When my late husband and I were performing music together, we shared the story of how I became a "musician" at every gig. Since he died, I haven't told the story as much, and I realized recently that many people in my life don't even know the origins of how this whole thing started.
When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a musician, but I let that dream whither and die as I grew into adolescence. This is the story of how fate intervened and how I "hitched a ride with the wind" to get my first gig as a musician.
Step 1: Fall in Love With a Musician
When I met Adam, he was a Methodist preacher and played solo as The Preacher Man Band every week at a bar just down the road from the parsonage.
They didn't pay him in cash; they paid him in food. He played once a week, and they supplied him all the butterfly shrimp and steak sandwiches he could eat, all week long. He stopped in daily for a meal with the waitresses and regulars, and they loved him there.
I still remember the two songs he was working on adding to his set at the time, a stripped down version of "Thunder on the Left" by the Stone Coyotes and "Garden Song" by Amanda Shires. I didn't have the confidence to tell him, but even then, I knew I could sing those songs with him.
Step 2: Keep Writing in Secret
These songs never stopped playing in the background of our lives. They traveled around the country with us as we sold our handcrafted door hangers and ornaments for years with our first business. I sang them loudly in the car, but I never shared that hidden little thought that perhaps I could sing them on stage with him.
After all, he was a musician, and I was, well, not.
At least, that's what I told myself even while secretly recording little melodies and song starts, sometimes whole songs, into the voice memos app on my phone.
Step 3: Be Supportive and Sing Along
At the end of 2019, Adam got really sick. It happened suddenly, and by the time we'd moved to Michigan in 2020, he was struggling to walk. But while he struggled to walk, he worked on his solo act.
By summer, he had landed a gig playing on The Princess of Ludington, an excursion vessel that did sunset cruises on Lake Michigan during the first summer of COVID. He loved it, and he realized that he could still pursue music even while he wasn't feeling well.
As the end of the year approached, he made plans to audition for Tunes & Tales, a city program in Gatlinburg, TN that brought musicians onto the streets for 30 straight days in the summer. He sent an audition tape in and was invited to come down at the beginning of 2021 to audition in person.
Just a couple weeks before the audition, he ended up in the hospital over Christmas. It was the early days of COVID, and I wasn't allowed to be with him. It was a lonely holiday for both of us, but he received excellent care. He had emergency surgery to fix a hernia, and recovery was difficult and painful.
He wanted to call off the audition, but I encouraged him to go, offering to drive down while he slept in the back of the van where we piled memory foam, blankets, and pillows to make travel easier.
He had worked hard to prepare for the gig and ultimately decided to push through the pain and wear of travel.
While he auditioned, I waited for him in the van.
Step 4: Hitch a Ride With the Wind
From here, I can almost hear him telling his version of the story so I'm going to include it as close to how I remember him telling it.
The recruiter was a Georgia peach of a woman in her 70s or 80s, and she knew a thing about talent. She'd been putting the program on for decades. I had only played one song when she told me I was hired.
She asked if I'd be coming down by myself, and I told her about my wonderful wife who had driven me down for the audition. Of course, she wanted to meet her, so I went out and got her from the car.
When the two of them started talking, it seemed like it was going well, but then the recruiter turned to me and said, "I'm not hiring you anymore."
I looked at Bobbie confused, but then she continued, "I'm hiring both of you."
I told her, "but she's not a musician!"
Bobbie told her, "but I'm not a musician!"
And then she told me, "well, you have six months to make her one."
So that's what I did. I bought her a little guitar that day and started teaching her how to play it. She had natural talent, and I was surprised I had missed it. It turned out I didn't really have to teach her. And she'd been listening so closely to me playing for so many years that when she sang with me, I didn't have to change anything. We just fit together.
I liked it best when he told the story, but as the years went by and I got more comfortable talking on stage, it usually fell to me to tell the story while he tuned his guitar.
After explaining how fate intervened and made me a musician, I would briefly talk about how badly I wanted to be one as a little girl. I always dreamed of singing in front of people as a kid, but I sacrificed that dream to practicality and self criticism.
And then I'd introduce "Wildflowers" by Dolly Parton by telling everyone it was one of the songs I sang the loudest as a child and dreamed of singing in front of people. I usually encouraged them to pursue their own child dreams and told them it was never too late to become what you want to be.
But that wasn't the only reason I loved performing "Wildflowers" after telling the story of how we started performing together. It also embodied so much of how I felt about the gift of music and the journey we were on together.
I'd usually smile and nod my head toward Adam on the stage when I sang, "I hitched a ride with the wind, and since he was my friend, I just let him decide where we'd go."
Because just as the wildflower rides the wind to where it will grow, I had ridden along with him right onto the stage of my childhood dreams.
He helped me realize that music could even be pursued as a career and a life. Now I get to live my literal little girl dreams, and I'll never stop being grateful for the wind who carried me here.
