Last week was a lot.
I found out my dad died on July 30th, 2024.
We don’t know the exact time he passed, but he died alone in a trailer park in Florida. We didn’t have much of a relationship in the last seven or so years of his life for reasons I won’t go into, but I want to share a bit about his music.
My dad was an absolute music theory genius. He spoke in keys and modes and time signatures. He could play multiple instruments, listen to a song once, and play it for you backward and forward.
When I was a kid, he played in a country rock band called The Buckaroos, playing at ski resorts on the weekends and clubs during the week. He made good money playing guitar in the eighties.
Live music started to fade in our area, so he started teaching music out of his house. One of his students was a fiddle player who moved to Nashville and toured with a notable country artist or two.
In his later years, he’d seek out bass players and drummers, always looking to form a jazz trio. He had some luck getting gigs back in PA and later in Florida.
But when these groups fell apart, so did he.
He would still play at home, with his little Polytone amp that he bought in the 80s, playing his be-bop jazz and whatever else came out from his decades of experience.
This is from my recent post “Outdated expectations kill creative dreams,” over on Substack.
That photo at the top of this post was from dad’s old digital camera. It’s so old it takes 2AA batteries.
