Love my family - The music man

My husband gets a pretty bum rap on this blog. (Sorry honey) He's not great with money so we butt heads on that and since that's where this blog started I've expressed my frustration with him many a time on here. But truly the spending thing is his only vice. He's a good man; quirky, goofy, and has a habit of trying to get under people's skin but he's a good man.

He's also a fabulous musician. He's a self taught bassist turned guitarist, singer, songwriter. We met at our church youth group. We didn't go to the same high school. He was the bassist in the youth praise band and I was one of the back ground vocalists. We went to a big youth group. It sounds silly to me that there were background vocalists in the youth band but, yes, there were. We first acquired a crush on each other when we were in high school. The youth group took a yellow school bus all the way from Michigan to a youth retreat in Oklahoma. On the way home from the retreat while everyone else was asleep, he and I, while sitting in neighboring seats were awake listening to songs by different Christian bands with the head set on his walkman.

We didn't end up dating until much later because he had a girl friend at the time. Years later he professed his love to me at a Christian music festival in Illinois that we'd gone to with a big group of our friends. It was totally unreal. He had just gotten back from the midnight show of one of his very favorite bands (a band we've seen together countless times since then). I was sleeping in my mom's van that we'd driven all our friends down to the festival in because it was way more comfortable than the tent with the horrid lumpy ground beneath. He woke me up to ramble on about how great the show was and this and that. He was really excited and incredibly happy but he wasn't making a ton of sense and I was half asleep. I was just sitting there with my eyes partially closed, nodding my head in agreement and wondering why he was in my moms van. Apparently he was trying to tell me that he liked me. Eventually I figured out what he was saying and we planned to go on a date when we got back from the festival (he was my first and only boyfriend). Needless to say we stayed together and music is a very big part of who we both are.

My heart goes out to him because the man I married is in love with music. I honestly believe there is music playing in his head at all times. Sometimes when he's not listening to me I know he's listening to that darn music playing in his brain. When we first married he was constantly dreaming of becoming a 'real' musician someday. The dream fades more and more with time but it's such a big part of who he is. It's a wonderful part.

He's been in several garage bands. His longest running one, which was his baby was really, really good. When they disbanded I think is when he started to stop dreaming. His bands have always played bars, coffee shops, little venues where the audience consists of all people who've been personally invited by the band members. His current band doesn't play out very often which I know hurts him because that's what he loves to do; to be heard. His longest running band played at some venues in Chicago a few different times. One time (one of the only times that I didn't go) they were scheduled to play at a bar they'd never been to. When they got there it was a very dark bar with a mostly all gothic crowd. He said the guys in the band were joking about how odd the place was. They are absolutely not gothic, just really basic rock guys. The band members were sitting at the bar before they started to play and one of the strange individuals sitting at the bar alongside them leaned over and bit one of the band member's arms. As you could imagine everyone was quite startled. Turns out they were at a vampire bar. The people there all considered themselves vampires. Yes, this type of thing exists. Needless to say my husband has had some "fun" musical adventures.

I am in love with the music man I married. I don't want to see that part of my husband fade anymore than he does. I think a big goal that I need to have, one I've overlooked for along time is to support him more. He might need to redefine what being a 'real' musician is. I know to him it's always been the picture of him standing on large stages with big audiences listening to his music but I also know that in his heart it means people hearing and liking his music. His heart truly doesn't have a quantity set on how many people need to be listening. I can at least be a voice of encouragement, of support, maybe of some new ideas here or there, and I don't think I've done much of that over the past few years. I love my music man!