Tonight, I am in a band. I am only a guest musician. But the guys on stage are my friends.
It’s a great night. Bright lights are shining in my face. There are happy people in the audience. And I can’t think of many things I love more than playing music with my friends. I am playing piano.
There’s an old saying about bands. The quickest way to get the band to sound good is to shoot the piano player.
Old joke. One I’ve heard many times. But then, I’ve heard them all throughout the years.
Q: What do you call a piano player without a girlfriend?
A: Homeless.
Q: What do you throw to a drowning piano player?
A: His piano stool.
I’ve been playing piano since age 9. The way I started playing piano was, my father bought an old spinet from the classified section.
One December afternoon, Daddy and three of his fellow ironworkers hauled the piano into our home and put the instrument into our dank basement, just beside the water heater, beneath the framed embroidery which read:
“Watch ye therefore: ye know not when the master of the house cometh.”
My father bribed his friends to help him move this piano by paying them with beer. His friends were feeling no pain. As a result, by the time the piano got to the basement, the thing looked as though it had fallen down three flights of stairs. Because, of course, it had.
But it sounded great. I was over the moon to have MY VERY OWN PIANO.
Mama asked Daddy whether he was going to buy me piano lessons. He replied, “If the boy wants to play bad enough, he’ll play.”
Because that was the old-school way. It was an “if you build it they will come” sort of mentality. Daddy supplied the piano, it was up to me to do the rest.
So I started practicing a lot. I read books from the library about how to make chords. I listened to a lot of records and tried to copy what I was hearing.
I became an ear player. At least that’s what the old timers in our church called it. This meant that I used my ears instead of written notes.
Soon, I was playing for church services each Sunday. I used no printed music. All I needed to know was which key the song was in. Then, using the miraculous power of my fine-tuned ears, I proceeded to ruin the entire church service.
Because, of course, I was a 9-year-old, and all I knew how to play was “Chopsticks,” and a dirty song my uncle taught me about the farmer’s daughter.
Often, in the middle of church service, veterinary clinic employees would make emergency calls to our church because they’d heard there was a dying cat on the premises.
But members within that little church suffered along with me until I eventually sucked less. You could say they truly believed in me. And that’s not nothing.
After my father died, I kept playing in church. But I branched out and started playing in country-western bands for cash.
Our bands played in joints with neon signs in the windows. I played in rooms so laden with smoke, all you had to do was breathe and you inhaled four packs of cigarettes.
But I loved playing music with my friends. I loved playing Hank Senior, Willie Nelson, George Jones, and Merle Haggard in places so foggy you couldn’t even see your bandmates.
I loved learning the melodies of Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke, and of course, Ray Charles, who is the fourth figure of the R&B Trinity.
Music got me through some very hard times in my life. Music is what distracted a grieving boy whose father had passed. Music was the diversion that helped this child find joy in a sad universe.
Music has at times been my only connection to the outside world. Music has been a connection with other human beings. Music is what has linked me to beer drinkers, cigarette smokers, and hymn singers alike.
Music is what made me cry when I needed a good cry. Music is what pricked my soul, when nothing else could.
But above all, music was the last gift John Dietrich gave me before leaving this world.
2 comments
stephenpe - October 16, 2024 12:03 pm
Music is magic at times. I play(ed) by ear. I have a piano here. I need to get back to it. Thank you for my morning story, Sean. They always take me to a good place.
Rosemarie - October 16, 2024 7:21 pm
My brother and I have played the piano since childhood, he’s much better; that’s the truth. I have a lovely upright, don’t play it regularly, but it’s here waiting for me, and when I practice, I can do it. Our son is a musician, plays sax (every type except the soprano), electronic horn, and bass guitar. He composes, arranges, sings, plays, etc etc, does local shows with a variety of bands, and went on a Euro tour with one of his rock bands this year; pretty heady stuff. Music is in his head all of the time. We suspected that when he was 2 years old, and used to dance to music on TV shows; always caught his attention. It’s simply his world. And his girlfriend has joined his world as well, playing the drums in one of his bands. He has a “day” job to pay the serious bills, but his music, his gigs, his tours, etc are what keeps him going and feeds his soul.