Memorial

My friend Cliff Tanner died a few weeks ago. The family asked me to play and sing at his memorial service this past weekend at Camp Lee in Anniston, Alabama. It was among the more moving, memorable experiences of my life, and I'm grateful to Marjory, Fara, and Seth for asking me.

Cliff was an adult friend to me at a time in my life when kids need the right kind of adults in their lives. I worked for him off and on painting houses when I was an older teenager (16 and 17 maybe?), and we worked together on "mission" trips like Appalachia Service Project and John's Island Service Project, improving and rebuilding houses. I can't really articulate how much Cliff meant to me, how much his influence shaped my life, but I can say that I only fully realized it when I learned he was gone.

Fara (Cliff and Marjory's daughter, who is my age) called inviting me to play a Brad Paisley song and to accompany and lead some other songs. I arranged to drive to Alabama on the day of the service with my Mother and Sister, and we arrived very early on that Saturday. Three hours early, in fact.

It was nice to be at Camp Lee with lots of time on our hands. While Meg and Mom went for a walk, I got out my guitar and found a shady spot to sit down and play awhile. By and by, it started to rain really hard, so we gathered on the screened porch of the dining hall and whiled away the time till the event rocking and talking.

When people started to arrive, it was clear there was going to be a really big turn out. Ended up there were a couple hundred. When it came time for me to play, the mood was downright funereal. Which is appropriate for a memorial service I suppose, but it felt like it was time to lighten up a bit. Not least because the song I was about to play had tearjerker potential, and that wasn't the way I wanted it to go. So I felt compelled to crack a joke or two before playing to ease my own anxiety as much as anything.

As it happened, the song went fine, and the rest of the service was moving without being maudlin. At the end, the family had asked me to lead a "camp" song of the type we'd have sung when I was a kid playing guitar at youth camp. And we closed by singing together the "Irish Blessing," "May the road rise to meet you," a song that we had alway closed vespers services with in my youth, when Cliff and Marjory led all us gangly and uncertain teenagers through the maze of doubt and awkwardness into adulthood.

After the service, I realized that having the opportunity to participate in the service in that way had been a great gift to me. From the time I first heard of Cliff's death, I had struggled to say what he had meant to me. By giving me the chance to offer music to his memory, Marjory, Fara and Seth allowed me a rare chance to say goodbye in a way that really meant something to me, and I hope helped others to say goodbye as well.

Injured Reserve

A couple of nights ago Shelle was out with some friends so EW (who's five now) was snuggling up with me to fall asleep. She asked, "will you play, 'You've Got My Brown Eyes' for me Daddy?" A sure enough lullaby I wrote for her, and the which I like to play at times like these. If you've seen my little girl, you would know that any daddy would walk barefoot through hot coals for those little brown eyes, let alone play and sing a song.

I got out my old Taylor and lay back to play a lullaby or two. And I did play the song she asked for, and then "Hush Little Baby" and "Amazing Grace." But the hell of it was, I've got this rotator cuff injury? and man, it hurt! I guess this was the first time I've played lying on my back like that, but I just could not find a way to get comfortable. I tipped the guitar up into all kinds of weird positions to find a way I could play it that didn't force my right arm into a weird angle, but most things I tried either left me unable to play or left me aching something fierce.

If anyone has any ideas about playing a big, wide-bodied dreadnought guitar with a torn rotator cuff, please send them along. Otherwise, I might have to start playing lullabies on the Stratocaster.

Live music coming up

Wow, we have another gig coming up.What are the chances?

As last year, we're playing a lunch time show at the Druid Hills Artist Market. This is a great opportunity to cut work, see some great visual art and listen to good music. There'll be a nice big shady tent and good food where you can relax and let the tunes wash over you.

Part of what makes this so much fun is the great cross-pollination of musicians. Coincidentally, the line up includes a bunch of people who know each other, so we end up sitting in together and creating some interesting collaborations. Last year Shelle was unavailable to sing, but John Willingham joined me on classical guitar. This year I'm going to play drums for my friends Bob Ballou and Sarah Dmitri-Carlton, who are on just before Shelle and I play. John follows us, so with any luck we'll talk him into joining us for a song or two.

Come out if you can and bring the party with you!

Druid Hills Artist Market
1410 Ponce de Leon Avenue
Friday April 16th 
11:30 am (PB to play percussion with friends)
12:15 Shelle and Patrick play

Invitation Only

People ask me "d'you ever play out anymore?" or "what's happening with your music?" or similar daggers to the heart. I tell them, "these days we really only play when we're asked." The truth is, practicing and playing are great fun and don't intrude too much on our very busy three kid/two career life. But the work of promoting music is a different story altogether! emailing, calling, visiting venues and asking if we can play there, and then promoting shows, printing and hanging posters, blogging, sending email, and all that to get people through the door. Now that's a lot of work! I'll venture it's virtually impossible to successfully write music, play and record music, and promote music while holding down a demanding job and being even remotely attentive as a husband and father. But I could be wrong: maybe I'm just lousy at it!

Unwilling to give up music (or our family or the means of providing for our family), Shelle and I have settled on a fairly meager compromise: when an opportunity to play comes along, we take it! But we rarely seek out opportunities. I have my guitar and a drumset and my son's upright bass sitting in our bedroom to remind me I'm a musician, and we'll be playing a lunchtime show at the Druid Hills Artist Market in April. But we don't have a plan beyond that. I guess we'll just take it as it comes!

Baptist Coffee House

We played a show last night at, of all places, the First Baptist Church in Macon, GA. They do a quarterly "Coffee House" event to raise money for Habitat for Humanity, and invited us to play a couple of short sets along with some poets and other musicians, all of whom were quite good.

The audience was warm and receptive, and the atmosphere was great! Good coffee, pizza and sodas, and nothing to remind you it was a church basement beyond the genuine friendliness of the folks and the earnestness of the cause. On the whole, I find I preferred this to an audience of sullen nihilists. But maybe I'm getting old. After all, I do require glasses now to see the lyric sheets. Which I require because my memory isn't what it once was.

Here's what we played:

I Didn't Feel
Moonshiner (traditional)
101 Degrees
Angel Band (Ralph Stanley)
Stay Close to Me
She Walked Away