My Life In 35 Songs, Track 23: “Can’t Smile Without You” by Barry Manilow

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I’m finding it hard leaving your love behind me

It was the one time in my life where I could reasonably describe myself as a “working professional musician.”

I’ve made passing mention of it a few times in this series, but during my college years, for three consecutive summers, my primary job was working at the local dinner theater in my hometown. The space was an old movie theater that had been converted into a wedding and event center. A catering company operated out of a building on the same property, and they’d struck up a deal with a local entertainer to put on three shows per week at the venue to help bring in customers and sell a shit ton of food and alcohol. Most of our customers were in or nearing the retirement age bracket, and most of the songs we performed were hits from yesteryear, to make sure we were appealing to that demographic. We switched up the show theme and the setlist frequently across those three years, and songs fell in and out of rotation. But the one song I sang at almost every show we ever did was “Can’t Smile without You,” a ‘70s pop hit made famous by Barry Manilow.

Had I come to this song in any other context, I’m almost certain I would have turned up my nose at it. The only song I knew from Manilow at that point in my life was the glitzy “Copacabana” (which I also performed as part of dinner theater shows) and I didn’t think much of that song, if I’m being honest. To my ears, Manilow was pure cheese – an old-fashioned Vegas-style showman whose songs were either too saccharine or too…is there a German word that means “sleepy matinee show on a cruise ship”?

“Can’t Smile without You,” which comes from the same 1978 LP as the aforementioned “Copacabana,” felt hopelessly old-fashioned to me when I first heard it in the summer of 2010. We’d just opened our first dinner theater show, dubbed “The Sensational ‘70s,” and Dominic, my boss, wanted to slot “Can’t Smile without You” into the setlist as our “thank you to the audience song.” The idea was that we’d go around to each table during the course of cocktail hour, snap photos of the couples or families that had come to the show, and then cut all those Kodak moments together into a slide show, set to the aptly named “Can’t Smile without You.” Never mind that there were already two other Manilow songs in the set – “Copacabana” and “Mandy,” both sung by me, because Dominic was convinced I was a vocal dead-ringer for Barry – “Can’t Smile without You” still went into the show and stayed there forever, even when we changed themes. I think we even kept it in place for our country music show, because we couldn’t think of anything more genre-appropriate to replace it.

Over time, I softened on “Can’t Smile without You.” For one thing, it was a fun song to sing, with no fewer than three key changes and a big dramatic bridge that made me feel like I was a crooner at the night club in Goodfellas. For another, I just loved that job. When I first got hired at the dinner theater for the summer of 2010, the only employment I’d ever had before was as a minimum wage grunt at Burger King, a summer job I hated so vehemently that it made me want summer to end so I could get the hell away from it. With the dinner theater, things felt so completely different. I actually looked forward to work, whether it was the weeks of rehearsals prior to opening night, or the shows themselves. Even the more menial parts of the job – like waiting tables or cleaning the place up at the end of the night – didn’t really feel like “work.” Granted, at some point, we started raiding the bar and drinking the owner’s booze during cleanup and teardown, but that was only the last summer, and only after we learned we were getting shut down permanently. Oops.

The dinner theater summers were the most idyllic time of my life – the period I’d probably refer to as my “glory days,” if I had to pick just one era. I was making good money doing something I loved, and I was getting to do it alongside a cast and band who I had a blast working with every day. And then, when the shows were over, we’d head out the doors into these flawlessly gorgeous summer nights – nights full of so much possibility and freedom that thinking back on them and how they felt makes me wish I was still that young, if only just so I could feel them again.

Certainly, it didn’t hurt that my first days at the dinner theater coincided with the start of my relationship with the girl who I’d end up marrying, or that those three summers were a sacred part of our romance. In a lot of ways, when I think back on our young love and that job, both things intertwine in my brain. Either one, by itself, would have been incredibly special; both hitting together is what made them glory days.

Our last show ever came in late August 2012, and in a lot of ways, it felt like the end of my youth. My girlfriend was done with college and moving off to Illinois to start her first full-time job. I was due to leave town just a few days later for my final year of college, and I wasn’t sure when – if ever – I’d spend an appreciable amount of time in my hometown again. And the dinner theater, this place that had meant so much to me for three summers, was closing down, and those of us who had been a part of it were going our separate ways, maybe forever. So many of my ties to home seemed to be loosening at the exact same time, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. A part of me wondered if losing those ties would make leaving easier; a bigger part of me knew it wouldn’t.

That last night at the theater was special, though. I remember giving a toast to my fellow cast members before our final show, and tearing up as I recounted memories and talked about how much this place had meant to me. I told them, for instance, how I’d questioned whether I even wanted to be involved with music performance anymore after failing out of my classical voice major at Western Michigan University the previous winter, but that coming back to the dinner theater for a one-off New Year’s Eve show over winter break had reinvigorated me and assured me that all was not lost. In my college years, when being a music major was making me question everything I loved about music, the dinner theater was always there to serve as a counterbalance. Because every night, when the lights went down and the music started to play, I got exactly the same feeling of electricity coursing down my spine that I’d always gotten back in high school before big performances.

That indelible energy lasted right up until the end. During that final show, 13 years ago this week, in the middle of our take on the Bryan Adams song “Summer of ’69,” I tweaked the words on the chorus – “Funny when I look back now/These summers seemed to last forever” – and sang the song’s punchline like I really meant it: “Those were the best days of my life.” Later, as I ran through “Can’t Smile without You” one last time, my castmate and good pal Tom put his arm around my shoulders and joined me in singing the bridge: “Now some people say/Happiness takes so very long to find/But I’m finding it hard, leaving your love behind me.” I finished the song with a lump in my throat and a smile on my face, the music perfectly channeling the mixture of joy and sadness I was feeling as the door closed on something that had meant the world to me.

It reminded me of a sentiment I’d shared with my castmates earlier that night, before we hit the stage for one last hurrah – a quote I’d borrowed from a sign Bruce Springsteen plucked from the audience on the last night of the E Street Band’s 2009 tour: That it’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but it feels like love.

Past Installments:

• Track 1: “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers
• Track 2: “Hanging by a Moment” by Lifehouse
• Track 3: “Hide” by Creed
• Track 4: “Wheel” by John Mayer
• Track 5: “Kill” by Jimmy Eat World
• Track 6: “Fix You” by Coldplay
• Track 7: “Walk On” by U2
• Track 8: “Feeling a Moment” by Feeder
• Track 9: “When Canyons Ruled the City” by Butch Walker
• Track 10: “Truth Is” by Sister Hazel
• Track 11: “Breaking Free” from High School Musical
• Track 12: “Come Around” by Counting Crows
• Track 13: “Someone Like You” by SafetySuit
• Track 14: “Crashin’” by Jack’s Mannequin
• Track 15: “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen
• Track 16: “Go” by Boys Like Girls
• Track 17: “Ride” by Cary Brothers
• Track 18: “Growing Up” by The Maine
• Track 19: “Dusk and Summer” by Dashboard Confessional
• Track 20: “The Sound of You and Me” by Yellowcard
• Track 21: “Holocene” by Bon Iver
• Track 22: “Handwritten” by The Gaslight Anthem

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