As with most people who are writing about themselves, it starts with our parents doesn’t it. I’m number five out of six children. Music coursed through my family. My mother had an exceptional singing voice. She loved big band music. She would sing as she did the dishes. She would sing at the grocery store to the horror of me and my little brother. A dear memory of mine is standing next to her as a teenager singing “The Long and Winding Road” while she played the organ. My father, on the other hand, loved Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. They both loved the Mills Brothers and the Kingston Trio.
When I was in kindergarten, my mother would play Grandpa Jones on our portable record player next to my bed so I would go to sleep. And I would stare out my bedroom window because my brother Mark told me a little man climbed up the telephone poll out front of our house and turned the light on every night.
As a first grader, I started listening to the radio, Up until then, it was whatever my parents played on their record player or on the car radio. My favorite song was “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals. My mom was not happy. I asked her about Johnny Rivers “Memphis” and the deal with writing on the wall. She said something about beatniks. I remember thinking that these beatniks sounded like interesting people.
I became a radio junkie. I grew up listening to WLS and Larry Lujack, Dick Biondi, Fred Winston and the rest. I cried, like everyone else did, when they fired John Records Landecker…the first time. I listened regularly to the hilarious Kevin Matthews, a Michigander. That is until radio became unrecognizable in the late 1980s,
The first album I paid over $3 for was Paul McCartney’s Ram. I walked past it several times before I decided to stick a crowbar in my wallet and buy it. With all due respect to Marvin, my favorite version of ‘Heard it Through the Grapevine’ is by Gladys Knight and the Pips. I rarely missed a high school dance. At one point, our neighbor called my mom and complained that the radio was too loud. She told them that was me, so I shut my bedroom window.
If I was stranded on a desert island, the one song I would choose is “Honey Child” (live on Folkscene version) by Peter Case. On a different desert island I would probably choose anything by Sly and the Family Stone. One of my favorite albums is “Fear of Music” by Talking Heads. Another one is “Late for the Sky” by Jackson Browne. I could listen to David Lindley’s fiddle playing all day long.
The first concert I went to was Santana at Grand Valley, back when it was a community college in 1973 or 1974. I was 15 years old. They played for a solid two hours and I soaked it up like osmosis. My second concert was Jackson Browne at Miller Auditorium, the Late for the Sky tour. I was 16 and had to go to school the next day. When concert tickets went over $7 at Wings Stadium, my friends and I swore we weren’t going to pay it. But, of course, we did. We had so much fun.
I took up the violin at age 10 and the guitar at age 14. The brother of a friend of mine taught me to play. He taught me how to pick chords from a song so I could play anything I had a recording for. The first song I learned how to sing and play at the same time was Neil Young’s “Ohio.” When I got out of high school and tried to play out in public, I realized I had terrible stage fright. Yeah, me and Van Morrison.
Back around 2001, a co-worker of mine who did poetry slams, invited me to come sing. I thought about it for roughly three weeks and agreed. She said, “Great. It’s tonight.” Again, sometimes I just don’t know enough to be wary. I sang my a capella version of Jackson Browne’s “The Late Show.” This song is over 5 minutes long and full of harmonies. Who does that?! You really have to pick and choose what lines you’re going to sing. And playing my guitar would have been too much like actual performing. But, half way through the song, I noticed it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.
I feel that if I had made it in the music industry, I would have made it as an arranger. I seem to have a knack for it. But I have to listen to things as an outsider…as in don’t acknowledge me, just let me sit and listen for a bit and then we can talk. If anyone asked me to come in and arrange their song for money, I would respond like a deer caught in headlights.
In the David Letterman/Bono/Edge documentary, they play through a song at the end that Bono says they can’t seem to get the arrangement down. I can do that. It’s a pretty simple fix. One that would also give them some options to experiment with.
My on-line username, travellerbytrade, comes from the Sandy Denny song, “Listen, Listen” – I am a traveller by trade, I only have what I have made, a fortune teller too they say, and he can take us all away.
Had enough? Will your eyes roll back into your head if you have to read another word? This is me. This is what I do and who I am when I’m not writing.
OK, I’ve dropped enough musical references to keep everybody busy for some time. So, off you go…and we’re shooing.
A Biography of Orville H. Gibson 