Five59 Music

Music has always been a big part of my life, beginning at around the age of three when, as my mother used to share, I'd sing along with the car radio in my little boy voice. (I still do. Sing with the car radio, I mean, not have a little boy voice.) At about the age of 11, my parents bought me my first decent stereo -- a Magnavox in a big wooden cabinet, with a record player and AM/FM. With that first stereo came three LPs: The Fifth Dimension's "The Age Of Aquarius," a three-record collection of 60s hits, and Michael Parks' "Then Came Bronson," which gave me my first taste of the blues with "Reenlistment Blues." I didn't know what the blues was about at that point -- I only knew that I loved that shuffle and the growl in his voice. But soon I drifted off into pop fandom again; it was the early 70s and I was listening to the Partridge Family, the Osmond Brothers, and The Archies (hey, "Sugar Sugar" is STILL a great pop song, four decades later!). This didn't last long, though. My father was a self employed salesman, and as such he had occasion to go from storefront to storefront during the course of his work day. On weekends and during summer vacations, I sometimes accompanied him and soon learned the joys of browsing through thrift stores and pawn shops; in those days it wasn't unusual to be able to choose from huge stacks of LPs for 10¢ each; 25¢ at the most. In this dusty, musty environment, I discovered rock and roll. Albums such as The Beatles' "Rubber Soul," the Rolling Stones' "Got Live If You Want It" and "Big Hits (High Tides And Green Grass)," Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," Blue Cheer's "Vincebus Eruptum," The Kinks' "Greatest Hits," George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" triple album, and John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band's "Live Peace In Toronto 1969" (I can still hear the introduction, as the announcer welcomes the band and John steps to the mic, saying, "We're just going to do numbers we know, you know, because we've never played together before,") formed the foundation of my rock and roll education.
	Mom, Dad, and me, circa 1963. Hey, that rhymes!
At around the same time, I got my first guitar; it was a rented acoustic and didn't stay around long, but shortly thereafter came a cheap electric guitar and a tiny amplifier. The lessons I took left me cold; playing "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and "The Farmer In The Dell" didn't do much to make me feel like a superstar, and I quit going after a couple of months. The guitar sat in the corner of my room for a year or so, and then one day when I was at the music store picking up items for school band (where I was doing a horrible job of learning the trumpet), I happened across a book that was nothing but guitar chords -- over a hundred of them -- and something told me that was what had been missing from those lessons I had found so tedious, so I bought the book and slowly, over the next year, began to teach myself.

The next real milestone in my guitar playing, however, came after I had obtained a copy of "The Ventures Knock Me Out" and learned to play "I Feel Fine" and "Love Potion #9" note-for-note. I was 14 and staying at my grandparents' house in Missouri for the summer. That gave me the chance to work on my guitar playing for 2-1/2 months. I wrote my first song that summer, too, a really insipid love song called "You and I." It was a few years before I ventured (pun intended) to form a band. I was 16 and my best friend and I found a couple of high school acquaintances to join us and decided to audition for the school talent show, performing a Zeppelinized version of Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." We weren't very good, and we didn't make the cut. The following year I formed a short-lived project called Chateau in which I played drums. It was a couple more years before I tried again. I was 18 when I formed Hostage, with some guys I met through ads at the music store. That lasted about six months; a few months later I was looking for musicians again. I found an excellent young drummer who I am still friends with today; the other guitar player from Hostage came on board and we recruited a bass player and then invited the friend who had played drums in Hostage to be the lead singer, and Greyhaven was born. We played all over central Oklahoma and the surrounding area for about three years, and then I left the band to concentrate on school and shortly thereafter got married.

Within a couple of years we'd started a family and decided to get involved in church. Soon I was itching to play music again and started playing what was still referred to as "Jesus music" at that time -- folk-influenced acoustic guitar interpretations of hymns like Amazing Grace, and soon I was writing original Christian music as well. My musical world changed a great deal in two major steps. First my head exploded when I heard DeGarmo and Key's "Communication" with its massive rock sound on songs like "Alleluia, Christ is Coming" and especially "Six, Six, Six." From there I learned about Petra, Randy Stonehill, and many other pioneers of Christian rock. Then I discovered, much to my dismay, that many people in the church thought of Christian rock as an oxymoron -- how could it be rock music and still be Christian? Larry Norman answered that question for me when he wrote these words: "I know what's right, I know what's wrong, I don't confuse it... All I'm really trying to say is why should the devil have all the good music?" Next came brief stints with a series of Christian rock bands; Second Wind in Oklahoma City, followed a few years later by Elijah in Norman, Oklahoma, and then a second incarnation of Elijah in Springdale, Arkansas. In 1985, I was hired to play piano at a small independent church, and a few months later, when the couple that led worship left for another state, I was promoted to worship leader. That began a career that spanned more than fifteen years. I served as a musician and worship leader in churches all over Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. Then came the day that my life changed forever.