Music, food, wine...

Today I walked along the shore of the lake through the Queenstown Gardens into the Center of town. Music was playing from performers at the Arts and Crafts Open Fair Market where many people were browsing through scarfs, sweaters, canned goods, oil paintings, pottery, jewelry and a stall with all kinds of cup cakes!

My hearing works like magnets... they attract certain sounds no one else would ever be aware of... someone was playing a very out of tune piano. Sounded almost like a honky tonk piano, but the melody was not ragtime...

I put my blood hound ears "out there" seeking where the music was coming from. Along the water front was a young man playing on a REAL, not electric, but a real acoustic piano!!! The front of the upright piano had been removed so you could see the hammers falling back and forward against the strings. The piano was ancient. He had fashioned a frame out of iron that the piano sat on with side bars and a handle to pull the sweet old piano by hand anywhere he desired. Damn clever! No amplification. Simply organic sounds from a very old piano and the guy made up his own music. He could have not been over 21. He loved making music at the piano! His concert hall was a boardwalk beside a lake, walled in by the shades of autumn leaves, a ceiling of blue on blue sky and laughing seagulls.

In the 70's I often lived out of my cars as I wandered around the country playing piano. Some nights I'd stop into a bar in Evanston, WY and begin playing piano... suddenly there would be a "tip" jar on the piano and I'd make enough to fill up with gas, eat, drive to the next place my musical muses took me!

One night during a blizzard I stopped in Rifle Colorado... walked into a bar/cafe and asked IF I could play piano. The bar tender laughed. He said: "Young man, IF you can get anything that sounds like music out of that heap of crap in the back of this place I'll give you a hundred dollars."

With that kind of a challenge, and the fact I was broke, I was determined to find that forgotten beast of a music maker and find a way to make music from it's neglected shell.

Two burly cowboys got up from their bar stools, stomped back to the end of the bar and rolled out a very rough looking old upright piano. The one winked at me and said: "okay pretty boy you better be able to play!"

The piano was unbelievable. I could not believe the sound... within a half hour the place was packed... breathing room only.
The proprietor, after hearing the first song jumped on the telephone and started calling people... I made over $700.00 dollars in tips. I also had a killing hang over that lasted for days.

I was able to get my car repaired free, good food at a local diner and most of all I seemed to had made a lot of people happy. People that had never heard a Classical piece performed on a keyboard. My event in Rifle CO. was at least 40 years ago!

I sat on a bench listening to the young man's music. It was not my kind of music, but it ignited a plethora of memories inside my mind. Musical moments that I have never, ever thought of in years. At last, I picked up my back pack, put a 20 dollar bill in the piano man's kitty and walked to a cafe for a sandwich and glass of wine.

I sat thinking how in the 60's and 70's war was a huge item... draft... now we have a NO DRAFT MILITARY... racial angst... now we have a BLACK PRESIDENT... still the same bigotry and wars everywhere as well as mother earth erupting with earth quakes, floods, winds, drought and amid it all there are young people that are traveling, making life better for many people and yes, they are creating and making art.

We all pay a certain price for where we end up at the end of the day. My day was magic. I pray that young man has a safe place to sleep, eat and most of all care for his beloved piano.