I used to be in a band. Classic Tragic Hero, like all legendary bands, started with two nerds in high school.
I met Stephan Carroll when I was 14 in Mr. Simonson’s computer class. We bonded over many geeky things. I was into making ZZT games. Steve was into MIDI keyboards and collecting hundreds of megabytes worth of sound samples, which was a lot at the time. In 2006, when I got pulled from Los Angeles back to Wheeling via magnet, we teamed up to produce a stack of songs I’d written in college and right after. The “folk punk” music project was a ton of fun, even if my voice wasn’t great due to the hard-living my early 20s was known for. We recorded two albums of original material, had a minor hit YouTube video in the era of “Lazy Sunday,” and even booked a local gig. Yeah, we were a “MySpace band,” but we had a lot of fun and made art that some people found cool… Best you can hope for in a creative project.
You can see and hear more about the history of the real Classic Tragic Hero in this week’s aftershow. Short story shorter? We broke up eventually, but we kept working together for years on my other creative projects. You know how people have a “guy” for something? Like car repairs or discount theme park tickets? Steve was my “music guy.” Any time I had a need in professional or creative work, I e-mailed Steve. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ve likely heard his work in my projects.
Sadly, Steve passed away a couple years back. A few months before he did, he e-mailed me a song he’d written called “In The Long Run” that was one of several attempts from both of us to “get the band back together.” I was busy getting Everly Heights going at the time, and we were talking about that in other e-mail threads, but I never responded to his song. I figured there would be time.
When I heard about Steve, I went back to listen to the song again. I started to wonder what it was about. Was it about our old band? Was it something Steve was going through? I’ll never know, but I listened to it a lot in the months after his passing and came up with 1,000,000 interpretations.
For this week’s episode of Everly Heights Tales, I picked my favorite interpretation over the years and wrote a story about two former lovers finding each other in a theater basement years after moving on from each other, and, in the case of Calvin Hobbes, moving on from Everly Heights itself.
A reunion in a burned-out theater basement forces two former bandmates to confront the lives they picked and the song they never finished. When Marla Harmon returns to Everly Heights for a benefit show for Cornerstone Theater, she finds more than charred Fresnel lights and party snacks. Among the former Rocky Horror cast members in attendance? Calvin Hobbes, her ex-bandmate/boyfriend, now dressed as a man his younger self would label a “sellout.” Between a hidden bottle of furnace vodka, a forgotten cassette, and an out-of-tune Stratacoustic guitar, their last unfinished song plucks the strings of the past and reminds them of who they used to be. Will Marla and Calvin grow up and move on from Classic Tragic Hero, or can they finally tighten up the bridge on their abandoned demo?
In the aftershow, creator Bill Meeks delivers a personal tribute to his late best friend and bandmate Stephen Carroll, the write of the song “In The Long Run” and the real-life inspiration behind the episode. Bill traces their friendship from teenage collaborations in high school computer labs to early YouTube attention as the basement band Classic Tragic Hero. Framed by Steve’s demo of “In the Long Run,” this aftershow confronts friendship, artistic guilt, and coming back together to make something new.
NEXT TIME: Can a fan podcaster find love in the Franklin W. Dixon Memorial Library?
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Alex Mechanic – Marla Harmon
Travis Crawford (TV’s Travis) – Calvin Hobbes
Big thanks to Alex and Travis for bringing the story to life. Travis has been in a few other episodes, but this is his first major part and I he totally killed it. Alex is a first-timer, but I liked her so much as Marla she’s already coming back in a future episode. Speaking of future episodes…
The Season Ahead
I keep track of all the podcast episodes I’m working on in a spreadsheet, and this season is stacked! We have a few more self-contained episodes coming up over the next month or so, but then we have two big multi-part genre stories I’ve been waiting to tell for years.
The first multi-part story is Infinite Tina: Worlds Apart, an audio drama adaptation of the audiobook I released a year ago, which was the outcome of several earlier swings at this “Quantum Leap in the multiverse” concept I’ve been playing with for a decade or so. Adapt-ception? Maybe. This will be a full cast audio drama trilogy, with all the key W.E.I.R.D.E. crew members from The W.E.I.R.D.E. World of Jim Colvin returning, including Nosloo himself!
The other multi-part story coming later this year is an adaptation of my screenplay The Last Chance Detective Agency from 2020, the story of a “kid detective all grown up” and in a state of arrested development that his old partner aims to fix. You can read it at that link if you want, but I’ve done a complete rewrite as well as writing a new story to kick off the trilogy set in the 90s. The 90s were Danny Chance’s glory days as a teen detective with freaky good luck. Find out how he got his name! Thrill to a chance encounter with Parade Magazine columnist Marylin vos Savant! The Quaker Inter… Best save that last bit for later.
I’m thrilled to announce the voice of Dogboy himself Nathan Beatty (Beyond the Deck Box) will voice both teen and adult versions of Danny Chance. Considering my Dogboy character was inspired by Encyclopedia Brown, I figure having Nathan play my version of Encyclopedia in a kid detective deconstruction makes good sense.
Speaking of Dogboy, next week’s episode is another Valentine’s Day-themed episode featuring a Dogboy Adventures fan podcaster finding love in the library. What is it with public spaces and romance? Rebecca Johnson (Supergirl Radio), who was my co-lead in my last audio drama The Fakist, returns as Clara from The Play’s the Thing (That Traps You) in a non-horror romantic story.
But, as The Eagles sang, in Everly Heights you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave. See you next week!
Bill Meeks
everlyheights.tv | @BillMeeksLA | billmeeks.com