Prior to my fourteenth birthday, I begged my parents to buy me a guitar.  Finally, after several days of pleading and whining and gnashing of teeth my father said to me, “I will get you a guitar for your birthday, but I suspect that if I do it will end up being another dust collector in your room and you’ll never learn to play it.  So, if I get you a guitar I’m going to insist that you take lessons, at least for a few months, so I know that my money at least won’t be totally wasted.”

He could have said, “I’ll buy you a guitar if you cut off your right leg,” and I would have eagerly agreed, so enamored was I at the prospect of being a musician. I am often thankful for my father’s wisdom in this regard because due to the lessons he insisted upon, my new guitar did not become a dust collector in some dark corner of my bedroom. Rather, the guitar and music became a safe harbor in a stormy sea of adolescence and later an anchor upon which I came to rely for safety, solace and sanity.  Music has soothed me, entertained me, served as a letter of introduction, allowed me to share my soul, opened doors, provided income and gotten me laid.  It is now an old friend that I can rely upon in good times or bad, in sickness or in health, until death do us part.  Music doesn’t judge, is always happy to fall into the same old routine or willing to attempt something new and never grows too weary or bored to try it, “one more time.”

I’m so in love with my music

The way you keep me movin’

Ain’t nobody doin’ what you’re doin’, doin”

Joss Stone, “Music”

But, perhaps most importantly, music connected me to my friends.  Craig Mann, Gary Thill and Dave Gardner were three of the most influential people in my life as a teenager and young man.  They, like me, were musicians too.  They were my best friends. And of all the things we shared as friends, none was more powerful than the music.

My friend Craig never met an instrument he didn’t like.  More than that, he never met an instrument that didn’t like him.  The rest of us often joked that he could play an oboe if he had one. (In case you weren’t aware, oboe is considered one of the most difficult instruments to master). His head is filled with music.  He hears everything that’s there and everything which isn’t but should be.  Even though I have traveled down many musical pathways and many years and many miles from him, Craig is still one of the best musicians I’ve ever met.  And I’ve met some good ones.  He always amazed me and does so even still.

Gary began his musical journey around the same time as I did and we learned much together and from one another.  Simon and Garfunkel, The Moody Blues, The Beatles, The Stones, or Van Morrison have never been covered more poorly nor with more enthusiasm. We were each other’s cheerleader.  Gary is fearless is his music and has no ego.  While never afraid to try and fail, he usually gets it right.

Dave Gardner one day simply picked up a guitar and began to play. It was absolutely amazing.  I witnessed the whole thing.  Never a lesson or an instruction, in only a very few weeks he suddenly became.  Or, more accurately, he began doing what he was born to do.  Quiet, unassuming, shy, Dave just is guitar.

If there’s a load you have to bear

That you can’t carry

I’m right up the road

I’ll share your load

If you just call me

Bill Withers, “Lean on Me”

Last month, someone noticed that it had been forty years since we had graduated from high school and they planned, wisely or not, a reunion. I debated with myself about making the trip from Texas to San Diego until an e-mail from Gary informed me that Craig’s lovely sister, Candace had offered her home as a gathering place for the four of us and some other friends on the night before the reunion..  I’m so there! I e-mailed Gary and inquired whether we were to bring our instruments.  “Well, hell yeah,” he replied.  Oh, yeah, I am so there!

Candace, or Candy as we called her before she grew up and became respectable, is beautiful and always was.  A couple years older than my friends and me, I burdened under a backbreaking crush on her for most of my pre-adulthood.  She always seemed so grown-up and experienced and exotic.  Laughable, of course, because I think she may have been all of sixteen years old when I met her. And, even more “Teenage Dream”- like, all of her friends seemed to be beautiful as well.

The consummate hostess, she prepared a delicious dinner for the fifteen or twenty of us, made us all feel welcome and important to the gathering and then graciously and inconspicuously stepped out of the way, as the rest of us reminisced.

If I had ever been here before I would probably know just what to do

Don’t you?

If I had ever been here before I would probably know just how to deal

With all of you.

Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Déjà Vu”

A couple hours later someone said, “Are you gonna play or what?” Without further cajoling, musical instruments virtually flew out of weathered, black cases.

We played.  Mostly old songs that we hoped someone still remembered most of the words to.  Some of the songs we used to play when we were fifteen and sixteen years old.  It was just the same.  Nothing is just the same you say; you can’t go home again.  Apparently, Thomas Wolfe was not a musician because for those few hours in that beautiful home in Southern California, while the music played, we all went home again.

Craig was masterful. We knew he would be.  Gary remains fearless and generous. Dave still is guitar.  And, I was there too, playing and singing and laughing and living as if I were sixteen, as if we all were.

Some of us are not as healthy as we once were. None of us is as young. None of us is as full of youthful, naive hope.  But, the music bound us back then and it binds us still.  The production of music is something we can’t share with our spouses or friends or children but that is, in fact, the essence of why we still play.  It’s because we want so badly to share it.  We want to share this magic thing that happens to us when we play.  And, that’s why we play. 

Out there in the spotlight, you’re a million miles away

And every ounce of energy, ya’ try and give away

As the sweat pours out your body like the music that ya’ play...

Well, here I am.

Bob Seeger, “Turn the Page”

For me, and probably for all of us, the entire evening was bittersweet.  I know that we all realized, that this night in Southern California might well be, probably will be, the last time in our lives that we share our music together.  But, for this night I am grateful...oh, so very grateful. To all of those who shared their home and their food and their drink and their time and their ears and their laughter; for all of those who were there to share the magic one last time, thank you so very much

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken and many times confused

And, I’ve often felt forsaken and certainly misused

But, it’s alright, it’s all right. I’m just weary to my bones.

Paul Simon, “American Tune”