IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

“I wanna run through the rain/dance on a cloud/Steal a kiss and then laugh out loud/Feel those butterflies in my soul/Catch butterflies one by one/Sprinkler underneath the sun/All those things from the days gone by/ I wanna wake up and start living life” is the powerfully poignant theme that is the driving message of Lee-Ellen’s debut album Falling Up. As a teacher, wife and mother of two, Lee-Ellen never thought she would be choosing this moment in her life “to wake up and start living life.” And although Lee-Ellen has had to face her fair share of adversity throughout the years, she has found the strength to persevere and overcome the obstacles that have stood in her way.

Lee-Ellen went public with her debut album Falling Up at her CD release party over the weekend. As I listened to the album over the past week, I became engrossed in the imagery of her lyrics as they flowed effortlessly from her heart. And unlike so many freshman records that seem to be thrown together as a smorgasbord of musical eclecticism, Falling Up is cohesively woven together like a melodic kaleidoscope that invited me to share in the beauty of the emotions that Lee-Ellen hauntingly invokes.

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I was filled with anticipation as I ran my fingernail across the edge and ripped the cellophane. The smell of vinyl wafted through the air and intoxicated me as I held the needle over the spinning edge of the disc. As I dropped the needle on my latest album, my euphoria increased as the music started blaring through my bedroom speakers.

I was caught up in this moment of blissful reminiscence the other day as I was downloading the latest batch of songs for my IPod. Music has changed over the years and so has the technology that has delivered music to our homes. I miss vinyl albums, I miss cassette tapes and I am even starting to miss compact discs. But I don’t believe it is the technology that I miss most about music. What I truly miss are the great albums that I used to buy that would grip my imagination from the first song until the very last note of the final cut.

I love these trips down memory lane because it allows me to share stories of my youth with my children. Like when I was a child and music was guitar-centric. And as the 70s turned into the 80s, The Eagles, Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Heart, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Boston, the Police, Billy Joel and John Mellencamp encapsulated the center of the music world. You could listen to every song they wrote and because of the work they put into the recording process, these bands turned out a multitude of hits on every album. Their music had a melody to them and their lyrics would cover any and every topic imaginable. Bono once stated emphatically that all he ever needed was, “a red guitar, three chords and the truth.”

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Stephanie and I slow danced and sang along with the band on Saturday night and as we did, I just let myself become immersed in the imagery of the lyric. In a throng of supporters underneath a sea of stars at the Comcast Center, Stephanie and I were dancing with each other while Darius Rucker sang “It Won’t Be Like This For Long” as though we were the only two people at the venue.

The soulful song about a Dad and his daughter enveloped my imagination as I swayed in time to the music. I smiled as I thought about him bringing his daughter home from the hospital and the sleepless nights that ensued as he adjusted to his new life as a parent. I empathized with him as he skipped four years ahead and recounted the fears and trepidations his daughter had around sleep and going to preschool. Vividly, I could see him shrugging his shoulders and asking the teacher for help as he tried to manage the ever changing world of his little princess. And as each chorus brought the reminders from his wife and the teacher not to worry because “it won’t be like this for long,” I could remember the reassurances Stephanie has given me along the way as well. “One day we’ll look back on this fondly and laugh,” she always reminds me and something tells me that one day, we will.

I was reveling in a moment of peace and tranquility with my wife. I was dancing under the stars and as the world seemed to fade away, the song took a new lyrical twist that jolted me out of my daydream:

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A couple of months ago, I caught up with a friend of mine from my old college radio days. We talked about a lot of things but mostly, we reminisced about our days on air at the old college station. And as always, our conversation eventually drifted to comparisons of the musical styles of the past thirty or forty years. His main point was that modern music is missing the storytellers, the great musicians who can write a lyric that tells a story and combine it with a quality piece of music that leaves the listener yearning for more. And although I didn’t fully agree with his assumptions and I could point to some bona fide exceptions, I realized that they were the exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself.

Last Tuesday, P.J. Pacifico released his second record Always & Everywhere and within moments of listening to the album on my IPod, I knew that I was listening to the next great storyteller. With a soulful and inviting vocal range, P.J. has created an album full of great stories and phenomenal melodies that are based on the past four years of his life as he has traveled around the country in support of his first CD. And the more I listened to his songs, the more mesmerized I became.

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Josh’s goldfish died a week ago. It wasn’t unexpected as “Goldie” had not been looking good lately. Josh was understandably upset and although he wanted to have a funeral for “Goldie,” he wasn’t ready to say goodbye because he was still processing his feelings. So we decided to have the talk about the good memories we have of “Goldie” and that seemed to help Josh and Chloe get through some of their grief.

This past Sunday afternoon, as I was sitting on the porch watching the kids play in the front yard, I thought about the conversation we had with the kids last summer after Grandma passed. We were sharing fond memories of the good times we had with Grandma when we started going around the room and asking, “What would you miss if I were gone?”

We talked about how we would miss Stephanie’s gardens as well as her arts and crafts projects. The world is Stephanie’s palette and her garden is an expression of her love and creativity. Her passion for art projects is an extension of that originality that allows her to share the world’s endless possibilities with the kids.

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As we got off the bus at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, I could feel the fatigue settling into my body. This was going to be a long day, I could feel it. We had been running around Disney World since Monday night and I was tired, a little grumpy and in need of a lot of caffeine. As we entered the gate to Hollywood Studios, Stephanie saw a Cast Member dressed in a blue pantsuit handing out little white placards as she stood next to a sign that read “American Idol Experience; Auditions today.”

