October 2024

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There weren't a lot of career options in the late 1950's for a poor Native American kid, so at age 17 my dad followed his older brother, and joined the US Coast Guard. Dad served his country for 20 years and retired an officer. He attended community college on the GI Bill.

 My dad learned to play guitar while stationed on a lighthouse in Lake Superior in 1959. He later upgraded to the electric guitar and played at clubs and Coast Guard parties with a country band. 

The gigs and the nightlife came to an end when he married my mom.

He eventually had to sell his guitar as well, as they needed the money with a new baby (me) to care for. A military paycheck meant meager wages for an enlisted man.

As a young kid I had no idea my dad was a guitar player. We didn't have a guitar in the house. We had a record player though, and it seemed my parents' country music records were always playing. My very earliest memories revolve around music and that record player.

In April of 1972, the Coast Guard sent my dad to desolate Attu Island, Alaska for an entire year, while our family remained at home. 

Attu is the tiny, westernmost US island in the Aleutian Islands chain, located 1100 miles off the mainland of Alaska. The island was occupied by the Japanese in World War II. A bloody battle was fought to reclaim the island, which until 2010 served as a base for the LORAN radio navigation system operated by the Coast Guard. 

Before dad left for Alaska, my parents bought a pair of cassette tape recorders so they could stay in touch by mailing audio recordings back and forth.

In those days, long distance telephone calls to a tiny island in the Bering Sea were ridiculously expensive. They also could not be placed without an operator, and might have involved a radio transmission along the way. 

So mom and dad wrote letters and recorded audio tapes to communicate. It also allowed me and my little sister to stay in touch with dad and hear his voice. A year is an eternity to a little kid.

Military families understand the sacrifice and stress of a parent being stationed far from home.

I have vivid memories of that year, and of the excitement of making and hearing the recordings.

If only we had FaceTime back then!

One day mom was in the living room listening to the latest cassette tape that had arrived via AirMail from Alaska.

I heard a man singing, and a guitar being strummed. 

"Who is that?" I asked.

Mom smiled. "That's your dad." 

"But who's playing the music?"

"Your dad. He plays guitar."

"He does?!" 

I'm sure I was wide-eyed with excitement and awe, thrilled to discover that my dad had a superpower.

He could make MUSIC.

The song I heard my dad perform on that tape was The Silver-Tongued Devil and I, by Kris Kristofferson.

I didn't know it at the time, but my dad had purchased a used electric guitar for $17 dollars during a stop in Anchorage. It was a mid-1960's Sears Silvertone guitar, which came with an amplifier built into the case. That's it in the photo above, as he was packing up to return home in April 1973. He gave that guitar to me, and he taught me how to play it. 

It changed the course of my life. 

From that point on, Saturday evenings would often find our young family gathered in the living room while dad entertained us with his guitar playing and singing and silly dad jokes. His favorite music to play always featured songs by Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson.

Cash and Kristofferson were guitar-playing giants to me. They were impossibly cool, funny, and wise. I got to know them through my dad, a guitar-playing giant who was also impossibly cool, funny, and wise. 

It was the words and stories in the songs that really hooked me. That's what first pulled me in as a young boy, more than the guitar playing. That came later, when my dad used their songs to teach me how to play the guitar.

My father was a self-taught guitarist. He could not read music, but he had a natural ability to learn a song by ear, picking out the licks and melodies on the strings. I am thankful I inherited that gift from him. Every song I've ever played on stage was only ever learned by ear. 

I loved watching my dad play guitar, and I was always so proud whenever my friends or cousins would be around to see him play. They would watch and listen, fascinated by his fast fingers on the strings, and laughing when he would hum a really low note like Johnny Cash, while playing "Walk the Line." 

 He would pretend it was a stuck record needle, skipping a groove: Hmmmmmm.. Hmmmmm... Hmmmmm... and so on, until one of us would finally nudge him. 

