Like pulling a thread from my favorite shirt and finding it's yards long, I peer back through my history and see one long string of musical notes as far back as I can remember.

I'm sure it started with my mother's beautiful soprano voice and lovely piano playing.  Dad tuned into great music for our impromptu day-long road trips.  At home, curled up on the avocado carpet next to that mammoth console with gold fabric covering the speakers, my siblings and I grew up listening to classic country croonings, cried when Elvis died, anticipated the echo of Dueling Banjos, heard the stories of Jim Croce and Gordon Lightfoot.

Somewhere along the line I received my very own AM/FM radio with one of those shiny antennas I could extend for better reception and discovered the dynamic rock of the 70's.  Fascinated with lyrics, I remember waiting all day to hear a song on the radio just so I could copy it out in my spiral notebook.

Great choir teachers in junior and senior high school (and church) taught me to sing harmony just like it was the melody.  Suddenly harmony was popping out of every song I heard on the radio.  Unlike my peers who wanted to be lead rock-n-roll singers, I dreamed of being in the trio of backup singers!

On the instrument side, as a third grader I remember being told that learning an instrument was a "requirement" of my parents.  Oh happy day when a classical guitar suddenly appeared in my room, and I was learning how to read notes and play simple songs.  It was my desire to join band in school as well, but I didn't pass the band aptitude test (band nazi's).  Not deterred, I just took my guitar to my Mom's piano, compared notes and began playing piano with my sister's beginning piano books.  With some finagling and my sister's waning interest in lessons, our parents reluctantly allowed me to take her lesson every other week. 

My perfectionistic tendencies eventually eroded my confidence.  Even though I was placing well in local and district vocal competitions, one negative comment made by a friend's mother, while I tried to play and sing a song a bit high for my vocal range, basically closed the coffin lid on any further pursuit of music. I closed the lid of their piano feeling like I had closed the lid of my heart.

Press that fast forward button as you watch me toss the graduation cap, find my vocation, grow a family, and hang on to the boat through the various storms of life.  Press play and one morning a fellow pew warmer turns around and comments on my "beautiful" singing.  More sprinkles of compliments.  An invitation to join the worship team.  Ah–a welcome return to harmony!  A discovery of musicians who could play songs with only lyrics and some letters from the alphabet in front of them.  What?!  No perfection required?!  Slowly, the coffin lid was pried open and my music eventually burst out all over the place.

When I brought up the possibility of purchasing a piano, my husband suggested a guitar with the inarguable logic of being easier to carry to the campfire.  Not remembering a lick of guitar (pun intended!), I relied on the salesperson's nimble fingers to guide our purchase.  After wading through probably 20 shiny blonde guitars in our price range, she dragged me toward a plain mahogany dreadnought that hung forlornly on the "you can make payments" wall.  One strum and we could tell the Martin D-15 was the one!  Not even a year later, a beautiful old upright piano came up for adoption and became part of our family as well.

Since the piano was much easier for me to remember how to play and lessons were not an option, my Martin rarely saw the light of day until a new neighbor with a similar passion for music moved in next door. The guitar case was cracked open one evening and the mystery of the letters from the alphabet on the church lyric sheets was explained. He also explained what that clamp thingy (capo) was used for. Armed with numbers and letters, I felt like a program for music had just been downloaded into my brain. All the bits and pieces of notes and theory I had learned from childhood to that point suddenly made sense; I could "fly that helicopter" (like Trinity in the movie "Matrix").

I spent a year in my living room between the piano and the guitar and in the pages of a rhythm guitar book, and I learned how to decode those lyric sheets. I even learned how to transpose a song so it would fit my vocal range. My friends encouraged me to bring out the instruments and play or sing for them.

One friend told me about an open jam she had heard about at a local coffee shop. Leaving my guitar in the car, I walked in the door to smell the coffee and hear the sweet sounds of various stringed instruments, penny whistles, and (think slow motion here now…) h-a-r-m-o-n-y! This wonderful band of musicians kicked me out the door to go get my guitar and welcomed me back with open arms and patient hearts, and over the next few years became some of my closest friends as they accompanied me up through my musical progressions.

Monthly jams turned into weekly practices which morphed into playing at the local nursing home. Suddenly, there was a search for a band name to satisfy the questions of residents, and business cards to pass out because someone wants to hire us for their party. Well, then my husband decides we're going to need a sound system (he knows how to "buy my chairs" [from the movie Phenomenon]), a sprinkle of karaoke to get over mic fright, and suddenly haylofts and town halls are dance floors! Oh, and my favorite song to play and dedicate to the Band Aptitude Test Nazi's is "I'm With the Band" by Little Big Town! 🙂

Don't cut that thread just yet! Weave into the canvas some outdoor concerts, festivals and nightclubs. Now we need recordings and a website to direct traffic to. So here's the beginning of the recording of my musical history, the photos, the music, the fans, and the fun.