Nine Things About Me

Big craze, on Facebook at present, "9 Things About Me..." Sort of fun, in light of all the shallow relationships we have, to learn something unexpected about someone we think we have sized up.

1. I met my life partner at the age of 25, a couple of years after a failed marriage. We have been (Happy Together)  95% of my adult life (so far) 35 years.
2. I was born and raised on the West side of Chicago. I moved to the (hipper) Near North side as soon as I could.
3. After a couple of really great years living on the North side of Chicago, I visited my parents in Houston one Christmas. Four months later, age 18, I moved here with my girlfriend.
4. My single greatest achievement is co-raising two great kids that grew into great adults.
5. As a kid, I was really into music. It would have blown my mind if my adult self had shown up to explain I would have a career in which one of my jobs was supporting concerts of my idols; Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dr John, etc.
6. I played guitar my first rock show in Chicago at age 11 for a crowd of around 4000.
7. I played bass guitar in a band that regularly performed for a crowd of 55,000 in the Astrodome as part of Houston Oilers games.
8. I have enjoyed snow skiing since 1975. I have skied the Lake Tahoe area, New Mexico, Colorado, New Zealand, and Jan 2014 Park City Utah.
9. I have an incurable disease called Achalasia.  As incurable diseases go, it is one of the better ones, but it makes for a dubious relationship with food.

Bonus Thing: I am secretly the love child of Elvis Presley and Joanne Pankey.

Momma's baby daddy.

Most Intriguing Family Member?

Everyone has family stories, everybody's family is dysfunctional.We all have Mommy/Daddy issues, etc. But who is the least understood, most interesting member of your family?

For me that would be my mother's mother; Minnie.

Minnie was like a second mother to me, always there the whole time I was growing up, a helicopter grandparent before the label was struck. I was indeed the apple of her eye, could do no wrong, although I was often horrible to her  as a pre-teen.

That she was so... (how should I put this?) Dynamic. She could love on you with all she had, but flip her switch - and I do mean 'switch', and well, remember "The Exorcist"?
As a kid it was like she could never do enough for me, even long after I would say "STOP!"

In 8th grade I had an after school paper route where we pushed carts with large spoked wheels (like horses would pull) full of newspapers. Like the poem about the mail, we delivered in rain, sleet, cold and serious snow.
Minnie was sure I would not make it on those cold snowy days and would just have to 'come to my rescue' despite my telling her not to. I was a kid with grit and would dodge her in the alleyways of Chicago. It was like a game.

She would fight a bear without a moments hesitation for any member of her family, and afterwards, after beating the bear, fight tooth and nail with her family.

The first time we visited as a couple, she was hospitable and nice to R for about 30 minutes, and then vetoed the idea of bringing our small child to see his aunt (her sister) at 'the home' because "he might catch cancer from her". That my spouse would disagree caused her to fly into a rage and the bats tore out from the belfry.
As I started studying psychology, I realized she was, technically speaking, crazy, and we had all been enabling much of her behavior all our lives.

When you are raised in a crazy environment, it never occurs that this is not normal.
Like 'it's not me, it's you"
I will say this, the last couple of years of her life, as advanced age set in, I never saw her angry - she became sweeter and delighted everyone at the nursing home.

Life After . . . ?

You can learn much about someone listening to them tell about their life after high school.
Let's face it, for some of us the door opened to a wonderful new chapter at a large university, with interesting people who (like you) have their whole future glistening (like the Emerald City) before them.

There are also those of us (I include myself in this group) that completed high school (with great tenacity) and had a chapter begin called "Now What?"

Yes, I have a high school diploma, class of 1970 (I don't like to brag) and THAT in itself was a big deal in my family. My father didn't earn one, my mother didn't earn one, my sister didn't and so on...

I had become an earner very early on - 9 years old I worked Saturdays at my father's car lot, and then actually got a real job at 11 years old (my dad lied for me and told them I was 13) in a family owned supermarket ($1 /hr under the table -  more than I made washing cars Saturdays at the used car lot). But this story is what came after high school.

Let me set the scene just a tad more for context. Many of my running buddies (I didn't have any actual friends) started their new lives knocking up their girlfriend and being forced to marry. congratulations. Many hung out at a park and drank Boones Farm wine on a daily basis. I joined them once. To be fair, I did know a couple of dudes who went on to college and thus fell into that first group I mentioned.

My high school job senior year was driving Chinese food to the hungry folks of Chicagoland. I did that after school last part of the semester, and through the summer. I had a moo goo gai pan lovin' customer called George who would engage me in conversation when I would show up at the door of his high rise on Michigan avenue. After a 3-4 of these 'casual' inquires into my life, George invited me to his office to apply for a job with his small company. Wow! 17 and working at a real company indoors and everything!!!

The siren song of Texas called when my girlfriend and I visited my family Christmas '71. Wow, great weather, and pretty easy living from what I could tell. Bye George, bye Chicago, I am (we are) heading for Houston!

Now my second year out of high school and looking to get started in a new town (Sophomore year for you college kids). I did a stint as a waiter at Steak and Ale, a short gig as an apple stacker at Rice Food Market, then worked for a family building an add-on to their house in SW Houston.
Now we are at year 3. During my Junior year at the college of Hard Knocks, I:

1. Got married (age 20)
2. moved to Austin and became a full-time musician

Senior year would be me paying the rent (playing 5 nights per week at a lounge) and working hard to bring the band I was in to 'money' gigs.
A month before my 22nd birthday, our band hit the road for 4 months with one month in Albuquerque NM, and 3 months in San Francisco (where we were, quite literally the toast of the town). Graduation!

Life had officially begun, a glistening city lies ahead . . .

