| Growing up in Central Pennsylvania
in the 1960s I was treated to music from a variety of sources. My
father and mother grew up on farms during the Depression and were, by their
own admission, "hillbillies" with a fondness
for traditional country music. Dad was a truck driver so the latest
"Truck Driving" records came home from the road with him. "Six Days on
the Road" by Dave Dudley was, for us, a family anthem. Mom and I often
visited my grandparents on the weekends so I spent a lot of time in the car
listening to the Grand Ole Opry and, my favorite, The Country Music Jamboree
from WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia. I can still hear the announcer.
My brother and sisters were teenagers by the time I came along so through
them I heard the Everly Brothers, Elvis, and others, including my first guitar hero -- Duane
Eddy. Sunday nights were blessed with Ed Sullivan. Ed's show brought
the Beatles, the Stones, all the great bands right into the American living room.
Mom was certainly not happy about the hair and the clothes, but I loved the
music. Like most kids in the late Sixties, as I rolled into my teen
years, I wanted my music to be a vast departure from that twangy Hank
Williams stuff my Mom listened to. Then one day in a junior high music
class the teacher said he had something special to play for us and dropped
the needle on the brand new Crosby, Stills, and Nash album. I thought
I had found heaven. This was acoustic music that was not too far
removed from what I grew up on, but those three voices together were like
nothing I had heard. From then on I wanted to be David Crosby (mainly,
I decided, because he had the coolest hair and mustache). I knew I had
to play music in front of an audience. I started on the harmonica. Dad had played
one on the road to while away the hours and miles. He died in 1967 and
his Marine Band in the key of C became mine; I set out to learn to play.
By the time I was fifteen I was playing the harp in coffeehouses at Penn
State. I joined the Air Force a few years later and then bought a
guitar at a pawn shop and taught myself to play a few chords. I was
listening to a Neil Young live album one day not long after picking up the
guitar and I realized he was playing the guitar and harmonica together.
It was an epiphany. I was already a harmonica player, why not do both?
I literally ran downtown to the music shop and bought a neck holder for the
harp. I could say the rest is history, but it's not. Over the
years I added bass guitar to my repertoire and have subsequently played in
duos, trios, and several bands and have performed everything except opera
and disco (if you don't count a few versions of "Play That Funky Music")
These days, when I'm not teaching high school
English, I enjoy performing solo, playing a few original songs and a lot of
classic acoustic rock. Hope to see you out there. |