The Music in Me
It all started with the Monkees. My mom tells me that before I could walk I would pull myself up to the coffee table and bounce to the pop music of Davy, Micky, Michael and Peter as they sang “Hey Hey We’re the Monkees." Then it was Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, Hank Snow, Faron Young, Glen Campbell, or any of the other albums my mom played on the turntable in the furniture sized stereo cabinet. After that, it was piano lessons, a guitar for Christmas, a recorder and then a flute. Playing the flute wasn’t my idea. At the end of 5th grade, all my classmates who wanted to be in the concert band stood in a line. One by one, we walked before the band instructor, a man named Harry Ward, as he studied our faces through his wire-rimmed glasses and chose the instrument we would play. My thin lips were the deciding factor — I would play the flute, no questions asked. My sister wasn’t so lucky, her beautiful pouty lips got her the French horn which came with a red ring around her mouth and a red face from blowing so hard. Today, I love the sound of the French Horn, but in 5th grade, it wasn’t my first choice. Looking back, it makes sense. My sister always could hold a lot of air. Back then she could swim both lengths of the swimming pool underwater without coming up for a breath.
Program for the Christmas show my sister and I performed in 1977
A few years later, Mr. Ward, suggested I play the Baritone Sax in the Jazz Band, so I did, even though the cumbersome instrument didn’t fit my image of a popular teenage girl. After I graduated, Mr. Ward and I, who I referred to as Harry by then, attended the same church where he led a worship band. One day he said they needed a bass player and handed me a bass guitar and a Mel Bay book. Again, no questions asked. Years later, that same bass would introduce me to Mickey.
While I was painting the barn one afternoon, I got a call from a friend who said they needed a bass player for a jam at a local bar in town (I’m sure that’s not at all what Harry had in mind when he bought me that bass.) Mickey was wearing a tie-dye shirt and had a wild head of hair reminiscent of Peter Frampton. We met, I played, and went home. Two years passed before I would see him again. The next time was a girls night out to a different local bar where he was playing a one-man show. It was love at second sight and thus began the story of Mickey and Trish. I learned new bass lines and he encouraged me to sing, first a few back-up vocals then more. I had written songs since I was 15 but had never sung them outside of a church setting. With a new dose of inspiration, I began to write more and more.
Mickey and I back in our younger days.
For the last eighteen years, Mickey and I have played together as a duo with a few bands in between. When our last band broke up, Mickey suggested I play rhythm guitar. Unfortunately, it’s wasn’t as easy as it sounded, and as a couple, we have had our share of arguments over how I did or didn’t play. However, through the years, it’s gotten easier. I have learned to play better and we’ve both mellowed a bit.
Our relationship has always been rooted in music, as is my life, which is ok with me. It’s about the music. I had those words tattooed on my arm so that when I play I would remember that it’s not about me, it’s much bigger than that. Music has a power that I still have yet to understand — the power to make me feel something. It heals me at some deep level, it brings comfort, it can change my mood, make me smile and get me up out of chair to dance. There is nothing else I know of that has that kind of power. I will always be grateful for those early seeds of music planted in my life from the old records my mom played to the teacher and friend who kept pushing me to reach further, and to Mickey for setting high expectations that I play the song right, like it is on the album — and sometimes I surprise both of us and do.
This last weekend we played a wedding in Florida for a close friend of ours. As we came into the second verse of a beautiful instrumental song called Maria Elena, I stumbled over the chord progression but quickly found my place again. Mickey didn’t say a word at the time but a few days later when we were driving home, he looked at me and said, “By the way, nice save … on Maria Elena.”
