LOOKING BACK AGAIN

   In 1993 I resolved to put my music career to rest. I had been a professional singer/songwriter for twenty-seven years at that point.  I had been 'paying to play' for years and the musicians I was working with at the time, although very talented individually, had absolutely no concept of inter connectivity when we performed. They ran over me like a freight train with amplification and I have the hearing loss today to prove it. 

   The music industry and I had a mutual mistrust of one another. The industry couldn't figure out how to categorize me for marketing and I didn't want to be pigeon holed. Unlike many of my musical friends, making the transition from performer to non performer was easy for me. I relegated performing to a youthful passion that had waned and took up painting for my creative expression. 

   But periodically in the years to follow, music would resurface in my life. I was hired as a lyricist for an MGM animated feature. Singers recorded my songs and most recently I was asked by Marc Myers from www.JazzWax.com to discuss my collaboration with the great jazz pianist and composer, Jimmy Rowles, on the song LOOKING BACK.  I wrote the lyrics for Jimmy's haunting melody when I was a teenager and Jimmy was somewhere on his way to sixty. Retelling the story of my long, albeit sporadic, relationship with Jimmy made me realize that making music was not something I could turn off and on like a spigot. The joy of it could lay dormant for years but spring to life again with a little encouragement. 

   I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason; there is no such thing as chance. I'm waiting to see where this new resurgence of music in my life will lead me. In the meantime I have a new idea for a painting.