After all, what is a road trip without music? She was the driver so she got to chose the playlist. It was a multi-generational girls trip for spring break and I was not driving. The playlist was not babyboomer – not from the 70s. The playlist was millennial and included a hearty dose of driving drumbeat intros (so far, so good), but also some raspy sounding screamo.
I sat in the backseat feverishly editing the manuscript for Precious Journey. My (almost) 15-year-old granddaughter occupied the front passenger seat and my daughter of 33 years was driving. The trip was her idea. The music was her music. Suddenly, the timbre of the male voice grabbed my attention. There was something familiar about the vocal placement, even the enunciation of the lyrics. This was a clean professional recording I had not heard before. I thumped the back of the driver’s seat. “Is this Philip?” I called. “Nope,” she answered, “Project 86.”
We rode on. We heard some millennial classics. We listened to soundtracks. A solid, hard, rock drumbeat laid an extended intro to a song. “This is my favorite band,” quipped my daughter from the driver’s seat. “You really like the drummer?” I queried. “Nope. Crush on the guitar player. This is the last thing they ever recorded.” It was, without question, a professional studio recording – not a rough take. And now I knew; she was the drummer. Three different band incarnations, same three musicians. They met in high school marching band. The first rock band formed in my basement at a homecoming party. They morphed into hardcore rock, then post hardcore. They lived for a time in the same house in Ft. Collins. They have now gone separate ways.
Fire Extinguisher – the first album my oldest son ever produced, toured, recorded, merchandised, released as a cassette and CD and personally presented me a T-shirt for. SMA – good old Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from out of the past (think 1997) came wafting into my mind as I listened to the male voice, now more mature, judiciously trained, skilled and versatile. The driver turned to her niece. “That’s your dad,” she said.
Friends, I am not musically illiterate and I am not going deaf. Yet, I could not tell the difference between the national best sellers and billboard names and my own children. When you have lived in a music house for over 60 years yourself, when you have been exposed to recording studios and stages of every genre, when you have spent a good deal of time on study and practice of vocal production, when you work daily in music, you notice things. My children have arrived. Whether the world ever recognizes them – or not – I do. These are children who grew up in a music house.