Killing Me Loudly with his Song(s)

Like many my age (b. 1953) the music of Elton John has been part of my life since the teen years. The man has a career spanning more than 40 years. E.J.'s first hit album was 1970, the year I graduated high school. Already a free agent, I was living on my own in Chicago. I lived in a garage apartment (my landlord called it a 'coach house'). I was already the deal; drove a VW Microbus, with a pretty good sound system and radio was half-way decent back then.

One night on the way home from my job delivering Chinese food, I heard an amazing song (Levon) and it blew my mind. So much emotion and energy! So there was more to this Elton guy than "It's a little bit funny..." Being a fledgling piano player,I really appreciated the voicing and the chord changes in that song.
Between the music of Leon Russel and this new guy Elton John, I was ready to throw myself into piano playing for real! I took private lessons at the American Conservatory of Music and got an old upright piano in the garage part of our coach house.

Over the years, I have performed many Elton John songs in many contexts. Sitting in the audience during his show last week really brought it all home. In over 2 hours of hits, each had some place of importance with me at a time in my life. Here are the highlights from his setlist that night (March 28, 2013):

4. Levon - The song that grabbed me first. I had to learn it's secrets, both musically and lyrically. There is enough meat in the lyric to get whatever meaning you may need/want to get. An Elton Song book helped out with the chord voicings.

5. Tiny Dancer - I like this one for a variety of reasons. We worked it up and played it right away when it came out ('dropped' in today's parlance). A cool, personal story of observations. Used very well in the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous. Tiny Dancer is still a go-to tune if I am on the spot - I can play it/sing it unconscious.

8. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters - One from the Tumbleweed Connection record. I worked it up just for the fun, never done it in a show. The Bernie Taupin words have a flow that that can still grab you by the heart to this day.

9. Philadelpia Freedom - one Elton wrote for his friend Billy Jean King (the tennis player). It uses what was called "the Philly Sound" in horns, strings and b,g. vocals. It's just a song that makes me happy.

10. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - a groundbreaking album for E.J. wonderful music coming from a whole new place, A song I enjoy playing in instrumental gigs, although the sentiment of the lyric is a tugger of the ole heartstrings.

11. Rocket Man - Two local men gave an art show. One was an astronaut who had personally set foot on the moon. The other man was his patron. He commissioned the astronaut/artist to make him a painting. I was hired to play music for the unveiling of the painting. After a brief lecture of what went into painting his work, what else could my first song be?

14.  I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues - We did this one in my 80's trio The Cadillac Band, It was therapy for drummer Bill as he went through his separation/divorce.

19. Daniel - another 'go to' song. 'Played it in many bands, contexts, still play it.

20. Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word - Another tune performed nightly in a duo I worked in the early 80's. My partner (the singer) was in the middle of a love triangle.

22. Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me - A song I sang in 1974, We spent a good deal of time getting the backing vocals down. It was the first time I ever got a 'standing O'.

There are more, but I realize this has gotten past the length of a normal piece and the blogger police will surely be after me. Killing me loudly . . .  indeed.

Life of Plane (Air that is)...

I awoke in an airplane. A pretty decent airplane. I felt there was a reason for me to be here, and I'd better start working out what it is.

As time went on, I took stock of what I had going for me. A pretty good machine, enough food to eat, companionship, a family who loved me... not bad!

Since my life was happening on (in) the airplane, I threw myself into learning about it. What made it fly? How do you get it off the ground? How high is up?

Thankfully I would receive clues from others more worldly than me. "Never co-sign a loan" (a good one), "Save your money" another good one. "Work hard at what you love to do", "Choose your companions wisely". And so on.

Having come from a long line of men who "flew their own planes", my time spent working on other's flight plans has been relatively short: I worked for wages from high school until a couple of years after H.S.
After that, "the sky was the limit".

It has taken 2/3 of a lifetime to realize our journey (life) is like an assignment to fly a plane around the world.

I recall time spent trying to figure out what I would do, then how I would do it. The biggest moment of that period was realizing I had choices and they were more than just those I saw around me.

There were years spent climbing, gaining altitude, struggling to reach goals and milestones.

and

Years spent cruising at a fairly comfortable level, working but not struggling, worrying.

It is evident as I see my 60th birthday on the calendar, that this airplane is coming down at some point.

But for the time being, I wouldn't mind taking it a few thousand feet higher first . . . 

Sleeping on the Floor

I have been reading Adam Carolla's book "Not Taco Bell Material" a Memoir. His life and mine have a number of similarities, so reading it has been a compare/contrast exercise. One of his theories has to do with the correlation between how far off the floor you are sleeping and how your life is going.

Being one who has slept on hard floors and about 3 feet off the floor, I think I have the qualifications to comment on this. When I went out on my own as a teen, I was on the floor. First sleeping on a waterbed. I was working an entry level job in Chicago and lived with a roomate. Not the best of worlds, but not all that bad. A good few steps ahead of my high school buddies at the time.

From there, was Houston. Sleeping on a cheap foam rubber mattress. It had a flimsy frame to hold it. BUT WAIT - the San Francisco gig found my then spouse and me back on the floor on a small mattress. A minor local celebrity, until we went to crash.

Quick flash forward, my father discovered a method for raising the bed really high, you almost had to get a step ladder to get into it. I used that method as a (single guy) larger fish in the small pond then known as Clear Lake (Our Bay Area). I did enjoy that time and the tall bed.

That was a long time ago.

My "adult life" has kept the mattress a respectable distance from the floor, although our current bed is a little low. The head board is about right, while the footboard is low. This is due to my habit of chocking in my sleep without the incline. Here's hoping your bed is just about 30.5" from the floor...