For goodness sake, are you as tired of all the name changing going on as I am? Just this week the governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, called the Statehouse Christmas tree a “Holiday Tree”,  and he’s catching a lot of flack for it. What’s next?

My nephew Jonathan, an avid Disney aficionado, Tweeted this week that the Walt Disney Company has been slowly taking father Walt’s name out of several corporate logos, to simply read–Disney. The Muppets movie, now in theaters, is conspicuously missing “Walt” in the castle logo at the beginning of the film, leaving just the founder’s last name. Other Disney logos have changed over the past year as well, including Disney’s California Adventure Park changed to Disney California Adventure. The names of several shops in both North American Magic Kingdoms have changed over the years as sponsorships come and go. Has this changed the perception of Disney? Does a moniker really make the product?

The Disney name game doesn’t compare to the  “Christmas Tree” versus “Holiday Tree” ballyhoo. I think the tree fiasco is a game the governor of Rhode Island has already lost to the overwhelming majority. You see, no matter what one wants to call this season, everyone knows what it’s all about: BABY JESUS! I think it’s pretty silly that a politician would try and lessen it’s importance by instituting a name change. Isn’t “holiday” a contraction of “Holy Day”? The joke’s on you, Mr. Chafee!

Random stack of ready-to-knit colors

My home is filled with color…not just warmth, love, rest and solace. All of those qualities define our sanctuary–thanks to my sweet wife. But the particular color I describe comes from all of the yarn that she spins. I’m not talking about tall tales here, but the real thing. My wife loves everything about fiber–all the way from cleaning and dying a fleece, spinning it, to knitting, what to me are, works of art.

Cleaned fleece, ready to spin

When people come into our home, there is usually a knitting project, in some stage of progress, laying in a basket, atop beautifully-spun yarn. Most of it is from sheep, but some of it comes from exotic places like the coat of a rabbit (angora), alpaca and silk, even plant sources like linen and hemp. Sometimes you have to watch where you sit around here or you’ll get a rude reminder by the protruding needles to plant your rear elsewhere–this is a knitting zone!

Brenda does all of this because she loves it. Some Saturdays, when she’s decided it’s gonna be a dye day, the stove is crammed with kettles, boiling bright colors into the fibers of wool from average barnyard sheep. After the dyed fleeces are dried (spread out over the entire patio table and chairs in the backyard), they are somehow smoothed-out, spun, plied and formed into hanks that stack nicely into colorful rows of soon-to-be mittens–even a funky cap.

Bobbins filled with newly-spun fiber

All in all, Brenda doesn’t ask for much, just a good cup of coffee and a few square yards of real estate to place all of her paraphernalia, like a drum carder (cleans the wool), spinning wheel, shelving for finished skeins of yarn and bins of raw, un-cleaned wool, straight from the naked backs of freshly shorn sheep. Hey, did I mention that she is beautiful, too, and an amazing cook?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that I’ve got it made around here. After all, she’s been stumbling around my guitars and amps for over two-and-a-half decades now. We will celebrate our 26th anniversary on December 21st. My life is filled with fiber, and sometimes a few sneezing spells, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

You’ve probably heard it said, too: “Boy, this butter tastes better than margarine!” Some people have never tried the original, so they make judgements by the knock-offs. This is backward and, unfortunately, the way so many young artists in our culture base their opinions these days. It’s true with every genre of art, and life in general.

Brenda led me to an interesting blog post recently, chronicling a meeting between  author Ian Morgan Cron and the great composer/musician Rob Mathes in a Connecticut Starbucks. They were stunned when their attention was averted toward the background music coming from the overhead speakers:

“Do you hear that?” Rob said, his expression darkening.

“Hear what?” I said. “Listen,” he said, glaring at the white speaker grilles above our heads. “Do you know that song?”

I closed my eyes and strained to hear the music over the hiss and gurgle of milk being steamed for someone’s cappuccino. I shrugged. “Nope,” I said. “I can’t make it out.”

Rob threw his hands up in the air. “That’s a cut off Miles Davis record Kind of Blue,” he said, his voice rising with indignation.

