Helping Hand...

Obviously, my father knew what my goals were going to be and planned my Christmas present accordingly. I know this because I got a package in the mail today. It contained one perfect copy of Rise Up, Singing, a music fakebook I have been wanting for some time. This is going to help me a great deal with my guitar practice, because it contains just about every song I remember hearing played at friendly jam sessions with my family.

You see, I am a musical nitwit in an amalgamation of musical families. My father can sing. My mother can sing and play piano and dulcimer. My uncles and my daddy can sing and play a variety of guitars. My sister can play the flute, one brother can play the drums, and the other, the guitar. My parents friends - the adults I grew up with - can play drums and guitars and mandolins and saxaphones.

Although I took flute lessons and piano lessons and (as an adult) guitar lessons, I have always felt like the musical ugly duckling amongst my relatives. That didn't stop me from relishing the sing alongs that invariably began whenever people got together - often beside a roaring bonfire. Some of my best memories from my youth are of resting my head on my mother's lap, listening to folk songs fading one into the other. There are snippets of songs from Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Sally Rogers, and John Prine the bubble up in my head from time to time that I KNOW most people of my generation have never heard. For example:

It was late one night in the pale moonlight
and all the vegetables went on a spree.
They put out a sign that said "Dancin' at nine"
and all the admission was free.
...
Little tomato, agitator
shook the shimmey with the sweet potato.
And old man Garlic dropped dead with the colic
down at the barnyard dance - this morning -
down at the barnyard - early this morning -
down at the barnyard dance!

How many 26 year olds do YOU know that have even heard this song, much less had it running through their heads?

Um. What was my point? Oh, yeah. Despite always feeling slightly dim-witted about music, I have not given up on my attempts at learning a musical instrument. I know that I will never be great, but I have promised myself that I will eventually be capable of playing some of my old favorites on guitar. Thanks to my father, I now have a book-ful of those songs boiled down to their simplest. This is gonna be fun!