Music Monday - Making rather than Playing (Part II)

(read part I)


After high school, I didn't do much music making for several years... like probably 15 years or so! And then one Sunday morning my big break came.

Cindy had managed to convince me to start going to church, and we were going to Champions Centre here in Tacoma. I was serving in the tech department, running the sound board in the 6-8 year old kids' room. For many of you, this concept is very foreign... but the classroom was a big auditorium with about 125 seats, and a stage at the front where the teachers would teach the lesson, do skits to illustrate the gospel principles, and at one end, a full band with drums, guitar, bass, keys and vocals. There was also a screen on the stage that projected the words to the songs, controlled by a computer in the tech booth. That's why I was there, and I did it a couple Sundays per month.

This one Sunday however, the drummer hadn't shown up for sound check... As the morning went on, and the official start time crept near, he still hadn't shown up... The lady in charge of the music ministry was starting to panic, so I stepped out of my comfort zone and said "Ya know, I could play the drums if you need me to..." It wasn't hard at all to find a kid who was semi-trained in the tech booth to run things, since I had already set pretty much everything. Five minutes later, I was up on stage, no sound check, no rehearsal, but I knew the songs... and I had an absolute BLAST!! Afterwards, the music lady (Tracy) told me - not asked, but told - that I was going to be on the schedule one week per month on drums from now on. I was SO EXCITED!!

From that unexpected beginning, I branched out and became a singer as well. After storming the stage at Kids Camp, grabbing Tracy's microphone, pushing her to the back of the stage, and whipping the kids into a God-Praising frenzy, she told me two things: "First, don't EVER do that again. And Second, you're now on the schedule for vocals as well as drums.

"I was just cruisin' right along with that, singing, drumming, leading kids in worship, helping to make church a place where the kids WANTED to go... And I really fell in love with the feeling of being in a band, putting together the different parts that make up a song, and performing it live.

In addition to the drums, I'd had a longstanding interest in playing Bass. I'd thought about it during school, but never did anything about it... I'd mentioned it to Cindy a few times, especially after playing drums at church, and really getting into the relationship between drums and bass...

Then, on the morning of my 37th birthday, Cindy told me she'd gotten me a really exciting present. Somehow, my instinct told me that she'd bought me a bass, but I couldn't allow myself to believe that - it was a crazy notion! Then she told me it was too big to wrap... (there's that thought again!)

Finally, she blindfolded me and set it across my lap - and there it was, I was holding a gorgeous Fender Jazz Bass! It was so unbelievably cool!! Almost instantly the panic set in - I'd been talking about playing bass for years, but what if I wasn't able to actually PLAY it?? Panic was unnecessary, as I took to it very naturally, and three months later - with no lessons - I was playing it on stage at church!

Cindy's dad came up from Arizona for a visit shortly after that, and kept talking about a guitar he had that he wanted to give me. Now, if you've met Cindy's dad, you know that somewhere in the range of 94.5% of what he says should be taken with a grain of salt, if it's taken at all. He went back to Arizona, and we got back to our regular lives... Until one day Cindy called me at work and said that a HUGE box from her dad had shown up, with my name on it. I opened it up, and WOAH! It was a very nice, hollow-bodied electric guitar!

I'd had an electric guitar as a teenager, but never took it beyond the photo prop stage. I was convinced that mere mortals couldn't manipulate six strings at the same time, and I was perfectly okay with that! Although by the time I received this incredible gift from my father-in-law, I'd gotten to know several of the guitarists at church, and they seemed to be as mortal as me, so maybe there was a way to make it work...

I invited our good friend (and real life guitar hero) Chris Cohoe over for dinner, and to check out my new guitar in the hopes that he would teach me a few things. He obliged, and taught me one or two chords, plus some scales for use when playing lead. By the end of the night, he was playing rhythm chords on Tyler's mini-guitar and I was playing lead on "Big Red." WOW! I was playing guitar!

One Saturday about a year ago, Kaylee (then 10 years old) came up to me and said she had written a song and needed me to help her polish it. Kaylee had written a few songs before, the type that little girls often come up with, so I am ashamed to say that I didn't immediately recognize that this time was different. I was doing some sort of busy work that I insisted on finishing up, but by the third time she asked me to help her, I got the hunch that this was bigger and/or better than her previous efforts. We went downstairs and I grabbed Big Red, she was clutching her notebook, and I asked her to show me what she had worked out already.

The kid had written 2 verses, a chorus and a bridge! But that wasn't the biggest shock, the biggest shock was that it was REALLY GOOD! For the next hour or two, we figured out how the melody went, recording each little section on the laptop so we wouldn't forget how it went by the time we got the next part down. Finally, when we put it all together and went through the whole song, I had goosebumps on both arms - an indicator that what I'm hearing is better than good, it's GREAT!

We called up Chris (my guitar mentor) and played it for him, and he was like "no really, who wrote that?" Kaylee was singing with me on the team at church, so a few weeks later, when rehearsals ended, we taught Chris her song, and had her sing it with a proper guitar backing. Everyone on the kids music ministry was blown away, and told Kaylee she should sing it for talent night! Unfortunately, we haven't gotten the song done with a full band yet, but it's going to happen. That kid has amazing talent... and guess what? Next year she's starting 6th grade, and wants to play... ALTO SAX! I can't wait to have a sax around the house again... and am looking forward to helping her learn to play it.

Meanwhile, I haven't graduated to actually playing the guitar with other people yet... The biggest problem is lack of time to practice. But I have played it with the family many times, can do a few complete songs, co-wrote Kaylee's #1 smash hit, "Breathe" on it, and have a strong enough desire that I know it'll happen before too much more time passes.

After that, I may just revisit the piano!

There's a special Part III Next Monday - Don't Miss It!