“Alright,” I said. “Apparently this bothers you.”
“It’s Miles Davis!” he said, slapping the tabletop with his hand.

I’ve known Rob for 30 years. He’s talented. He’s smart. He’s not afraid to speak his mind.

“When brilliant compositions are used for background music it desensitizes people to their genius,” he continued.

I paused. “You mean familiarity breeds contempt?” I said.

“Precisely. If an amazing piece of music is constantly playing in the background your admiration for it doesn’t increase, it diminishes. It becomes no big deal,” Rob said, imitating someone trying to speak and yawn at the same time.

What we expose our children to, many times, is a weak (to say it mildly) version of the original. My objections to the classical education I was being fed in my first round of college became an epiphany when I started my second, more serious, round as a married 25-year-old. I saw that a classical education brought me back to the origins of great art, music and literature–with a proper historical context–to which all other great creative work is traced.

In a Fast Company website interview by Rick Tetzeli, director Martin Scorsese talks about how to lead a creative life and how to pass the torch to younger generations:

“At this point,” says Scorsese, “I find that the excitement of a young student or filmmaker can get me excited again. I like showing them things and seeing how their minds open up, seeing the way their response then gets expressed in their own work.”

“His biggest teaching project these days is his 12-year-old daughter, Francesca. He’s trying to give her a cultural foundation that seems less readily available these days. “I’m concerned about a culture where everything is immediate and then discarded,” he says. “I’m exposing her to stuff like musicals and Ray Harryhausen spectaculars, Frank Capra films. I just read her a children’s version of The Iliad. I wanted her to know where it all comes from. Every story, I told her, every story is in here, The Iliad.”

“Three months ago,” he remembers, gesturing to the room around us, “I had a screening here for the family. Francesca had responded to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, so I decided to try It Happened One Night. I had kind of dismissed the film, which some critics love, of course, but then I realized I had only seen it on a small screen, on television. So I got a 35-millimeter print in here, and we screened it. And I discovered it was a masterpiece. The way Colbert and Gable move, their body language. It’s really quite remarkable!”

We must take our children and students back to the originals, to study them and discover what makes them so great. That’s why I like to see the look on a kid’s face when he hears a stellar vintage guitar though a great tube amp, or a vocalist’s performance through a classic microphone and preamp. We must teach the next generation that a promising artistic future springs from an understanding of the great work that came before them–to learn from the best and stop trying to imitate the cheap, margarine knock-offs.

The melancholic afternoon shadows and crisp, cool evenings of late help create a backdrop for reflective inner dialog about the future. I had a relaxing, wonderful summer and fall, but now it’s time to make some decisions.

I came upon a couple of videos today promoting a new music software that features Nashville drummer Harry Stinson and producer/engineer Chuck Ainlay. Both guys gushed about the virtues of Nashville, from a creative and personal perspective (I heartily agree!). Stinson said that he came to a place in his career, back in the mid-70s, where he felt stagnant and ready to get to a new level. He soon received a call from the folk/rock group America to fill-in for their drummer, who had an accident and needed to leave the road. Harry’s name came up in conversation as a great replacement. He had 24 hours to get ready. So he gathered up all of the America records he could find, met the band in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, spent a meager hour and a half in rehearsal, did the show that night, and finished up the tour. What a cool place to be in life: ready, at the right time and place, when opportunity comes knocking!

Living in a community like Nashville, it’s easy to forget that this a very special and unique place. It’s also a tough place if you are here to make a living as a musician. I, too, am ready for the next season of my career. I am doing my best to stay adept at my craft, even though, at times, it’s easy to get discouraged. This small bit of encouragement from Harry and Chuck today was like a drink of cold water. Sometimes I’m tempted to pack it in and try to make a living with something non-musical altogether. But really… what would I do? This is all I know; I’ve been playing music professionally since 1980. Sometimes it takes even a YouTube video to realize that I’m doing exactly what I should be: writing, playing, producing and looking to God for sustenance.

A musician’s life is like a crazy adventure where you just start driving, don’t ever look back in the rear-view mirror, and enjoy the ride until your gas light comes on. Just when it seems like the adventure’s over, miraculously, there’s a gas station right over the hill. You get filled up again and head back out on the highway!