Sitting Here With Jesus On A Cloud - February 2023

The other day, I was talking with my daughter Sarah about the ending of the book I wrote last year.  I told her it really doesn’t end; she has to wait for the sequel, or maybe a prequel.  I haven’t figured it out yet completely, but I’m thinking it should be like the Godfather trilogy and Al Pacino should play me in the movie.  Or maybe Robert DeNiro. I like them both. Seeing as it's my legacy at stake, I don’t want to mess it up with a less experienced actor.

Legacy seems to be a big thing these days, especially the past month.  With David Crosby’s passing came a huge number of tributes and videos praising his music and the recognition that he was living on borrowed time for a long time.  Ol’ "Cros" was trying his hardest in recent years to make amends for a long life of debauchery and making virtually everyone he ever played music with hate his guts.  I don’t know whether or not he found peace with himself (or the others), but at last check, he wasn’t resting on his musical laurels or playing his hits from the seventies.  He was cranking out new and very listenable music at a rather furious pace, right up to his death at 81.  I admire that.  While my musical catalog isn’t quite in the same league as his, I hope to be able to write new and respectable music right up to my departure, whenever that may be.

(Not) The Cover Of The Rolling Stone - Photo by Heather Rousseau © 

Retirement planning software is another thing that makes you face your own mortality, and I’ve been playing with that lately also.  You use it to model your projected life, lifestyle and longevity against the backdrop of accumulated savings, market trends and predictions, inflation and health.  Talk about a guessing game.  I should probably do a lot more writing and gigging if I plan on living for any extended period past retirement, just to be on the safe side.  It’s hard to envision being 85 years old if I can’t be like Willie Nelson – touring endlessly, recording a couple new albums per year and generally defying the laws of aging (among several others).  Maybe I’ll grace the cover of the Rolling Stone, as the old song goes.  Or AARP for that matter. It’s a good goal and hopefully my tip jar will be full and I won’t be fighting our two cats over a bowl of cat food, should I live that long.

In all seriousness, I’m grateful for life’s journey so far.  I’ve circled the sun enough times to know I’ve had it pretty good.  Unlike Ol’ Croz, most of my family and friends still speak to me and while there are no gold records on my wall, I’m happy with the songs I’ve written and anticipate the songs that are still to come.  I don’t think I’ve peaked too early and still find the process of creating new stuff both challenging and rewarding.  If God calls me home tomorrow, it’s been a great ride.  If God chooses to put it off another twenty or thirty years, I hope that those extra years will be blessed with a passion for music and the ability to go on making it.  Either way, I’ll look forward to playing “Sitting Here With Jesus On A Cloud” for a long time to come.  I wrote this one as a tribute to John Prine after his passing in April of 2020 from COVID-19.

“Sitting Here With Jesus On A Cloud” 

©  Bob Schmucker 2021

I’m sitting here with Jesus on a cloud  

Singing to you from the great beyond

There’s John Prine on the left, Steve Goodman on the right

We’re sittin’ here with Jesus on a cloud.

When I was travelin’ on the earth like you

Pickin’ my guitar like any fool

God said he had a better plan

I’d pick and sing in the heavenly band

And my guitar would always be in tune!

So, we’re sitting here with Jesus on a cloud

Singing to you from the great beyond

There’s Guy Clark on the left, and Elvis on the right

Just pickin’ here with Jesus on a cloud.

I never knew that Jesus picked guitar

But I saw him pickin’ bluegrass like a star

Then Abraham picked up the bass

And everyone sang Amazing Grace

Yeah I never knew that Jesus played guitar!

Yeah, we’re sitting here with Jesus on a cloud

Singing to you from the great beyond

Johnny Cash is on my left, Glen Campbell’s on the right

Just pickin’ here with Jesus on a cloud.

The Apostles are the featured band tonight

Paul and Peter are gonna do it right

They like to jam on Twist & Shout

With John & George, they’ll play it loud

They’ll rock the heavens, just like dynamite!

