Song Maker
The front room this morning is a maze of cables, amps, pedals, and instruments. Music is being made. We’re missing the daughter and her bass, but the boys are back with keyboards and guitars. Someone starts a riff , or dad starts singing, and off we go. Covers, originals. It matters not. What’s the key? Boom. There’s a downbeat. We’re off.
I never thought when I first picked up a guitar in 1963, that eventually it would give birth to this. A family of musicians. Not the Brauns nor the Gutheries nor the Wilkins nor the Bachs, but a family nonetheless with music in their blood. I wish their mother was here to hear this, but that’s another story that’s been told. Her spirit is in the room, I’m sure. After all, music is all about memories and feelings, spoken or otherwise, and when you put them in the air as a song they tend to live forever.
So, I think when I’m gone, someone I love will hold my guitar, strike a chord and think of me, or their mother, or their brother, or sister. And it will be a sweet thought and all those songs we sung will be there in the air or in the memories until no player is left to remember them, and then it will be up to the instrument to remember how someone’s fingers felt on the fretboard or how it felt to be held and how it felt to be a maker of song.