That first night, the audience seemed to know the music was about to begin even before the bright lights of the concert bowl went down. There was a tiny, brief silence; a wave of anticipation that rippled through the stands—and then everything changed. Lights out, plunging 26,000 screaming Yellow Birds into a momentary darkness somehow made even more impenetrable by the roar of the audience. Soon, spotlights brightened the stage, illuminating the drumkit, the guitar stands, the keyboard, moving across the stadium over hands raised above heads. And then the lights returned to the front as the five members of the Open Road walked onto the stage, walked to their instruments, and paused.

“Welcome home,” said lead singer Ernest, strumming the first notes on his guitar. I threw my arms in the air as the crowd erupted again.

***

Birds weren’t just fans of the Open Road; they were the ambassadors, the insiders. I was just beginning to learn the secret language, the hidden code the Yellow Birds all seemed to share, but it didn’t take long to figure out that getting to shows, and helping other Birds get to the shows, was part of that code. I would not have considered myself a Yellow Bird only weeks earlier but in my desire to stay on Open Road Tour, to only move forward, I learned enough of the language to pass for one. And the longer I stayed on Tour, the more fluent I became.

Pulling into Eugene, Oregon, as Nick and Nicole argued over whether or not there was time for a Target grocery run, the only words I could say were Get me out of here.

The West Coast leg of summer Tour was about to begin and I was thousands of miles from where I began without a plan, a ride, or even a place to drop my small bundle of belongings. I was starting to think I should have just gone home, while home still seemed like an option for me.

And then I crossed paths with Skate and Easy and Vivi and I hoped they were my answer, and then I met Eartha, and that was that.

“Aren’t you new and shiny,” said Eartha, in the way that I would come to know as affectionate. “I’m Eartha.”

“I’m Kait,” I said. And then I was.

This crew called their van Big Blue Bertha, and as far as I could tell, the five people in it had been friends for a long time and travelling together the entirety of summer Tour, criss-crossing the country as I had. And like me, they were Canadian, though all five of them were from the West Coast; British Colombia and Alberta. They had road-tripped out to Vermont to start Tour for the very first Open Road shows of the season, but according to Easy, the van’s tall, lanky owner and seemingly defacto leader of the crew, Bertha had just made her last cross-country trek.

“She won’t be doing that again,” he said, tucking his long blond hair behind his ear, as I sat outside the van that afternoon for the first time. “She’s a good Bird, but she’s an old Bird.” Vivi, his girlfriend, was the van’s resident goddess: tall, slim, and graceful, with gorgeous long ringletted locks the colour of Swiss chocolate, and eyes to match. It would be easy to hate Vivi for her perfection if she hadn’t also been such a sweet, welcoming person. Vivi sat atop the blankets on the ground, leaning against Easy’s chair. Her eyes were closed as she angled her head against his leg, up towards the sun. Easy twirled a ringlet lazily around his finger.

“She’s a shitbird who’s falling apart,” said Skate.

“Why don’t you hop right on that board of yours and freeload your way into someone else’s van,” said Easy, pointing to what I gathered was the four-wheeled source of Skate’s nickname.

“Nah, he can’t,” said a girl who was introduced to me with the unexpected moniker of JuJube. “There’s nobody left on Tour that he hasn’t slept with, owes money to, or both. Except her.” JuJube motioned towards me.

“Don’t bother, Skate,” I said, “I need a ride too.”

Everybody sitting around the circle laughed and I expected that these barbs were well-rehearsed and trod out often.

Skate had a baby face anchored by a slightly crooked smile and eyes that were dark shining pools made even darker under the shade of the baseball cap he wore. He was flirtatious and quick-witted and I got the feeling these traits were a definite asset on Tour. Skate had been the one to invite me into the company of Bertha’s crew; he had been sitting in one of the folding chairs outside the van and I had stopped to ask him if he had a line on a ticket to the show that night. He said he didn’t, but that he thought a friend of his would; she’d be back soon, I was welcome to wait. I sat in another of the folding chairs, Skate passed me a beer, and we started chatting.

Easy and Vivi showed up next, then JuJube, then Eartha, who did in fact, have a line on a ticket. She was the line, and the extra ticket was hers, a fluke, a mistake in an order she had placed months earlier. I was welcome to it at face value. I loved Eartha immediately, I couldn’t help it. She was familiar and a bit gruff and funny and I just wanted to be around her.

“There’s just one condition to the sale of this ticket,” she said, holding it out, but not releasing it to me.

“What?” I asked, wondering if I had misjudged her and she was going make some sketchy request like procuring mushrooms for her or something.

“I can’t let you go into the show alone. You gotta come with me.”

“How do you know I’m alone?”

Eartha made a face and pressed the ticket into my hand. “You’d have to be alone or desperate to spend all afternoon with these fools.”

I didn’t tell her that for the first time in a long time, I finally felt neither of those things.

***Yellow Birds*** by Karen Green (Re:Books, 2024)

MORE ABOUT YELLOW BIRDS:

Sex, drugs, rock and roll, and even cults … take a “trip” in this bohemian love story.

Set just before the digital revolution, Kait is a young woman searching for identity and community among the cast-outs, cast-offs, and other “misfit toys” who refer to themselves as the Yellow Birds and follow a band called the Open Road from town to town.

Just as Kait believes she has found her place among a group of Birds travelling together in a messy van, a young man with the eye-roll worthy name of Horizon sits beside her one night and alters her fragile plan for the foreseeable future.

Amidst the whirlwind of the Open Road Tour, their growing feelings for one another soar to ecstatic heights, while propelling them toward an impending reckoning with their troubled pasts.

Filled with sex, drugs, music, and even cults, readers won't be able to get enough of this bohemian love story, the groupie lifestyle, and the party within the party.

MORE ABOUT KAREN GREEN:

Karen Green is a successfully published writer who has had her poetry, essays, and fiction featured in Room Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Globe and Mail, and more. She has also contributed to Juno-winning and platinum-selling albums during her tenure as a senior copywriter. She is the author of two young reader books (Fisher Price).