‘cause my bones had grown restless ‘fore I was 17.
Music was hard to come by where I grew up. We had top 40 country and pop, or southern gospel tunes. Being in the buckle of the bible belt in the Ozarks, I was surrounded by a lot of gospel quartets and family singing groups. Those harmonies have few parallels, but my freshman year of high school changed everything. Speech and debate, punk rock, and the divorce of my parents.
Speech and debate became this weird family of folks that transcended schools. The folks that I met have played a far larger role in molding me than they’ll ever know. I’ve had the privilege of watching a few of them do incredible things with their lives. Truth be told, many of them are my heroes. Several of them also introduced me to the most amazing music that’s ever been captured. My friend Crystal would bring mix cds for me. Jammed with as many songs as she could fit on a CDR. She meticulously labeled the cds with song titles and artist names so that I could dive further in to whatever struck my fancy.
If I recall correctly, lunch in my high school cost $1.50 a day. I’d get a $10 bill from dad each week. Little did dad know, I was feeding a deeper hunger. There was a guy in school who was big into downloading music. Anything you wanted. I’d take the names of the bands that I loved from those mixed cds and figure out the names of their albums. For three dollars he would burn any cd for you. Each week I would come to him with a list of three albums I wanted, and I gave him my lunch money.
98 Mute - Slow Motion Riot
Rancid - Let’s Go
Bouncing Souls - Hopeless Romantic
H20 - FTTW
Flogging Molly - Swagger
And every Punk-O-Rama and Rock Against Bush that were ever created.
My parents, who had adopted me, split up at the end of my freshman year of high school. I’m a rare case that my life drastically improved after they split. Dad and I were able to finally live life. I hadn’t been allowed to pursue music until that point, but dad could finally invest in that curiosity of mine.
He and grandma spent the next few years helping me get the basics that I needed to learn guitar. I stopped giving my lunch money for burnt cds and started mowing lawns to save up for gear. Punk rock helped me understand a lot about myself. Over the years I’ve tried to figure out what it was that drew me in. What it was I had been looking for. How it was exactly what I needed.
The music that my friends showed in those hallways of any given SW Missouri high school at a debate tournament actually rocked my world. They got me through hell and back and prepared to do it again, if need be. Those songs were the soundtrack for drunken nights in Joplin in my early 20’s. They helped carry me through intense graduate school courses. Somehow they’ve all found their way into my own music. To all of those who have shared life and their music with me, thank you. At the end of the day, I am but an amalgamation of influences and experiences.