“Doug, you have to do this,” Stephanie said.

“Yeah, Dad, you gotta do it,” Josh agreed.

“Doug, you would be so awesome at this,” Angie stated exuberantly.

“I don’t know guys. I don’t think so… not today.”

“Come on, Doug, you’ll have fun,” Stephanie responded.

“No Steph, not today.”

“Daaaaad,” Josh said coyly as he grabbed my hand.

“Yes, Josh?”

“Dad,” he said again with a twinkle in his eye. “You can’t say ‘no’ in Disney World!”

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A few weeks ago, I went out to lunch with a friend of mine. We were swapping stories of our youth; the fun and the outlandish things we did when we were in our late teens and our early twenties. During the conversation, the topic of Crossfire came up. I shared with him some of the stories and fun we had had as a band. I also told him the honest truth about the frustrations we encountered as well.

“I’ve always been curious, how do people write songs? Do you just sit down with a piece of paper, decide to write a song and something just comes to you?” he asked.

“Sometimes, yeah, it does,” I responded. But I didn’t want to be glib, so I continued, “But most of the time, it starts with a personal story. Something happens in your life and it affects you in one way or another, and then, after a while, you just have to write it down.”

And that is how it has always been for me as a writer. Most of the lyrics I have written in my life started out as a personal experience or a story that would get stuck in my head. Somehow a piece of music would start playing in my brain and the words would just come to me. Most of the time, I would just free write and then put away the rough draft. Later, I would edit the lyrics until I felt the song was perfect.

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I was enjoying my drive into work this morning. The weather had finally changed and it was the first nice morning we have had after a slew of rainy days, and the warmth of the sun was invigorating. I had my sunroof and windows open as I was being gently caressed by the cool air as I peacefully made my way into work. I had stopped at a red light and I was daydreaming a bit when the sound wafted into my ears, caught my attention, and brought me back to reality; “I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined/I’m just beginning, pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned…”

Let me digress for a moment and start at the beginning. In the summer of 2007, I was up late one night with a severe case of writer’s block. My mind was blank but my heart was racing like I had something to say; a surge of adrenalin and inspiration combined with the inexplicable inability to put down on paper what was so vivid in my imagination. I was frustrated. It was midnight and I was wide awake, yet unable to write.

So I threw myself down on the couch, grabbed the clicker and searched for anything that was worthwhile to watch in the middle of the night. As I perused the guide, I caught the title of a movie I hadn’t seen in years. It was Keenen Ivory Wayans I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and in one of the final scenes, Bernie Casey’s character, John Slade, is walking into a battle with the bad guys and as he prepares to face the villains, he is being followed around by a group of musicians. The appearance of the rappers during the preparation for battle scene prompted Keenen Ivory Wayans character, Jack Spade, to engage in the following conversation:

Jack Spade: [looks at musicians] who are these guys?
John Spade: They’re my theme music. Every hero’s got to have some.

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The other night, Chloe, Josh and I sat out on our front porch and sang to the birds. We belted out as many tunes as we could think of and when we couldn’t think of any more songs to sing, we sang the songs a second time. It was a nice cool evening with a breeze blowing in off the water and from where we were sitting; we watched the sun set over Boston while we were having a little fun.

As it got later into the night, Stephanie came out onto the front porch and told Chloe it was time for bed. After a few rounds of hugs and kisses for Josh and I, Chloe headed off to her room with Stephanie. A little while later, Stephanie came back out onto the porch and told Josh it was time to get ready for bed as well. As he gave me a hug good night and headed into the house with Stephanie, I sat back with a huge grin on my face as I stared out over the marsh across the street from our home.

It all started in August of 2001, when our son Josh was born prematurely. He spent the first eight days of his life in the Special Care Nursery because his lungs had not yet fully developed. It was tough for us to watch him lying in an incubator with tubes down his throat so he could breath, feeding tubes in his arms, and monitors that were carefully checking all of his vital statistics. Luckily for us, Josh responded to the treatment rather quickly and was home in eight days.

Stephanie and I were happy, excited, tired, jubilant, in love, scared, and just about every other possible emotion in between. It was a tough time for us when Josh first came home from the Hospital. Stephanie and I were on pins and needles as we worried about a possible relapse that would put him back into the Special Care Nursery. But as each day passed, our fears gradually subsided.

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During the early part of the 1990s, I was the lead singer of a rock ‘n roll cover band. Originally, when we started the band, we were unable to think of a name for the group so, Jack, our guitar player who was a medical engineer, suggested we call ourselves the Slide Rule Jockeys for our initial gig. At the time, everyone figured, “Why not? If anything else, at least it was an original name.”

The name Slide Rule Jockeys didn’t last long because we soon realized that there was a big difference between the word “original” which actually means “cool” and the other meaning of the word; “geeks.” At our next rehearsal, we all sat down and bounced names off the wall to see what would stick and by the end of the night; we had decided to name our group Free Beer.

Free Beer wasn’t a band name that lasted very long as well because we couldn’t get hired by any of the local establishments. Local bars refused to hire us because they wouldn’t promote our name, FREE BEER, in newspaper ads because they felt that people would show up, pay a cover charge, and expect to get “free beer” for the rest of the night. Club owners felt that customers would get angry because they were being duped by questionable advertising tactics. They liked our sound but not our name and they weren’t going to take a chance on us until we changed it.

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