So today, I'm feeling all ... musical. Let me explain. Last week, I surprised The Police with tickets to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, scheduled for this weekend. Wife of the Year, right? I know. Especially considering that I know only three Lynyrd Skynyrd songs -- probably the same three that everyone else in the country knows. Freebird, man...
But I digress.
The concert was canceled because of an impending inland hurricane, but I've still spent the last several days trying to beef up on my Skynyrd knowledge, and it got me thinking about my own musical roots -- the things that have shaped my tastes into what they are today. And there is one person, and pretty much one person alone, who is responsible for that: my big brother, Shane.
He's six years older than me, which is quite a spread. So naturally, we spent the first 12 or so years of our lives together in a non-stop argument about who got to ride in the front seat and who was looking at or touching who, and what kind of cereal our mom would buy and who ate the last Pop Tart.
During that time, one of his favorite pasttimes was convincing me that an assortment of ridiculous and wild stories were true. If you've been a reader for a while, I will refer you to the incident in which I devoted months to learning to breathe through my ears. But I'll give him this -- he never tried to put my head in the toilet. His friends did, but he didn't.
By the time he graduated high school and I was a teenager, we managed to move on from the bickering stage, partially because the Nintendo was kept in his room, and if we both wanted to play, we had to be nice.
When Shane went away to college, I was traumatized. Our mom had been life-threateningly ill and we'd spent a lot of time being each other's only friends in many hospital waiting rooms. But not to worry, he was home each and every weekend, and we developed a close friendship -- something that's rare in brothers and sisters of our age, I think.
We took road trips to visit friends and family in Louisiana, drove to Memphis on the weekends to veg out at movies (he even took me to Memphis in May for my 16th birthday), and shared a group of friends who would get together religiously to watch "The X-Files." And all of the time we spent together centered around music: what was new and awesome, old and awesome and what stunk. What we liked and didn't like, and mainly what we could sing along to and sound like rock stars. I can't tell you how many hours I spent sitting in the passenger seat of whatever beat up car he was driving, his mammoth CD travel case in my lap, feeling ultra cool as the DJ of the day. I brushed off splinters from dozens of busted-up drumsticks that lived everywhere he did. He never stopped drumming. Never.
We spun old school rock like Toto and Chicago, jazz from Bela Fleck, Diana Krall and Victor Wooten and everything else in between -- from Reba McEntire to Tupac. I will say this for my brother -- he never excluded a genre. He loved music for the sake of music, the artistry, and anyone who showed real talent was appreciated. When times for the family were really hard, and we weren't sure if we would have a mom next year or next week, I would sleep on the floor in his room, and listen to the radio. We'd tape our favorite songs, and always tune in for the late night countdowns on the country station. If I've heard Brooks and Dunn sing "Neon Moon" once, I've heard it a thousand times.
He taught me how to harmonize when I was learning how to sing for worship leading at church, and helped bolster my confidence when I was intimidated by the fact that I was younger than everyone else in the music program. Because of him, I can offer fairly insightful commentary on pitch and tone, lyrics and part construction, and I can even criticize a song's bass line. It was a language that we spoke fluently and with joy, something that connected us and made us who we were: musicians and lovers of music.
It's a known fact that music has a deep, almost primal effect on people. We all have different preferences, but whatever type of music it is that gets to you -- there's just nothing like it to evoke memories and emotions, and I'm no exception. I don't know many girls my age who are familiar with both Broadway show tunes and '80s rap, but I sure am.
We're both adults now, with lives and families and careers of our own, and we don't really get to spend the kind of time together that we did as kids. I miss it, but it's been an equally pleasing experience to see the guy I looked up to so much become a husband, father and eventually a pastor. What we share is a connection that will never dry up, as long as radio stations somewhere continue to play Michael Jackson and Patsy Cline, which I'm sure they always will.
And what do I carry away?
Aside from a compulsive desire to break into song in public and a complete lack of shame when it comes to dancing to a song I like, I carry a lot of memories that are never any farther away than the dial on my car radio.
And that's just one of the things that makes life so, so sweet.
Enjoy your rain-soaked weekend, my friends, and spin some tunes with someone you love.
sharris@blythevillecourier.com