SOME MUSICAL EPIPHANIES

For as long as I can remember, music has always played a pivotal role in my life. My dad once told me the story of how, after returning from a German rest home for undernourished children when I was about three years old, I was singing a folk song about a train in a Swabian dialect. I grew up listening to my dad's LPs of Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsy symphonies, as well as Puccini and Verdi operas.

During junior high and college, I played the flute in the marching and concert bands. I began taking classical piano lessons when I was fourteen. And while an undergraduate at Xavier University in 1966, I discovered top-forties rock-n-roll. A few years later as a graduate student at Ohio State, I learned to play the guitar and fell in love with the songs of Peter, Paul, and Mary after hearing them in concert.

One of my most memorable musical epiphanies occurred while I was in my late twenties, working as a cook in a Minneapolis pizza restaurant. I recall listening to their transistor radio when I heard Bob Dylan's Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts from his Blood on the Tracks album. I was mesmerized by its pounding rhythm and transcendent lyrics. A few years later, I heard Bob Dylan on Halloween night at the St. Paul Civic Center. At that concert, the fans mobbed the stage. Dylan's songs not only captivated my imagination, but also prompted me to start writing my own songs. In 1993, I won first prize at a Dylan Soundalike contest in Minneapolis. And in 2004, I won first place in a songwriting contest at a bluegrass festival in Winfield, Kansas for writing the best children's song. It was called Pluto , and told how that unfortunate planet got demoted to a mini-ball by the astronomers, even though it was the kids' favorite.

In the summer of 1979, I experienced two major musical transformations. I discovered Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion Show , and I learned to play the autoharp, thanks to Stevie Beck who often performed on that show. The autoharp opened up a whole new musical world for me since I learned to play lots of melodies on it that had eluded me on the guitar. In 2009, I began attending an annual autoharp festival in Pennsylvania known as The Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering. There, autoharp players from all over the country, and even the world, gathered for a week of workshops, jam sessions, and an annual autoharp contest in which I took part every year.

I continue to play my autoharp, harmonica, guitar, and banjo every chance I get at churches, coffeehouses, and nursing homes. I've also taught some of these instruments at several Minneapolis community ed programs. During COVID, for example, I taught myself how to play the banjo clawhammer style. And I keep composing new songs. So far, I've written over two hundred, as well as recorded eleven CDs of original songs. I perform many of these with my singing partner Mary Parker. About twenty years ago, I joined an organization of Minnesota songwriters called MAS (Minnesota Association of Songwriters) where I've had many of my songs critiqued. Yes, it seems as if I'm always discovering new musical vistas..