DALLAS — If music is medicine, there are healthy doses in Dallas.
Music for what ails you in a dose of vinyl, or some dessert jam down the street.
Some notes even mix with the morning air before shops open in the Bishop Arts District.
It wasn’t always like this.
“They kind of were like pioneers here in Bishop Arts. They started busking down on the corner of 7th and Bishop," said Brecia Eubank.
She remembers a few years back when her husband Darren Eubank helped bring music to the Bishop Arts District streets. As she remembers, she points to her wedding ring.
In fact, Darren performed first on the little stage outside the Laughing Willow shop.
Melody Ginn owns the Laughing Willow. She said her husband built the stage and said that Darren was like a son to them, that he was like family.
This is where Eubank still comes to listen to her husband.
Darren died from COVID-19. He was 29 years old.
Eubank said after Darren passed, the owner of Laughing Willow came and asked what they could do to honor Darren.
For Eubank, sitting on the bench near the stage is one of the only prescriptions for her grief.
“Next thing you know there’s a plaque of his face on the stage. I can come and talk to him, cause I would come watch him play… I can’t watch him play anymore, but I can come and talk to him, which is cool," said Eubank.
When we lose someone, it’s the memories. Like all those Tuesdays, for years, when Darren and Cameron Ray played at the Opening Bell coffee house.
It’s been hard for Ray to lose his best friend.
But Darren left more than memories. He left musical stories of hope, and an entire brand new album of them with fellow musician Chima Ijeh. It’s called "…And it feels like.”
Ray said people have seen a lot of hope in the new record.
“It was hard, losing someone you loved so much”, said Ginn.
For Eubank, it’s the new record, and something else.
“Realistically, the butterfly was just for fun”, she said, as she pointed to the tattoo on her finger next to her wedding ring tattoo.
“I think he visits me in butterflies now, because I notice them everywhere I go when I’m missing him," she continued.
Sometimes, we don’t even realize what feeds us.
It just might be notes falling from a speaker above an empty stage -- on the corner of Bishop and Melba in Dallas Texas.