I love music. I love listening to music. I love making music. I love musicians. So much so, I married one. And in a crazy curious and unconventional way I am one. I say that bashfully and with a full-body blush. To be perfectly clear, I am not a musician who plays and performs on stage in front of crowds of screaming adoring fans. I’m the nerdy dorky dweeby sort whose part of an adult concert band that does Christmas Concerts at old folks’ homes for sweet seniors who just happen to be the most appreciative audiences. Ever. Their enthusiastic applause makes us feel like stars with every corny Christmas carol we play.
My first real instrument was a recorder. It was mandatory in grade seven at Algonquin Avenue Public School back in the day. In high school I played the clarinet and was in the Hammarskjold High School band from grade nine to thirteen. (Yes, you read that right. Back in the day, high school went to grade thirteen in Ontario. We were old as dirt by the time we graduated. Some were even older.)
There was always a guitar or two around our house when I was growing up because my older brother Del played. And something I learned just recently on a trip back home to Northwestern Ontario (aka Nowhereland) Del played in a Bluegrass Band up until a few years ago. Read on, and listen, to find out why this is significant to the story. I have tinkered with guitars since I was a teenager, and I am a loud and proud self-proclaimed lousy guitar player. Not sure why, just am. So, there’s that.
After I got a couple of under-graduate degrees from Lakehead University, I went back and did a year of music. Learned the flute and enough theory to put me to sleep. But that itty-bitty bit of knowledge has served me well over the years, especially since I joined the concert band. I hung on to my flute for a couple of decades and then gave it to my oldest daughter when she followed in her mother’s footsteps and studied music in high school and was part of their band. Decades later she would move back to Victoria, after twenty years of living and working in the music industry in Vancouver and become a part of our modest concert band. That is, and will always be, one of the most joyous times of my life. Playing in the same geeky band with my kid. Imagine that. It was so Poindexter. And perfect.
Fifteen years ago, when Eric and I finally got married I was writing a bunch of songs. Not great but I was learning. I wrote this one song about the day Eric and I met at this shabby old bar country bar called the Gorge Pub. It held afternoon country jams on the weekends. I was new to town, didn’t have many friends so I hung out with my older sister and her crowd occasionally. One Saturday afternoon she brought me to the bar to drink beer, listen to country music (which I wasn’t a fan of at that time), shoot the shit and dance. I learned that country music is quite fun to dance to, especially the two-step.
When I wrote that county song I tinkered with the music, fiddle-faddled with some major and minor chords, warbled like baby bird with heartburn. But after all that effort, I hated everything I came up with. I surrendered to my ineptness but kept the lyrics (along with a ton of other songs/lyrics/poems). All silently tucked away in a folder on my computer called Boos Songs, just waiting to be brought to life with music one day.
I always yearned for a musical partner to collaborate with. Kind of like Bernie Taupin and Elton John. Someone who got me, who could take my poetic lyrics and build a beautiful song, the one that I had heard in my head all those years ago. But that never happened. Why not my husband, you ask? Long story short. We didn’t speak the same musical language. Truth is, I had never heard of Bluegrass until I met him and as I said, I didn’t really like country music thirty-five years ago. We weren’t a good fit that way. We both knew it. But I have always been his biggest fan. I learned to love Bluegrass music as much as the man.
Flash forward to this week to when I discovered this app called Songer. It was like the musical partner I had been waiting for just wandered into my life, opened the folder of Boos Songs and said, “let’s make some music together.” Kind of like my collaborator in a weird, and I have to say, wonderful way. I asked it to produce some country music to go with my lyrics, my words, my story about the day I met Eric when we danced at the country bar about to be torn down. My eyes flooded with tears when I played it for the first time. And I wept. And wept. The song was no longer locked inside my head. It was released. We were both set free.
