So here at Cosi one of the employees is an extremely nice, gregarious, talkative guy named Joe. I know him only in one realm—as the big dude who slings sandwiches, pours drinks, cleans off an occasional table.
Today, he handed me his CD.
Joe, it turns out, is a member of The Melillo Brothers, a sibling pop trio in the spirit of BoyzIIMen and the Backstreet Boys. Their tunes aren’t 100 percent my genre of music, but I’ve been listening to the disc and I’m really impressed. The guys can sing and express themselves, and Joe truly is as friendly a fella as you’d wanna meet. Hell, they even played the Nashville Hard Rock, where I once covered concerts as a music writer for The Tennessean. Cool.
Anyhow, the point here isn’t really to turn you on to new music, but to reinforce the timeless truth that everyone has a story; that the person changing your tire or giving you a checkup or selling you mints isn’t merely composed of one dimension. That’s one of the reasons I got into journalism to begin with—the complexities and depths that make people riveting.
Just like ol’ Joe.
