Mark Wheat wasn't even sure he was going to talk to Feist at Rock the Garden. Backstage, Wheat confided as much to his colleague, Bill DeVille. "I told him, 'You know, I'm such a fanboy, I don't even know if I should introduce myself,'" Wheat explains. "And Bill was like, 'No, you should; she is really nice.'"

When Wheat approached The Current's backstage broadcast tent, it just so happened Feist has just finished her interview with Oake and Riley, and was talking to The Current's Jim McGuinn and David Safar. "They introduced me and I kind of gushed and I said, 'Feist' and she asked me to call her Leslie straightaway," Wheat says.

Wheat told the Canadian artist he was pleased that she had made the trip to play Rock the Garden, and he added that Feist's album Pleasure made his personal top 10 for 2017. "She was like, 'Oh my god, thank you thank you!'," Wheat recalls. "So I guess that kind of was a good start."

It was at that moment Wheat recalled something he had said on the air in the run-up to Rock the Garden. Having played Feist's song "Century," Wheat noted the spoken-word bridge in the song that is voiced by Jarvis Cocker. Wheat suspected Cocker wouldn't make the trip to Rock the Garden for one song, so Wheat mused on-air about asking Feist if he could voice the bridge on "Century." Fast-forward to backstage at Rock The Garden, and that's exactly what Wheat had the moxie to ask. "She engaged me so consciously and with a presence that I knew immediately that if I didn't want to do it, it was the wrong thing to say," Wheat says.

Feist explained that typically when playing the song "Century" live, she just plays back Cocker's recorded take of the bridge. She encouraged Wheat to do it live, explaining how sometimes the recorded bridge doesn't go over that well at live shows.

Feist also gave Wheat a bit of advice: "All you have to do is walk up to the front of the stage and act Shakespearean," she said.

As the song ramped up, Feist teased the audience. "At the end of this song, we'll hear from Father Time himself," she said.

As as the song transitioned into the bridge, Mark Wheat took the stage …

"Century. How long is that?
It's over 3 billion seconds
876,000,000 hours
Or 36,500 days
Almost as long as it's been since Feist played in the Twin Cities
one of those endless dark nights of the soul when I wondered would we ever see Feist again?
Those nights never seemed to end
(backing vocals: Century)
And when you're waiting for Feist to play
Every second feels like a century
A century!"

As the song faded into the crowd's applause, Feist clarified for those in the back that Father Time is "Otherwise known as your very own Mark Wheat."

"She said my name!" Wheat replied. "I could die happy!"

Wheat notes that "Century" may not have even been performed at Rock The Garden had it not been for the chat he and Feist had had earlier in the day. "They weren't planning to play it, but they chose to play it because I offered to do it," Wheat says. "So that kind of pressure is almost unbearable; I knew I had to do it."

External Links

Feist - official site

Mark Wheat - MPR biography

Jarvis Cocker - official site

Rock the Garden

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