Then he would laugh, and continue playing the song, smiling his bright, beautiful smile.

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I lost my father in April of this year. We played music together for the very last time on Feb. 29.

I miss him every day. I will write more about him in a future newsletter.

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*I learned something quite intriguing today while sharing this story of dad's Alaska guitar.

There is a remote possibility that the very guitar my dad bought at a second-hand store in Alaska was once owned by my student and good friend Jerry Thompson. Jerry owned the same exact model Silvertone guitar with the amp in the case in the 1960's, and he is certain it ended up in Anchorage in 1970. Obviously Sears sold a lot of those guitars. But maybe not so many to Alaska...? 

Fun Fact: Jerry today owns an electric guitar that I built with my father in 2005. A nice Telecaster with a birdseye maple top.

Our dear friend and long-time student Kellen Kennedy has been performing gigs around New York City since she moved there in 2023.

Kellen played her solo acoustic set of original music recently at a rooftop gig in Brooklyn (photo below) at a music venue/bar & grill called Our Wicked Lady. 

Later this month she will perform at the Brooklyn Music Kitchen.

Kellen began her music journey with me in October 2011, when she was just 12-years old. I have been privileged to be her musical mentor all these many years as she has performed in several groups, duos, and as a solo performer. 

During her senior year at Cherokee Trail HS, Kellen performed in an all-girl rock band called Crop Circles with other CTHS girls. They rehearsed every week at my studio. Upon her arrival last year in NYC, Kellen joined another all-girl rock band called Feral Romance, playing originals and covers at venues around the city. 

Kellen is a talented singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Her lovely voice is blessed with a sweet and natural Irish ornamentation. She arranged vocal harmonies and performed with a student a cappella group while attending the University of Colorado. 

She is also an accomplished award-winning artist who creates beautiful paintings. 

Kellen has a very bright scientific mind: She is currently working on her masters degree in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University in New York City. She moved to NYC last year when she was hired by a lab doing stem cell research. 

Kellen has a kind and caring heart, and a free bohemian spirit. She is a fearless and independent girl with a strong sense of her self, and of her art. 

She possesses a bold sense of adventure: Kellen spent the summer after college graduation backpacking -alone- across Europe. 

She especially loves the music of poets and dreamers, legendary songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and Joni Mitchell. 

After all these years sharing music, Kellen is quite dear to me. I love and adore her as though she were my own daughter. I am very proud of this sweet and talented young woman!

Tickets are on sale for Metallica's two-night stand in Denver, taking place June 2025.

This exciting concert will feature in-the-round staging in the center of the stadium, and TWO completely different shows on two different nights. They're calling it a "No Repeat Weekend."

Go one night or both!

They have many ticket packages on sale at https://www.metallica.com/tour/2025-06-29-denver-colorado.html

Our own young rock star guitarist and Metallica fan Porter H. will be there both nights, thanks to his super cool dad, and now Porter's very first ever concert will be the experience of a lifetime! 

See him wasted on the sidewalk

in his jacket and his jeans

wearin' yesterday's misfortunes like a smile.

once he had a future full of money, love, and dreams

which he spent like they was goin' out of style... 

-Kris Kristofferson, The Pilgrim: Chapter 33 

Kris Kristofferson passed away this week at the age of 88, having lived a remarkable life by any standard. One of the last living legends of a long-lost Nashville era, Kristofferson was a true Renaissance Man, in every sense of the word. 

He excelled at every pursuit he set his mind to: Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star, Rhodes scholar, Army Ranger, helicopter pilot, award-winning songwriting legend, country music icon, movie star.

Born in 1936 to a military family in Brownsville, Texas, young Kris wrote his first song at age 11. It was called "I Hate Your Ugly Face." 

The songs he wrote later in his career were much more introspective and thoughtful, as Kristofferson brought a highly literate poet's sensibility to country music and forever changed the craft of country songwriting for the better. He was certainly the most well-read songwriter to ever ply his trade in Music City. Kris had previously attended Oxford college as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Masters degree in English Literature.

