The Missing Photo…..

   For any of you that follow my blog, you know that my dad was a musician. He died in 1993 of cancer. My mom died 5 years later in 1998. While cleaning out my parents home, each of us got a few things we wanted as keepsakes. This was before scrapbooking and digital photos entered my families lives. So…some photographs got taken here and there and basically scattered between the four of us, ending up in our prospective attics and shoeboxes…etc. Pictures that should have stayed together got separated.

   I have a nephew named Adam who looks an awful lot like my dad did when he was young. Adam plays guitar and does that very well. He married a Greek girl named Carey from North Carolina who also plays guitar and sings like a bird. The two of them moved to Nashville 12 years ago to try and make a name for themselves. They are both talented song writers as well. After a few years of being struggling musicians, they are finally getting a break it would seem. They have their own production studio and some of the songs they have written over the years are beginning to be picked up. MTV has started using some of them and the residuals of those songs are beginning to come in, albeit small. Every once in a while I go to their MySpace site to check on what’s happening in their lives musically. While there recently, I came across one of those missing photos I was talking about….of my dad. I wondered how Adam got that. I happened to be at my daughters a while back and on the desk top of her computer, was that photograph! How’d you get that?? She got it from Adam who got it from my brother and so on.

   It is a photo of my dad playing guitar during WWII at a music show put on for the boys over in Italy. I just love it and boy doesn’t my nephew Adam look like him! So…I just went to Adam’s site and copied it!!! Now I finally have it!! How simple was that….but do you think I could figure all that out back then??? Oh my God it takes me forever to get these things done. Here’s the photo…. That’s my dad playing his 1937 Epiphone. That guitar ended up with my nephew Adam and my brother had it refurbished. Here is a photo of Adam playing it today……

I saw this and it freaked me out!! What a strange feeling came over me! It was meant to be that he inherit this old guitar from my dad and keep the music alive through it. Gives me goose bumps. It makes me think of the Dan Fogelberg song, Leader Of The Band.

My brother Arthur used to play this song and one day he played it just for my dad. It was a moment I will never forget. When he sang about the music running through his veins I just lost it. I looked over at my dad and he had tears in his eyes. God I miss him and my mom every day. I feel grateful we have musicians in the family that keep that magic alive today. Music is such a universal thing isn’t it? It can transport us back to a different time in our lives….it can make us cry at the drop of a hat….or laugh and dance…it’s a wonderful thing that binds us all together.

  My nephew Adam and his wife Carey got mentioned recently on CNN by a man that reviews music. We were all very excited about this! Adam produces some up and coming musicians that folks are starting to take notice of. After reviewing two of them in this interview with CNN, he mentions A and C and showcases my absolute FAVORITE song they wrote called BACKSEAT!! Yay!! I am in LOVE with that song and can’t seem to get enough of it! I have been telling people that forever!! Here’s the link to the interview….the Backseat part is at the end…

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2009/10/06/dcl.grumbine.country.cnn   Hopefully this will come through……..

  

  Do any of you play music? Did your parents too? What a gift my folks gave my brothers and I that will always be with me…….