Last weekend my niece Emma was crying because she didn't want to go to a football game with the rest of us. It was her brother's last time playing in his his school band and so she was being forced to go. I tried to make her laugh but she wouldn't let me. My mom told her, "You sound like Tim used to when he was your age and we used to make him go listen to your Pap play music."
I've always contended that my mom was the basis for the character Edith Bunker, but this time I'm sure she knows she made me think.
In the 60's and early 70's my dad practiced every night. I used to sit with my face against the TV speaker or go outside so I didn't have to listen. Most Friday and Saturday nights they would force me to go to barn dances, old churches, union halls, and the Jamboree in Wheeling, where my dad's band would play. When I could, I would wander outside or maybe listen to a baseball game on the radio in the car. I remember "Wildwood Flower", "Your Cheatin' Heart", lots of the old classics, but the first time I ever really listened without complaining was at a barn dance in 1973. I was sitting in the car listening to a baseball game when I heard some older people walk past complaining, "I can't understand Mouse's band wanting to play that rock and roll crap..." When I stepped inside the barn they were playing "House of the Rising Sun". It sounded like a country band covering the song, but not too bad to me.
I'd give anything to be able go go back, and listen closer to the dobros, mandolins, fiddles, even the steel guitars, just to hear the flavor. I think I listened enough that it helped to shape my appreciation for music and the artists that flavor it by pouring in parts of their souls. I go to hear all the live bands I can today and I'm thankful I was forced to when I was younger, just as I was forced to do my homework.
One laughable side note - in the early 80's I was old enough and liked to go to some of the bars my dad's band played in. There was a place in Moundsville WV called The Hayloft where he played and sometimes a grade school aged kid, Brad, would bring his guitar around and sit outside picking and showing off for all of us. The kid could sing pretty well and sometimes the band would jam a little with him outside before they played. We all thought it was cute that he often commented that he wanted to sing for them some night, but of course could not go in the bar and would lower his head and walk home as we went inside. I guess little Brad Paisley got his wish some years later.