Kristofferson's songs often told the story of flawed men who had lost everything due to their personal choices, or vices. Kris personally felt such loss after his family disowned him for choosing a career in the music business. 

His parents had pressured him to join the military after college. Kris joined.  He volunteered for duty in Vietnam as the war was escalating. Instead, the Army sent him to teach English at West Point.

When he finally left the Army to pursue his passion for songwriting in Nashville, his mother disowned him in a scathing letter. His wife grew tired of the Nashville scene, his dodgy musician friends, and late night drinking binges. She and their two children left for California, leaving Kris free to chase his dreams and demons alone. As he wrote in his classic song Me and Bobby McGee, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." 

Many of the gems in the Kristofferson songbook have become timeless standards: Me and Bobby McGee, Help Me Make it Through the Night, For the Good Times, Why Me, Loving Her Was Easier, Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down, Silver-Tongued Devil and I, The Pilgrim: Chapter 33.

His songs have been covered by a wide variety of music legends, from Johnny Cash to Elvis to Frank Sinatra. The most famous cover of his songs may be Janis Joplin's version of "Me and Bobby McGee." She recorded the song shortly before her death in October 1970. Kris first heard her version of the song after she died. 

Johnny Cash gave Kristofferson his first big break as a songwriter.

How that came about is an interesting Nashville legend.

He had tried to get his songs heard by Johnny Cash but wasn't having any luck. He gave Johnny's wife June a tape of his songs while working as a janitor at a recording studio. But it sat unnoticed in a pile of tapes on a desk.

Kris had become a skilled helicopter pilot during his Army career, and after moving to Nashville to write songs he found employment flying oil rig workers from Baton Rouge to oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Johnny Cash later told the story of how one day June came to him saying "Some fool has landed a helicopter in the yard." Cash went outside and there was Kris getting out of the helicopter, with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other! This began their lifelong friendship. Johnny listened to his songs.

 And he liked what he heard, especially a song called "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." 

The song told a stark, somber story in which a man shakes off a hangover as he strolls a quiet neighborhood on a Sunday morning. 

He is filled with regret and loneliness, and aching with each new scene that unfolds before him: a daddy and a laughing little girl in the park, hymns echoing from the church, the smell of Sunday dinner. Painful reminders of all he has lost. 

Johnny Cash performed the song live on his weekly national network prime-time television show, (famously refusing to change the lyrics to appease the network censors).

Johnny Cash took the song to the top of the charts, and it won Kristofferson a CMA Award for Song of the Year.

Many artists had great success with his songs, and Kris also landed a record deal and started recording his own music as well. 

By the early 70's, Hollywood came calling, looking to capitalize on his good looks, tequila-soaked gravel voice, and endless swagger. He appeared in over 100 films and TV shows over the course of his long acting career. His most famous film was the 1976 version of "A Star is Born," with Barbara Streisand.

Fun Fact: When Bradley Cooper filmed the opening concert sequence for his 2018 remake of "A Star is Born," Kristofferson graciously offered Cooper the use of his stage and stage time at Glastonbury festival to shoot the scene.

In the 80's Kris Kristofferson teamed up with fellow outlaws  Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson for the Highwayman album. Successful tours and another album project followed.

I was lucky enough to see the Highwaymen in concert, TWICE!

It was a thrill to see four of my biggest lifelong music heroes together on one stage, at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan. I loved it so much I quickly bought tickets to another show in the next town.

The music of these four men has been an important part of my life as a fan, as a musician and as an aspiring songwriter. They are my musical Mount Rushmore.

I have been playing these songs since I first learned to play guitar as a young boy. They spoke to me, as they did my father. And I still hear my father in them. 

This week I played and sang those old songs again, some for the first time in years. There was comfort in the familiar chords, melodies, and memories I found there. 

They now feel like my dear old friends, those songs and the men who sang them.