Here I sit on the threshold of 2018. My life has been driven by music. There are the basics. But music is the passion that drives my soul. In the last several months I have lost several of the icons of the music that I listen to constantly. I know everyone gets covered up with media about all these people. Mine is just my small story as a person who grew older through this time period and lived the dream of seeing these people perform live on a stage in front of me. Amplifiers blasting, the weather all around in the summer heat, the winter cold creeping into a large coliseum, people moving all around you feeling the history of all the music these people played. As we get older you can see the eyes of the audience glaze back to being young again as they hear the music of their youth. A concert with the proper artist can be a transportation in time.
I am almost a year behind getting photos edited and stories written for my blog due to my choices of the things I spend my time on. I am going to catch all that up. I made some progress moving several hundred thousand photos into Adobe Lightroom over the last two weeks. I have notes and thoughts about what I want to publish I just need time to do it…
Without boring you any further. In 2017 we lost Chuck Berry who I feel was an inventor of Rock and Roll. I never had the privilege of seeing him play live. But he will always be one of my favorites.
We lost Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band. Wow what a talent. As I look at all my digital photos of Butch they are so limited but I know if my life slows and I can dig into the film I have I will find some killer photos of him. Butch was such a great guy and he gave everything when he played. I have this old photo of him playing timbales. I shot it in 35mm black and white film. I have yet to be able to get that over to digital but I will. I would love to share it with you.
Tom Petty. Wow. Bill Flanagan said it best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmTlykHPneQ I never thought I would outlive Tom Petty. I had to pull over in my car when I heard he was gone. Even now I am constantly listening to his “Buried Treasure Show” on Sirius XM which ran for over 8 years. I am a veteran of his concerts for years and basically grew old on his relentless greatest hits. I have told the story of playing his breakout vinyl via radio in my second year of college…that was an awesome time to be a music fan. There was so much incredible music over the last few decades and his band was a part of that. I will stop there. I could write chapters about his shows and music influence. Tom was an amazing soul.
Gregg Allman. A son of the south. I was an Allman Brothers Band fan from a very young age. They were about 10 plus years ahead of me in age. I remember seeing Duane’s photo in my best friends band practice room in Greenwood, Mississippi and knowing that that was the band I would follow for a long time. I never imagined it would be my entire lifetime. I was fortunate to meet Gregg for a few moments and see the solo acts as well as the band perform through out several decades all the way back to 1974. The stories are true. I am a vibe guy. I feel people. He was laid back and a real southern gentleman. I have never met anyone who had that vibe. It was unique. I won’t bore you with all my connections to his life but in so many ways he was a brother and I put a lot of gas in his tank. I saw some of his last shows. I am glad I was there. He left us with some great music that will live way beyond all of this generation. The music was awesome and I am glad I was there for most of it.
Two of the last times I saw Gregg Allman perform. He was awesome with his band on a very hot night in Raleigh. It was over 100 degrees that day. I remember just how hot it was even after dark. He completely rocked it that night. Later that weekend he came out to play with the Tesdeschi Trucks Band for a song in Charlotte. It was 103 that day in the parking lot. I was very close to the stage and he did not look like he felt very well. I had this feeling he was sick. He was. But there he was playing to the fans. The crowd gave him a huge welcome. I could write pages about all of this.
It has been a fast year and not the best from an artist loss perspective for many music fans but that is a natural part of life. I already miss some of my favorite musicians. We have the music. The world has the music for the future. It is good to have lived in these times. There are great young musicians coming up everyday. So goes the circle of life…Happy New Year All. See ya down the road.
