I bought my first guitar when I was seventeen. My aunt and her husband briefly owned a vacation resort on the Grand Mesa in western Colorado and I worked for them the summer before my senior year docking boats during the day and washing dishes in the evening at the restaurant serving the patrons staying at the cabins or visiting the mesa to fish or boat on the many lakes there. I saved my money and bought my guitar at a pawn shop in downtown Denver when I came home at the end of the summer to start school.
The guitar is a handmade Mexican classical beauty with a rosewood body and a solid spruce top. I learned to play basic chords by listening to an instructional record and following along in a book. Those basic chords would serve as the foundation of my self taught repertoire and songs for many years.
Almost fifty years later, it is still with me. Many songs found their way thru the strings of that first guitar as it followed me thru the years; thru a few marriages, the birth of a beautiful daughter now a beautiful woman and artist, thru many and varied jobs and professions all the while waiting patiently to sing and dance with me when I found time to play. It shows the wear and use of those many decades but it is one of those prized personal possessions that tells the story of my life and times thru the songs that found me. I don't play it much these days as I have evolved musically and found other guitars to share my musings. But it remains a dear friend that shares my history and experiences over time. I consider my first guitar my life long best friend. Always true, always there, always willing to listen.
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Over the years I amused myself by melodies I made . Told stories of my journey of discovery as a young adult. Told stories of love and romance. I reflected on my experiences and captured them in verse and melody. I always had a love for music and found my own way in the absence of any real opportunity to learn and experience music as a discipline and art. My father's family were Italian immigrants. My father was an athlete who couldn't carry a tune and thought Dean Martin was all you needed to know about music. But the musical DNA of grandmother on my mom's side found its way to me.
As a child from the earliest age, I would travel from my home in Denver to western Colorado and spend my summers at my grandparents apple farm. My mother's parents . My days would be spent in a wondrous privacy exploring among the trees in the orchards or climbing the rocks stacked from the fields to make fences. That place between yours and mine. As a young boy , I came to love solitude and its many sounds.
It was during those summers I spent at my grandparents farm that I first found my love of music. My grandmother grew up in mining towns all around Colorado during the 1920's . Her mother was an enterprising madam that catered to the needs of the miners. When in her teens, my grandmother would play piano at the mining town honky tonks.
At the farm, she had a very cool upright she got from a church in town when they remodeled. The piano was set up in an old barn we called the bunk house. A fragile, old beautiful building with tools and old stuff everywhere. There was a small room with an over sized bed and wood cook stove. That was my space. Each morning I would hear the day begin from that huge, soft bed as my grandfather whistled while feeding the chickens or setting the water. On occasional evenings, that old upright would jump to life as my grandmother kicked it into gear and danced with those dusty ivory keys.
I must have been six or seven years old. I remember sitting on an old wooden apple crate next to the piano as my grandmother played in the breezy cool of the summer evening. The place would shake with her twangy honky tonk and singing. I marveled at how she could glide her fingers across the keys from bass to treble as the evening turned to night and the stars settled into listen. It was wonderful. The memory is like heaven to me. It was the kindest gift of fate and chance that foretold of my lens of self. Those were beautiful moments.
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Through the years I would play farmers markets and small venues or parties. About five years ago the passion and reward I find in making music took a more defined direction. I found a thirst to grow artistically and musically. I wanted all the melodies waiting patiently to be heard to find their voice and time. The songs shared with you here are the product of my musings. I hope to share more songs and stories of my journeys around the sun and my time here and now as they find there way to words and melodies.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy.