Musings on music

**An update for myself in the future and for anyone who cares:

In September 2006 I took part in a poetry workshop at Berkeley led by Richard Silberg, did ten weeks there and then joined another workshop, led by Kim Addonizio at her home in Oakland. They were both good experiences for different reasons, and forced me to hack out some bits of poetry, meet some interesting fellow poets and give myself a hell of an editing assignment. Most of those poems aren’t ready for even late night time, so they will undergo revisions, rewritings and scrapping before I venture to make them “public” – if this, the most microscopic audience in the world, can be considered “public.” What I consider done for now appear on my poetry site, couldbeverse.

Toward the end of my second poetry workshop I got involved with the RPM Challenge project, about which I’ve blogged here before. This opened up the long-closed gate of my interest in music. I wrote my first song in high school and had it performed at the Spring Concert, probably in 1957 or 1958. I remember being shoved out on the stage to play the piano by Sister Mary Whoever because Dur Daggett, the school genius pianist, was a no-show. Funnily, the song was called “Memories,” but I can hardly remember it now.

Songwriting remained pretty much dormant until long after college, poetry being my muse in the intervening years. Bought my first guitar from a guy at work who had a music store. Paid $40 and it was worth almost every penny. But I started to learn some Bob Dylan and Beatles on it. In 1968 my wife bought me a real guitar, the one I still have, and about which I wrote the poem “Attachments.” Soon after, I began writing songs and that continued for several years into the 1970s, producing dozens until I got religion in 1976 or 1977. Suddenly all that artistic stuff looked crass and unholy compared with the lofty goals and mission I had taken on. So songwriting remained more or less dormant for the next thirty years and the songs, typed or scrawled on yellow paper mostly, lived in the back of the lowest draw of the least used file cabinet. I had also recorded most of them on some reel-to-reel tape machines I owned at various times. I have boxes of these and until February of 2007 hadn’t listened to them. But I still had an old Wollensak kicking around and got it working well enough to listen to some of those songs. That led quickly into the RPM Challenge project.

But my interest in songwriting has flared up and I am involved with music again as in the old days. These days I’m concentrating for the most part on recording some of my oldies, using the wonderful technology available to the layman today. Some of them are just tunes, so now and then I take a crack at writing lyrics to them.

ENTER RED HOUSE

I met John Cunningham at Fitness 19 where I had been working with him as a personal trainer. We discovered our mutual interest in music and began jamming on Friday nights at my place. John laid down awesome lead guitar tracks to two songs I was producing for the RPM project.

Then one day he told me about a place in Walnut Creek, just 8 or 9 miles from here, where guys like us could go and jam. It’s called Red House. We visited it one Saturday and a week later joined. It has been a great experience for me. John and I meet there instead at my place and have a couple hours to jam in a beautifully equipped studio. I made a brief video last Friday, which you can see here.

But the big breakthrough for me has come from playing in a group, something I have always wanted to do, but the logistics posed formidable obstacles – and excuses. Now, with Red House providing a gathering place for musicians I find I’m playing a lot more. Apparently most of the members play blues lead guitar, and there seems to be few keyboard players. There are several “Players Clubs” where members can jam on the Red House stage. Next to guitarists there are several drummers and bass players so there’s always a core rhythm section and people take turns paling a couple songs on stage. I have found myself expanding that rhythm section on keyboards. And the neat part is that I get to sit in on all the sessions! So I’m getting more experience playing, and having the fun of interacting with the other players.

Will this lead to a whole new career? No. Being now of a certain age, I can do this sort of thing for the sheer pleasure of it without the slightest trace of guilt. Being “retired” means not only never having to say “hello Boss,” but not having to defer doing what really resonates for the sake of earning a buck. I didn’t feel this way when I was first let go from my job. I felt I had been cut off from the most satisfying work I’ve every had. It took about a year to realize that I had been handed one huge favor and, useless as it is, I am loving my life.

Where I go from here is completely unknown to me. More of the same, something new or all of the above? No plans other than to stay healthy, appreciate what I have and look for new opportunities.