to do is like, be part of a sound and not necessarily like blow sheets of sound on my instrument.
DINGMAN: It was never about people looking at you.
KILLALEA: No, it’s never been about that. I’m just a sideman.
DINGMAN: Wow.
When we were growing up, I always wondered what it would feel like to be Colin Killalea, and sideman is probably the last thing I would have guessed. But a few weeks after that show at Arizona Financial Theater, Colin sent me a voice memo.
KILLALEA: Yo! Hey man, I’ve been thinking about you. I hope all’s well. I’m back in Virginia with the fam, and we’re just settling back into the Virginia thing. I’m driving to work right now at the studio down the road. And it’s weird, but it is good to be back.
(Improvisational music from the Devil’s Workshop Big Band plays)
This is the Devil’s Workshop Big Band. I’m still not sure which part is Colin.
