I've been playing music for awhile. I've played locally, sat in with friends when they came through town, and have even been lucky enough to play with some damned good players. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in a jam sesion with Tim O'Brien. Later that evening, I was playing with Pete Wernick, Jim Lauderdale, Luke Bulla, Bryn Bright, and others. I've played with Roland White, Bela Fleck, Ronnie McCoury and others in various informal situations. But none of that compares to the gig I had tonight.
My daughter is 6 years old. A couple of weeks ago, she and I drove to Nashville to visit family. She asked me how many minutes were in 4 hours. She then tried to convince me it was 180. I kept telling her it was actually 240. She told me that I was wrong, that I didn't know anything, because I didn't finish school. I told her, I did finish school. I graduated High School, and I even attended some college. She just looked at me and rolled her eyes. Then she said, "But you didn't go to Kindergarten". She's right. At the time, it cost money to go to Kindergarten, and my family didn't have any, so I didn't get to go. Besides, most of the kids in Kindergarden majored in eating paste, it's not like I missed anything. However, my daughter has learned to read in Kindergarden. She does math. The kind of math we weren't doing until 3rd or 4th grade. Her kindergarden kicks ass. She looked at me and told me I will never be as smart as her, because I didn't finish school. I didn't even go to Kindergarten.
A few weeks ago, they sent a note home about the talent show, she wanted to enter. I asked her what her talent was. She told me she had lots of talents. She was talented at art. She was talented with animals. She was talented with brains. I told her she was right and I explained to her what a talent show was, she told me that she was a good singer. Now she has two favorite songs. Hillary Duff's "When the Rain Falls Down" and Dr Hook's "Cover of the Rolling Stone" . I figured she would want to do Hillary, while I wanted her to do Dr Hook, because I wanted to hear her sing "we take all kinds of pills that give us all kind s of thrills....". Instead, she decided to do Puff, the Magic Dragon.
I tried to talk her into doing Old MacDonald or something that she knew all of the words to. but she insisted on Puff. We practised it, and we practised it. Not nearly enough, but enough where she learned the words, or at least how to read them on a lyric sheet.
Tonight, was to be the Grade School talent show. There was going to be lots of Karaoke, lots of over-emoting little girls trying to shake their groove thing just like Britney and Christina do, and there was supposed to be my daughter and me. I was going to be the only adult on the stage tonight.
I wasn't doing too good. I had a root canal on Tuesday. It got infected and I'm eating Vicodin like they are Peanut M&M's. I've had either 2 or 3 of them in the last 2 hours. I waited too long before taking this evenings dose and had to double up to try and knock the pain back, but they weren't acting fast enough. The whole side of my head, and neck were throbbing. Tears in my eyes kind of pain, and I have an extremely high pain tolerance. But pain was no excuse, I had the most important gig of my life tonight.
I was running late, so we missed our place in the line-up, but it was no big deal. They just put us in when we got there. I went up and sat in a folding chair. She stood next to me, almost in my lap, so close that my arm was wrapped around her so that I could reach the neck of the guitar. She knew where to come in and she knew to wait for the end of the turnarounds. She got a little lost with the lyrics, but was so close that I was able to whisper them into her ear with out any problem. It was a flawless performance.
You know Puff the Magic Dragon is a pretty long song, but not long enough. Not when you are sitting on stage in front of a couple of hundred people backing up your daughter while she sings it. Puff is also a morbid little song, where little Jackie Paper turns his back on Puff, and then Puff crawls into his cave and dies. But when your 6 year old daughter is singing it for all she's worth, wrapped up in your arms, it's the most beautiful goddamned thing in all of the world.
One of these days, I might get to play music on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. It's not that unreasonable of a thing that it might not actually happen. I may get to play for a sold out crowd, for an audience of thousands. I have been blessed by being able to play with some of my heros, people who are considered by many to be the best in the world at what they do. But none of that will ever be able to compare to tonights gig. Sitting in an elementry school gymnasium, and singing Puff the Magic Dragon with my six year old daughter, you can't get a bigger or better gig than that.
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