Tag Archives: peter paul and mary

Neil Young

I’m listening to him now. It’s just a dream is the tune and I must get back to it before This Old Guitar with Joni Mitchell.

When your spouse wants a gift you should know it. I would have had tickets to a concert last week if one beloved artist was in town at the same time as my husband was in town. He should know I am this old guitar. Neil Young played it with Joni Mitchell on Hank Williams’ old guitar. Oh, my. I may swoon with such talent.

What a history old rock has with country and folk. I learned to play guitar with mainly Johnny Cash, PPM and CSNY. Lyrics only except at lessons for a few months. I’ve always wanted to make things more difficult for myself by choosing my own chords and only having the lyrics but have made it easier via the country model of A,C, G and E. Of course I know B7 and some minor chords but the F’s and others are troublesome because I’ve small, stubby fingers and can’t reach across and hold all the strings down.

I do have a lot of sheet music, some from my Dad. Notebooks of lyrics and everything is now taped up in boxes, in storage. My keyboard is in storage. I do keep my new, smaller artisan folk guitar here to hydrate it every week.

The goal with my music is to be able to share at home with family. I never made a career of it. No, I don’t want to shred on a Strat except on Rock Band. Writing and music help make the long stretches of time my husband is away on business livable. Singing Leaving on a Jet Plane and doing my own harmony is how I get through long car trips to get to see family.

His gifts to me are my guitar and keyboard. I guess you could say that over eleven years ago he got me a dog but I worked that off in the first year with research and her surgeries. Oh, last week he got me a fish turner (I call it a Flipper and try to sing the song from the old tv show but don’t recall lyrics).

The fish flipper is an incredibly useful tool but I’ve never had one and it can be used for steaks or burgers….. He found me the only one on Amazon that’s left-handed! A friend’s spouse asked for a gift. I gave ideas. My husband and I do not give gifts on regular holidays, birthdays or anniversaries. We think of little things like learning to make real Texas Chili as a gift. It just doesn’t have a box or a ribbon.

Neil Young, thanks for being a rebel. As one of your CSNY cohorts would say, “Be Yourself.” And you always have been. Thank you for that. Hearing your voice today was a gift to me. Dee

Guitar

Yes, I took up the guitar at age fifty. I filed our taxes on April 15 and decided to pay a bit of our refund for a guitar. I didn’t have any idea how to buy a guitar and bought a good one but the wrong one for me for $200. But I also signed up for lessons, private lessons.

I learned a lot in a couple of months then they changed teachers and I got a drummer. He didn’t care to teach chords and said people don’t care if you can’t hit a note, you just have to be on the beat. That may be OK in his world but not in mine.

The downfall came when he realized I may have perfect pitch and he doesn’t so he wouldn’t let me into a darkened practice room to tune up before a lesson. I’m paying for this, not a parent and I want every bit of thirty minutes to count and I always pre-tuned at home a mile away.

This is not a bad story. I did get him a chronology of his favorite band before I quit. Now I have a really good folk guitar that I keep hydrated, a keyboard to help me figure things out because I read a piano better than I read a guitar. I’m not a musician, had to go to the mall instead and quit everything to be a kid.

The celebrated Western singer Juni Fisher approved my choice of guitar, a Seagull. Don’t tell anyone but we all sang Beatles Rock Band together once.

I wake up with a different song in my heart every morning and tend to sing it for a moment or two. Today I fused John Denver with The Eagles. I didn’t sing it out loud.

You, you, you are the sunshine…. from legendary PPM, we could use some of that sunshine here! Dee

 

500 Miles

“If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone…”

That is the first song I had my “band” sing at age 12. I had no idea it would later mirror my life. I’m now 1,300 to 7,000 miles away from what would be home but luckily we do have one of our own.

When Peter, Paul and Mary sing that song it always reminds me of home. Our families needed to take care of us and now we must prepare for the reverse.

Now we can fly to see them. We do so at least once a year. We did drive last year and it took 24 hours and two hotel stops, with Zoe the dog. We’re lucky BB King’s in Memphis gave us a table with her on the patio, because she was not allowed to stay in the hotel room by herself. Everyone wanted to pet her.

People talk of never wanting to move. We move. We have a dog and she should be in obedience school at nearly ten years old. Everyone loves her and knows her name and she has a sweet temperament.

We fly or drive or train or even take the lake ferry to get to see our folks, because that’s what it’s all about. Family. My mother is gone but I do wish a happy Mothers’ Day to M and Nanny and Ann. They have made me feel like family. Cheers. Dee