Photo: Shelby McQuilkin
It’s Labor Day. If you’re reading this, you should be out doing something besides reading blogs.
I didn’t mean that. You should totally be reading this blog.
But for the holiday, I figured I’d dispense with the how-to stuff and just talk a bit about what it is that I love about music, and why I’m so passionate about doing what I can to help musicians reach their potential.
Last night, I watched a documentary of Johnny Cash called “Johnny Cash’s America.” (Oh, the power of DVR.) Johnny Cash is one of those lifetime influences for me, and he continues to inspire me even after his death.
One thing that’s interesting about Johnny Cash is that when he and his band first started, they could hardly play; they didn’t start out as iconic or anything. But Cash became known as a symbol of stark honesty in his music, a symbol of counter-culture. Years after country music stopped paying attention to him, punks and Goths started celebrating him. To this day, Cash defies categorization musically–his sound is instantly identifiable, even before he starts to sing. We remember him as a sort of dark horse, a man who stood up for the downtrodden even as he battled his own demons.
One of my all-time favorite movies is Mr. Holland’s Opus starring Richard Dreyfuss. Please take a few minutes to watch the video clip below. It’s not necessarily the easiest thing to watch, but there’s something Mr. Holland says to the principal that really sums up my personal passion for the arts, why they are important, and why they need to be taught and nurtured.
Here’s the problem: if I tell you how long I’ve been involved with music, it will give away my age. But if I lie and tell you how young I am, you won’t believe I know what I’m talking about.
So let’s just skip that part.
Anyhow…hi, there! If you’re an independent musician, or even if you just like music in general, this blog is (hopefully going to be) just what the doctor ordered. Let me tell you why.
