Yes, its another song title. You’ll come to find that music has a big impact on me and the way I write. It’s been an important part of my creativity since the beginning. Movies I could mostly take or leave, but music always opened doors to me that an otherwise isolated childhood would have kept closed. My record player, and then cassette player, were my most prized of possessions, next to crayons and paper. CDs were the greatest of the great inventions, forget the wheel. No longer did I have to worry about wearing out the tapes or scratching fragile vinyl.

I’m a music snob, self-admitted and unapologetic. Not the snob in the sense of one certain genre or artist being greater than another, through I can be insufferable at times in that regard. No, I’m a snob in regards to whether music feels honest and real to me. Modern music, not so much. Canned and processed within an inch of its life, it will do what it needs to do, namely sell and make money, but as far as nourishing the soul, it leaves me as flat and unsatisfied as a can of Spam.

I am a fan of the classics. I’m an Elvis fan, for sure. I grew up on mostly blue collar rock and hard country, with some hard bitchin’ rock to counterbalance that. Eagles, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, John “Cougar” Mellencamp, those were the voices I heard. American Fool was one of the first albums I could sing all the way through. Jack and Diane still mean as much to me as it did when I was little, maybe more now that I’ve gotten some of the distance and perspective to appreciate lost time. Pink Houses chokes me up every time, and if you happen to pass me driving down the road, belting out something at the top of my lungs, it’s probably that song. It just gets me.

As I grew older, I found opera and classical music. It’s not my cup of tea all the time, but when I’m in the mood for it, nothing else will do. Once I got to college I opened the door to alternative, country and rock, and all for the better. I discovered a great band, now sadly broken up, The Tea Party. Their sound was an amalgamation of Eastern and Western influences, melding them together into something wonderfully unique. The Tea Party got me through the hardest parts of college, and for that I could never thank them enough. Triptych is an album I recommend to anyone and everyone I know.

Each of these genres and the artists in them have helped shape the writer I am. Country music (I’m talking the old stuff. Real country, not this sappy pop-rock American Idol b.s they’re shilling as country now) is exceptionally good at storytelling. Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash are my favorites in this genre. And yes, I was a fan of Cash before being a fan of Cash was cool. Eat it, hipsters. Ahem.

Waylon Jennings music has that ballsy, bluesy edge to it, just angry enough, just wistful enough, to draw you into the tale he’s telling, leaving you wanting more and satisfied all the same. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got a wonderful voice and knows how to use it. Cash has more of an epic feel to his music, like he’s reaching out beyond the dust and grit into the larger unknown.  Writers should take lessons from both these guys. They know how to tell a story.

Where am I going with this? Not really sure. I’m feeling a little nostalgic tonight, so I’ve dragged out a lot of the old tunes to see what memories and stories they conjured for me. People divine in various ways. Tea leaves, coffee grounds, rune stones: it literally runs the gamut. Me, I conjure with music. I throw in a CD and see what kind of story comes out of the feeling the music makes in me. They don’t always make sense. I’ve written gunfights to Celine Dion, so I don’t have a clue how my subconscious works. As long as it does the job, I don’t feel the need to break the machine apart to find out how the gears are put together.

By the way, the song Seven Turns? It’s by the Allman Brothers Band. If I had to pick a song out of any I know that fits where I am in life right now, its has to be Seven Turns. I’d love to quote some lyrics to you, but I don’t have permission, so the next best thing you can do is find a copy of this song and listen to it. It might not do it for you, but no matter how blue or bummed I feel, I can put this song on and it helps me get a little perspective on where I am. Then I can get my head back to work on the books, because that’s where I am.