At the point in my new novel where long-time friends Henry and Charlie were headed to a show at the Orange Peel in Asheville, there was just one band of the many I’ve known that popped into my mind as offering precisely the right vibe: the one and only Goose Creek Symphony. And even though the timeframe of the story meant this show couldn’t actually have happened, hey, it’s fiction so the show goes on in celebration of “Henry’s Really Big End Is Near Magical Mystery Tour.”

It’s a pivotal moment in Not Dark Yet, published in May, as a pledge made in college between the two friends becomes a harsh reality decades later when Henry calls unexpectedly upon Charlie to honor their pact to exit the planet on acceptable terms. The feisty Henry is determined to control his final days in order to maintain his dignity and minimize the impact on his wife, teenage son, ailing mother and friends. A veiled ulterior motive is to force Charlie to accept his own unavoidable fate and fully embrace the time he has left.

And who better than the Goose to serve as a stab from the guys’ collective past? Fueled by a little wine and weed, Charlie finds himself swept back in time:

The lights dim and I’m dragged back by the opening chords of a song that immediately entangles itself with remnants lurking in my memory and sets my corpuscles juking, as Henry slaps me hard on the back and charges toward the stage where Charlie Gearhart—how did I remember that name?—is strumming his guitar and welcoming us all back to Goose Creek.

I hold my ground as around me things start twirling in time with the music—at first I think I’ve come unmoored and I’m sailing, but then realize everyone around me, an eclectic mix of young and old, is swaying or dancing as the opening song, which starts out slow, just a vocal and acoustic guitar, slams into a raucous quick-stepping country-rock merger of multiple instruments, including a banjo and wailing fiddle high-flying over it all.

As the music swirls and Henry disappears into the crowd, Charlie is launched further back as he recalls the time and place and person that introduced him to the band. And while it is fiction here, I readily admit it’s based on how the same thing happened to me, very much like Charlie remembers in the book:

I’m transported without resistance back into time, to a me, young with the beginnings of long hair hitting my neck and sandals on my feet, strolling past a seen-better-days house, pale yellow with age, from which this exact song is wafting through a broken-down screen door into the kind of spring air you want to wrap around you like a baby blanket. I pause to take in the music, when a voice says from the porch, “Nice, huh?”

I turn to see a girl in a flowing skirt leaning against the post. Her blond hair hangs to her waist and eddying around her as she steps down into the yard, and I can’t help but notice her breasts swinging free under a loose blouse, her nipples dimpling the material. With every move, a brass bell around her neck on a leather thong tinkles, matched by another on her ankle above a bare foot. I’m mesmerized by that foot, how carefree it seems. I’m still watching it when she speaks again, forcing me to meet her eyes, which are a strange goldish hue like a street cat’s.

“Just discovered these guys,” she says, tipping her head toward the house. “From like West Virginia or Kentucky, called Goose Creek Symphony. Not that country-rock mish-mash from the west coast. This stuff’s got real roots.”

That day, I quick-stepped straight down the street to the record store, scored that first Goose Creek album and proceeded to wear out the grooves, proclaiming the gospel to my friends. And that girl and the rhythm of those bells haunted my dreams for many moons and, like Charlie says in the book, “I’m pretty sure I was in love, at least with the mystery of a girl so free and alive.”

Though light-years removed, in my mind I can still see that beat-down yellow house and that girl. And right now, from the other room, I again hear the sweet sound of that invitation to a special place called Goose Creek where “If you’re wanting something old and tired of something new / Come out to the country when the trees are all in bloom / Cleanse your mind, cleanse your soul and give your head some room.”