Thoughts....

I wrote this about a year and a half ago.. though you might enjoy it..


“I got friends there….waiting for me to, come outside” Sheryl Crow sings softly in the background. Weather Channel, peals softly off the walls like some cool soothing moist fog from my past.

The song takes me back to a time in my life when things were simple, yet becoming more complex by the day. 1973, sitting by my stereo every Saturday night, tuning into 96.5 FM, WSIU, from the campuses of Southern Illinois University. Each weekend we would tune into “The King Biscuit Flour Hour” to expand our then fledgling musical knowledge.

The sounds of Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt (still with the Stone Ponies) Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder would full my room, my ears, my heart. As a struggling young guitar player I strained to hear each note, trying to glean as much from each show as I could. Such effort exerted at such a young, impressionable age, it didn’t just stick, it molded my perception of what music should, could be.

More than just mere notes on a page, more that just frequencies of noise in the air, it stirred the soul. It spoke in ways that I had yet to awaken to.

Now in 2002, as I sit in my kitchen in Utah, I hear a progression of notes from some long lost chord, and a sweet feminine voice, in a bluesy sad slow drawl, and I can smell the sweet rain of Southern Illinois. I can feely the fall humidity crawl up my neck. I close my eyes and I’m 13 again. I relax for a moment and think all I need to worry about is my homework, (who’s this Nixon guy anyway and what’s a Watergate), what are the guys and I going to do tomorrow?

The power of a single simple song, amazing.