Sept. 25-Catching up with friends, karaoke

Thursday after work I met some buddies, Jeff, Kim and Ray, for some beers. Kim seemed to be doing fine after a few beers, with no apparent aftereffects of a rough patch he went through over the past summer, or the negative things he was dealing with when I saw him last December. Ray was about the same as ever, bending Kim’s ear and rehashing the experience they had a few years ago when they had played together in a band.

After a few beers we headed on to a karaoke joint, the Rockit Grill, we used to frequent. I signed up for my ‘go-to’ song, ‘The Weight,’ and then after that warm-up I went to a favorite that was a little more challenging, ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ a song that made a difference back in the ‘60s when released by Bob Dylan. I hit it pretty well, no doubt aided by Sam Adams. When Jeff got his second song in we were ready to head back to his place where I would spend the night. He proudly showed me the new Paul Reed Smith guitar he bought during an extended work assignment in Denver, and plugged in and played along with a Carlos Santana CD.

I first met Jeff almost 20 years ago at a business event, but it wasn’t until a few years later when we ran into each other at a karaoke bar that our real friendship began. It wasn’t too long after that that he started playing guitar again after a long absence. Like others I would meet in the years after I started to learn to play guitar myself as a 35 year old around 1990, he had played in a band when young and set his instrument aside as families and careers took precedent. At the time he and Ray were part of a University of Michigan alumni group that played in a softball league and often went out for karaoke after the games, and I fell in with that crowd for several years, donning the yellow and blue t-shirt even though I graduated from a rival Big 10 school, Indiana University.

This was in the period after I took some guitar and vocal lessons, which I attribute to a major turning point in my life. Almost all the friends I made after that, whether they were fleeting or more permanent, were through a musical connection. Jeff is a good case in point. I don’t even think he owned a guitar when he started noodling around on one of mine many years ago, but it appeared to re-spark something deep inside him and I think it was to change his life in some significant ways, as it has mine.

It seems that all my friends and associates in Washington have been going through some significant challenges lately. This doesn’t even include Tom, one of my closest friends who killed himself a few years ago after he fucked up his life to the point that he didn’t see any other way out. Strangely, one of his last acts before a sharp downhill turn was to go on a buying binge at a guitar store, even though he didn’t know how to play. I ended up with a couple of guitars, a bass, and an amp following that disaster.

But Jeff appears to be in a good place in his life now, an exception, although he divorced his wife a couple of years ago and shares custody of their two daughters. I don’t know, my theory is there is something about the music he has brought into his life that keeps him on a steady course. Maybe I am projecting my own experience onto his.