Now we’re up here in paradise, and all us pickers feel alright

Pickin’ here with Jesus on a cloud.

Want to hear a bit of this one?  Click here!

*****

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A Healing Place

 It’s funny how certain events can change the trajectory of things in one’s life.  And then, years later, you can see how something happening today can clearly be traced back to something that happened years before.  This is that kind of story.

On New Year's Eve of 2008, my wife Denise and I returned from a couple day stay in Roanoke Memorial Hospital.  Three evenings prior, she had been admitted there with a major headache.  After much testing, the attending physician and neurologist diagnosed her as having had a stroke in the part of the brain that controls language.  Neither of us really understood much of anything that was going on at the time, but we were grateful to be back at home.  

Over the following days and weeks, it became clearer that Denise had lost quite a bit of her ability to communicate and understand with basic and random words that go into almost any conversation.  It was like one third of her vocabulary was just gone.  It was scary for both of us.  It wasn’t clear if or how she could get it back.  On top of that came major fear and panic attacks when she was anywhere outside of the house.  This all went on for a long time, literally several years.  Thankfully, over time, her brain healed and rewired itself.  She had to relearn all of the lost words, which took an incredible amount of work on her part.  Today, you would never know that anything like that had ever happened to her,  Hold that thought.

During the initial months of recovery, Denise slept a lot.  Healing takes a lot of energy, so you sleep while your body heals.  I needed a distraction to keep my brain from overloading and blowing a circuit in those early months of recovery.  In the back closet was an old Yamaha guitar that I’d had forever and maybe played twice a year, mostly teaching neighborhood kids goofy songs like Dead Skunk (In the Middle of the Road) by Louden Wainwright III.  Dear Abby, an old John Prine favorite, was also played a lot, except for the fourth verse, which was somewhat R-Rated.  It couldn’t be played if there were kids in the room, lest they be tempted to re-enact it.  In any case, the old guitar came out and became my companion while Denise slept.  She liked hearing me play as she drifted in and out of sleep.

The old Yamaha had been around a long time and was in dire need of a good setup and fret dressing.  The strings buzzed a lot and it didn’t play well at all beyond the top three frets.  I’d grumble about it occasionally and Denise heard me.  The next Christmas, she surprised me with a new Recording King guitar from Fret Mill Music In Roanoke.  It was, and still is, a really nice guitar - quite a step up from the old Yamaha.  

As time progressed, Denise worked hard to overcome her fear and anxiety when it came to crowds.  Up until that time, our travels outside the house were pretty much limited to doctor visits and therapists.  We needed to expand our horizons to some place where nobody was going to get into her personal space. She was tired of feeling like a prisoner in our own house.  3rd Street Coffeehouse was a little hole in the wall live music venue where it was dark and only lightly attended.  It was a baby step - a place where she could feel relatively safe.  We did okay there and started going there more frequently.

I knew a couple of people who hung out there and they knew I played a little.  They invited me to play their open mic, and I did.  The next thing I know, they invited me to be a volunteer, pouring coffee and helping set up, etc.  Denise surprised me by asking if she could do it too.  Baby steps.  The next thing I knew, I’m running the place and we both joined the Southwest Virginia Songwriters Association, where we met a bunch of really good friends.  Many of the folks we met at 3rd Street were healing from one thing or another.  It’s that kinda place.  I wouldn’t know any of them if I hadn’t taken the old Yamaha out of the closet.  Hold that thought.

Over time, I came to know most if not all the performers who played on our stage.  One was Betsy, a longtime Roanoke folkie and, at that time, feature writer for the Roanoke Times newspaper.  A few years ago, she asked me if she could interview me for a piece she was writing for that would go in a magazine insert for the newspaper.  I said sure.  Later, she called and said she needed some photos for the piece and I met Heather, a great photographer and also a writer for the newspaper.  Heather and I became friends and I hired her a time or two after that to take pictures at Coffeehouse special events.  I wouldn’t know either Betsy or Heather if I hadn’t picked up the old Yamaha.    

