We crashed their party, and when I say we, I mean two genXers – both of them dads – and me, the gray-haired baby-boomer. “Let’s go down,” said my 47-year-old son, “And ask if we can jam with them.” He was talking to me, but mostly to a former bandmate who was visiting from out of town. Down we trooped, to the well-appointed basement studio. “Can we set in?” I called, feeling very much like a nuisance neighborhood kid. Now I ask you, how can two sixteen-year-olds, one seated on the throne and the other slapping a bass, refuse the dad who shelled out the lettuce for all the equipment? And how can they refuse grandma? Captain picked up a second bass (Tennille was upstairs chatting with the mom of the graduate). Kvon grabbed the guitar and started setting options on the pedal board. I flipped the switch on the keyboard stack and got…nothing – this is not my studio and the sound man is AWOL. So I moved to the Hammond which was live last time I was here, pulled a few tabs, disengaged some buttons and full-throttled the Leslies. We’ll play in “A” said the captain to the co-bassist. So I did. Played “A” for about ten minutes. Played A 440 on the upper manual and A 440 on the lower manual and A 880 and riffed the notes in between. Eventually, I slide off the bench and drifted away to greet cousins and walk the old homestead. The teenagers switched instruments and cross-trained. But for a moment there, it felt like old times. I’m even saddle-sore from dangling my legs off an organ bench. And what of the graduate, the person who precipitated this event?

He wasn’t manning the keyboards, instead, he was playing video games with his classmates. Are they wasting time? No. Think of it as research. He’ll design something someday, a game that integrates original music and video and creativity and it will be a hit. Because all this is what you do; all this is at your fingertips, when you were raised in a music and media house, with grandparents who were songwriters, engineers, and bandleaders in the 70s and great grands who knew how to raise the roof at gospel camp meetings. 

***

I returned to the music house today after a job interview of sorts. Like most interviews I have been to, this one included a fair amount of listening on my part – listening to the story of another and absorbing the information between the lines and applying it to my life, shaping an opinion and a proposal. Unlike most interviews I have ever been to, this one ended with me sitting on a piano bench playing a medley of popular tunes whilst the retiring piano man wandered off to talk to the restaurant owner. “I told him he should hire you,” he said. “When he asked me why, I said because you guessed the correct amount of money in the tip jar.” He laughed and played a few tunes for me. I thanked him and walked back home, declining a ride in his convertible. After all, it’s only a few blocks and the weekend weather is fine. Walking gives me a chance to soak in the neighborhood ambience and hear various kinds of music wafting out the doors of houses and food establishments. My own house is no exception. When I arrived home live music was filtering through the open screen. Laid back guitar riffs, a bit of funk, nice steady patterns on percussion, perfect for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Andrea sat on the cahon, hand-drumming snare and bass and adding tambourine fills with her foot. My guitar was in the hands of someone obviously more capable than I who was effortlessly picking and strumming. A mandolin and a bass lay in open cases nearby. They’ve gone to do some grocery shopping now, and I just spent another hour at the keyboard improvising old favorite tunes. It’s a fine thing to live in a music house, and an even finer thing to have a musical family.