“I’ve witnessed those one night stands, must have played in a thousand bands…” – Jackson Browne
“Momma don’t let your cowboys grow up to be guitar players.” – Me (with a little help from Waylon and Willie)
I remember the day I stood in front of the mirror – 14 years old – with the $15 pawn shop guitar I had just acquired, mimicking the Beatles who I had just seen on Ed Sullivan. Banging the strings, making a God awful noise. I didn’t know a single chord nor how to tune it.
My parents would have been better served just buying me some crack, but it hadn’t been invented yet. At least with crack you might eventually burn out on it and get back on path to a normal life. But noooo.
In 1966, when I was a scrawny 16 year old, I played my first series of paid music gigs at the Golden Bell just outside Columbus. And I ain’t the only one. There are a lot of alumni still hanging around town. We may be dinosaurs, but we ain’t extinct yet. Hell, even Mike McCoy is still up and breathing.
When other boys my age were mowing lawns and bagging groceries for a few bucks, I was making almost as much as grown men with families and solid jobs. Which I spent like a drunken sailor, a pattern that continued for many years.
That’s the way of the musician: full adult men (and a few women) who have worked hard developing skills and talent who otherwise are babies with all the financial discipline of a 5 year old blowing their allowance at Toys R Us.
I spent years as a full time working musician and singer, and even after moving to other careers I still couldn’t leave it and played music jobs on weekends and at events. Just finally quit four years ago. I feel like a clean and sober former addict.
What do you call a musician who breaks up with his girlfriend? Homeless.
If you are that unfortunate mother (or wife) whom fate has saddled you with raising a musician, you will benefit from a few tips. First, it actually takes very little to keep one of these critters happy.
These three things cover the basics:
1. A Big Mac and large fries, or pretty much anything that will keep their stomach from growling (it interferes with tuning). Or throw a little warm water on a plate of Kibbles & Bits, pop open a Red Bull for him to wash it down. (Not a bowl; that might give it away.)
If you time it so you present the “food” while he is learning a new song or changing out the pickup on a Stratocaster, he’ll eat with one hand and never even notice it.
2. A roof of some sort and a bed under it. The bed has somewhat multiple uses: a place to sleep and storage space for 5-6 guitars. (Get your mind out of the gutter!)
The roof is there to protect his guitars, drums and assorted stuff (that he paid way too much for) from rain.
A musician is someone who packs $20,000 worth of equipment into a $300 car and drives many miles for just enough to pay for gas and… that Big Mac and fries.
3. And the most important thing of all: a place to play in front of people, for money or not. Money has very little to do with any of this. It can be a dark dive with five people at the bar or a stadium with 30,000 seats filled.
If the stage lights are in your face, you can’t tell one way or another.
Rather than looking at the sad state of their lives and leaping head first out of a hotel window, musicians cope by slamming each other with cruel jokes. Here are a few from my collection.
“How do you get a drummer off your porch?” Pay for the pizza.
“What do you call a beautiful woman on the arm of a bass player?” A tattoo.
“How can you tell it’s a singer at your door?” He can’t find the key and doesn’t know when to come in.
“What’s the difference between God and the guitar player?” God doesn’t think he’s a guitar player.
That about says it.
Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.
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