As I mentioned, Heather is a writer - a really gifted writer.  When I see her work in the paper, I occasionally send her a text telling her how much I enjoyed it.  This past November, Heather wrote a front page feature article about a young Ukrainian mom and her son, who arrived in Roanoke last August as refugees from the war.  The article was as superb as it was heartbreaking to read.  I sent Heather a text, which led to another text, which led to a Christmas party at 3rd Street Coffeehouse for this young mom and her son, and the Ukrainian college roommate and her family that sponsored them to come to America.  

The Coffeehouse was packed with people that day, American and Ukrainians, who came together for a few hours of healing and celebration.  It was an amazing time of love and bonding for new friends from the other side of the world.  Seeing those beautiful smiles light up the room reminded me that 3rd Street Coffeehouse has always been a place of healing first disguised as a music venue.  Somehow, for me, this all got set in motion fourteen years ago.  It’s a path that I never would have expected.  Denise has all of her speech back, and maybe a little more.  I’m grateful for the new friends made since then and music, which is the glue of how we all stick together.  

Me and Denise

Under The Mistletoe

Thirty-seven years ago today, I met my wife Denise on a blind date. It wasn’t really a blind date, as much as it was a plot hatched by Denise’s cousin Paul. He had decided to play Cupid in spite of the fact that both Denise and I had said no thanks to his offers of “assistance” with our social lives.  Paul wasn’t discouraged.  It was 1985.

In 1985, I was having a bad year… a really bad year.  My first wife decided she was bored, took the kids and left me. All I had left was my clothes, fishing tackle and a really old and ugly Chevy Nova with a quarter million miles.  I had to put my mother in a nursing home earlier that year after being summoned home to Illinois by concerned relatives. Dad was having memory issues due to a series of mini-strokes and sometimes he forgot the stove or oven was on.  I was living and working in northern Virginia, trying to build a civilian career after I had left the Air Force.  Then, my company lost the contract I was working on and I was out on the street with no job.  I packed my meager possessions in the Nova, headed back to Illinois and moved in with Dad, who needed the help anyway.  It was a bad year.

Denise was also coming off a bad marriage and trying hard to make enough money to move out of her parents home and get a place of her own.  With two young daughters, Jennifer and Stephanie, that was a tall order.  She had a decent job in commercial insurance and a big dream.  She didn’t need any guys screwing it up, especially an unemployed bum who talked of being a logistics engineer, whatever that was.  

Paul hatched a plan.  He knew we both loved music, so he invited both of us to see The Atlanta Rhythm Section play a show in Morris the Sunday night after Thanksgiving.  He just forgot to tell either of us about the other, knowing we’d both say no thanks.  It was a perfect setup.  He introduced us and bought a round of drinks.  The music was good and so was the company.  Denise and I ended up at an all-night restaurant until about 4 AM, talking about kids and life.  I have no idea how she went to work the next day.  

Within a couple of days, I called her and she asked me if I’d be her date for her company Christmas party - a dress up affair up in Naperville, IL - just southwest of Chicago.  I said sure and, at the appointed time, put on a coat and tie, got in the old nasty Nova and picked her up.  As with most first dates, she wasn’t quite ready when I arrived and I sat in the living room of her parents house, patiently waiting and wondering how the night would go.  Jen and Steph were about 5 and 7 at the time, and extremely curious about this new guy taking their mom out.  There was a lot of giggling and corner peeking going on.  Denise was finally ready, wearing a hot looking red dress that wasn’t near warm enough for a December night in Illinois.  She filled it out nicely.  We jumped in the Nova and were off to the party.

I don’t recall much about the party other than we both had fun dancing and she had a slight wardrobe malfunction which I won’t describe (but I didn’t mind a bit).  We probably both had a little too much wine and got in the Nova to head back.  It was maybe ten or fifteen degrees and unbelievably cold, about par for the course in an Illinois winter.  We had driven maybe half a mile when the water pump went out and puked antifreeze everywhere.   It’s something you just can’t MacGyver back to life, especially in a coat and tie.  We totally froze waiting for the tow truck and had to call somebody for a ride. Feeling like a total loser, I held her close because, as I said, she wasn’t really dressed for being outside.  Somehow she didn’t freeze to death and, even more surprising, she didn’t tell me to get lost.

