Best selling author Brian Andreas writes, “She waved at all the people on the train and later when she saw they didn’t wave back, she started to sing songs to herself and couldn’t remember having a better day.”
I can’t help but wonder if we’ve stopped sharing songs with the children inside us. It sounds like a Julia Cameron Artist Way influenced question but through all the plastic walls we penetrate there must be some sort of truth in the soils that hold the original seeds to every dream we keep hidden from the world.
Laughingly I make fun of my current endeavors of being in a recording studio laying down the tracks for twelve songs while embarrassingly running from the chapters of the punk kid with a bowl styled haircut that once stood on giant haystacks in Ranchester, Wyoming pretending there were 500,000 screaming festival fans singing along the way they once did with Dylan, Lennon and Crosby Stills and Nash.
That kid could find happiness anywhere! Then one day you wake up and you’re expected to take everything serious. Being serious comes with a price; drop your dreams and build better foundations that guarantee an income with dental and health insurance.
I’m deeply inspired by Home Depot employee and Charlotte native Tommy Dicarlo, all he ever wanted to do was sing. He didn’t have a band so he settled for karaoke. It’s proved to be the missing musical link to the salvation felt when standing on a stage readied for an amateur performance. Millions of young boys and girls are set free from high school every year holding onto the idea of one day becoming something in a world of constant change. Set aside are the inner aspiration of gripping drum sticks or wrapping your greasy finger prints around the neck of a Hummingbird acoustic; its melts away quicker than a Popsicle held by a messy faced child standing outside on a 102 degree summer day.
It doesn’t matter how low you turn down the radio or how far you shove a CD into a player each push, shove and influence to turn your back doesn’t erase that scoop of goop that whispers to you, “I want to hear you sing…now do it again and again.”
There’s something about being on a live microphone that brings the sweet sounds of true soul from a tossed away childhood that mysteriously connects with a passerby who unexpectedly found themselves stopping and taking note of passion versus just doing it to have something to do because life’s boring.
Tommy’s a 70’s child who mastered the fine art of perfecting a simple self belief, “I can do it.” Do what? Harness a better sale at Home Depot? Create an unforgettable relationship with customer’s that guarantees the store will keep its highly touted reputation?
Hidden away in the darkest corners of the world of Tommy and only released during karaoke nights was a smoldering obsession to give fans of the rock group Boston a sound that time stole from us when news arrived that leader singer Brad Delp was no longer with us. Nothing hurts more than the echoes that remain in the aftermath of losing the voice that takes your shy self to a level of performance that makes you scream like a rock star while driving home or humming like a bird in the bathtub with suds tickling your nose.
Tommy’s daughter convinced him to put his Boston performances on You Tube and that decision floated through the universe like chocolate ice cream meeting birthday cake. Band leader Tom Sholtz just happened to be surfing the web and time stood still.
What is it about music that sucks the air right out of your lungs? How can a single note steal from your common sense and leave you in a state of addiction as the rest of you becomes an act of wanting to sell everything just to feel it again and again? What if Lennon and McCartney were inspired to write due to the song of a bird who then would get credit in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame?
“She waved at all the people on the train and later when she saw they didn’t wave back, she started to sing songs to herself and couldn’t remember having a better day.”
Three weeks ago I sat in the recording studio with Alan believing in the spirit released from his finely tune guitar—the moment I let go of the worries a Cancer holds too close to their visionary tracks…nothing seemed important except to take from the air lyrics from a song written by my very good friend Gary in 1979. I remember nestling up to the microphone attempting to locate a melody and into Pro-Tool you hear me say, “Come on Gary I need your participation.” And from the fog the child’s face reappeared.
I’m not going to write that we lost Gary to a drug overdose because its too cliché for Rock n Roll but all too true in the history of my personal hall of fame. Until just recently his music lived on a light blue cassette tape stuffed in a microphone carrying case with orange tape spooling around like a separate universe. I can still see him pressing his palms into the pages of a king sized notepad hoping to seize from the wind a hum or two to share with a world he’d never get to see.
Maybe I’m wrong…at 48 I could be deaf. I see young, old and plenty in the middle tapping their toes or swinging their hips but I almost never see lips moving to a rhythm and tone that lifts from your seeded soil those songs that always invited happiness on the rainiest of days chilled with fear, lack of love and a desire to keep reaching when the rest of the world had already given up hope.
What if today…you began to sing?
I will always believe in you first….
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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