It’s never too late to be a rock star
My new axe is large but not too large, and it’s golden brown and a real beauty.
I got it last weekend at the guitar store, having chosen it after picking up and strumming a half dozen of them.
“This one feels right,” I said to the guy who was helping me.
“Good choice,” he said.
I drove it home in a big cardboard box, my Yamaha acoustic guitar. It’s a beginner’s model, not expensive at all but a good instrument with which to get this thing done.
I bought it after telling my friend Gina that she and I were going to sing that song together. We decided that while sitting in the amphitheater at the Chautauqua Institute in New York two weeks ago. Mary Chapin Carpenter was on stage, and when she started picking the bluegrassy intro, Gina turned to me.
“Halley Came to Jackson!”
It’s a song about Halley’s Comet bursting across the sky in Jackson, Miss., in 1910. Carpenter was inspired to write the song after meeting the short-story writer Eudora Welty. Welty told the story of how, when she was a baby, her father carried her to the window to see the comet. And so began the lyrics.
Late one night when the wind was still
Daddy brought the baby to the windowsill
To see a bit of heaven shoot across the sky
It’s a happy, bouncing song with perfectly visual lyrics.
“Don’t you wish you were standing on that stage singing that song and playing the guitar?” I asked Gina there at the concert.
“All the time,” she said.
Sadly, nobody will ever invite either of us to stand on stage and sing that or any other song, but what’s keeping us from singing it? I told Gina I would get a guitar and learn to play that song and we would sing it.
I play piano OK enough, and at one time was first-chair alto saxophone player in high school. I recall a guitar I would strum as a teenager, including the intro riff of “Smoke on the Water,” but everyone who could hold a guitar could do that.
Once home, I spent about an hour learning the basics-the C, G and D chords. I’d forgotten how those strings hurt the fingers. I’m going to have to grow some calluses if I want to move beyond the basics.
I found the chords for “Halley” and got to work. I have a terrible singing voice, and I’m not just saying that. I’m terrible-like a grumpy frog. When it’s time for our private concert, Gina will have to do all the singing. Me, I’ll be behind my axe.
After our concert, I might try some other of Mary Chapin Carpenter’s songs. Holding that guitar and struggling to move around the strings reminds me of how skilled and talented she is, and how many years she’s worked to get there.
But as they say, it’s never too late to be a rock star. Or in this case, a folk star. By the time autumn chill comes, I hope to have conquered a few more chords.
It’s been said that if you know three guitar chords, you can play any country or folk song. “Three chords and the truth,” is how the saying goes. The truth is I will never be good enough to play for anyone but myself, and Gina.
But still, we’ll feel like stars-no, like a comet. Shooting across the sky for a moment or two.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.