That Christmas season, with no job, no money, no hope of seeing my kids and trying to figure out what’s next, I spent a lot of time at her folks house.  When we went somewhere, it was always with Jen and Steph, except maybe one time where her earrings got lost somehow. Her mom and dad made me feel welcome, even though I was an unemployed bum with a crappy car.  After all I’d been through that year, it finally seemed like I was catching a break.  Thirty-seven years later, the kids are grown and we’re still together.  We’ve hung mistletoe and decorated the house together since 1988.

About six or seven years ago, Denise asked me why I had never written a song about her.  I took it as a challenge to do so and after about a hundred pages of torn up lyrics, I finally wrote the song “Under The Mistletoe” on Christmas eve.  It’s based on our life together and it starts like this -  “The first time that I kissed you, you had that red dress on.  Baby it was cold and I just had to keep you warm.  We both were lookin’ to avoid another broken heart.  It was Christmas back in ‘85 when we first had our start.”  It’s a pretty good song.  I think she likes it.  You can hear it here.

Somewhere about 1986

Finding My Muse - Deep Thoughts About The Source of Inspiration

This month's blog post is brought to you by my muse. Merrium-Webster dictionary defines muse as 1) any of the nine sister goddesses in Greek mythology presiding over song and poetry and the arts and sciences and 2) a source of inspiration. Having thought long and hard on this lately, I beg to differ.

As a songwriter, there are generally two ways a new song comes.  The first is the tried and true process of having an idea and developing it over many iterations until it feels good and works in performances.  This is a very intentional and fairly structured process; even goal oriented if you need a song for particular situations or to serve a particular purpose.  That’s probably how 95% of songwriting occurs.  The second way that songs come are born is what most songwriters call “the muse”.  For me, that means an entire new song comes out of the blue with no preconceived thought or planning on my part and I scramble to capture the melody and lyrics before they go away.  It’s there a fleeting instant and gone the next.  It’s a bit like automatic writing or some kind of telepathy.

My wife Denise once asked me how I write songs.  My response frustrated her.  I told her “I don’t know, I just open the window, they fly in and I try to catch them with the song net”.  That’s as close as I can come to describing the process and it’s completely useless to anyone trying to figure how songwriting works.  There aren’t really any rules, other than try to be ready when the muse is, and know that you probably won’t get any advance notice.  They just show up.

So what exactly is this muse thing in reality and how do you get it to show up more often?  That has been on my mind since my muse last showed up two weeks ago.  To set the stage, my most recent song was completely out of my normal groove in terms of subject matter, melody and how it's sung.  It’s not me at all.  It’s way different and was not planned in any way shape or form.  It just happened late one afternoon and lasted about 15 or 20 minutes.  I was lucky - I had the net ready when it flew in the window.  It wasn’t a fully finished song, but probably 90% complete.

To understand what happened, I go back to a place long ago and far away - McComb, Illinois.  It was there that I was a student at Western Illinois University back in the mid 70’s.  I majored in Psychology, only because they wouldn’t let me major in fishing or goofing off (my real skills in life).  Psych was fun, and only a little harder than Underwater Basket Weaving, so it fit my objectives for not requiring a major investment of time or brain cells.  I got along well with the faculty, most of whom were long haired hippies who stuck around college long enough to get their PhD’s. They taught me all the basics, like the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind. It was also where I met and became friends with one of my mentors, Dr. Jim Garrett.

Jim was a renowned author and practitioner of hypnotherapy.  Not the kind where you make people do stupid things like crow like a rooster at unexpected times, but the real kind that is used in treatment of all sorts of addictions, depression and other mood disorders.  He taught me (and a lot of others) the basic techniques from breathing and relaxation to focusing in on the subject's subconscious mind, where most of these issues reside.  I worked with him as an assistant until I graduated.  We did seminars on behavior modification like quitting smoking and weight loss.  We also did some really cool things like age regressions and even past life regressions (topics for another blog post).

What does all that have to do with songwriting and a muse?  Here’s the connection.  Our subconscious is like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, taking in tons of information and stimuli, far more than we need to actually navigate through a day or situation. The conscious state of mind is much more focused on things that really matter, like danger or, if you are younger, people of the opposite sex who get your engine running.  The subconscious rarely ever shows itself in your waking hours, but does reveal itself in dreams.  It’s where deep seated values and concerns live.  It’s also where creativity seems to spring from.  Things like art, music and writing… songwriting in this case, which often seems to be intrinsically related to the subconscious mind. 

To take the idea a step further, I’ve often thought I have about 10,000 songs in my head (my subconscious mind) that I just haven’t gotten around to writing yet.  The trick is to figure out how to get them from my subconscious mind to my conscious mind, so I can capture them with my song net.  In thinking this over the past few weeks, I realized that visits from my muse seem to occur only when my mind isn’t all cluttered up with the normal stuff of everyday living - when I’m relaxed and my mind is drifting in an almost dream-like state.  With that realization, I’m beginning to think that relaxation techniques such as the ones I learned as a Psych major, could be the ticket to getting a few more of those 10,000 songs out of my subconscious mind and onto the stage at some future performance.  Time will tell.

Are you a songwriter or poet?  What are your thoughts about how this muse stuff works?  Let me know in the comments below.  To me, it’s an interesting topic that deserves a lot more consideration and discussion than it typically gets in songwriting forums.  

Just What The World Needs - Another Blogger

If you were to make a list of the top ten things the world really doesn't need, another blogger might be on it, somewhere under nuclear holocaust, world pandemics and famine.  After all, reading blogs doesn't exactly make the best use of whatever little time you still have on the planet.  Writing a blog, similarly, is time I could better spend educating myself, giving back to humanity or planting a garden.  Yet, here we are - you the reader and myself, the writer.  Let's make the best of it, shall we?

Writing doesn't come naturally or easily to most people.  Sharing your writing on the internet for likely criticism should be against every rule of common sense, even if you consider yourself a good writer.  Still, people write the outrageous things on social media every day and it seems like the more outrageous it is, the more buzz it generates.  Maybe the whole social media thing has dumbed us down to the point that we no longer have the constraints of a more civilized society and we're all headed for a "Lord of the Flies" type of digital world.  In that context, maybe another blog doesn't really matter as there's no stopping the descent into madness.

My purpose isn't really to depress or anger anyone however.  As I examine why I would ever want to be a writer or publish a blog, I ask myself what is the purpose of writing if not to share my observations, musings, jokes, stories and concerns with others?  My answer to that question is why not?  Writing is just a form of expression.  A blog, much like a story or song, is intended to be shared with others.  Or so I tell myself.  Your opinion may differ and that's OK, because its just as valid as mine.

Earlier this year, at the behest of my daughter Sarah, I completed a year long project of writing and publishing online my first book - intended only as something of a private autobiography of sorts, for family only.  It was a terrifically fun and rewarding project and I felt like it produced something of value for future generations of my family who may arrive after I've gone.  It also cemented the idea that you can only improve at writing by actually doing it on a regular basis.  This blog is a continuation of that first effort and hopefully for a wider audience.  

My intent is to post a new blog at least once a month, maybe more.  I hope that the thoughts I share contribute something positive to the world, perhaps even slowing the aforementioned decent toward Lord of the Flies.  You are cordially invited to respond, agree or disagree, or just add your own two cents.  If you like what I write, you can share it.  At some point, I may publish a new book based on the best of the blog posts.  Who knows.  If you've made it this far, I'm grateful for your patience and I'll try to make this worth your while.  

Bob