The Origins

Grandma Palmer gave me a harmonica when I was 7 years old. She always used to play that romantic 1940s jazz, and some old time folk music, and she always used to sing that tune, “I’m my own Grammpaw”. It was simple enough to learn how to pick out that tune on the harmonica, and that’s where it started.

Growin up we never had much money. But one day in middle school my mother called me out sick, lied through her teeth to the secretary about me having a cold, so we could go to buy me a guitar. I’ve never since been so confused and excited at the same time.

We drove the next town over to Bob’s Trading Post and found something just right. Bob told me I could get a special 10% discount if I promised to get him tickets to my first big tour! I guess I won’t be able to make good on that deal, cause Bob is long gone. And even though his trading post still sits on Main St, with the south-facing bay windows, those sun-warped guitars all stained from years of daylight, I still think of Bob, and I think of how its taken me so long to get here, and I think how grateful I am for that first guitar. I remember the Jim Post, Arlo Guthrie, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell records that all sounded old and perfect. I could only try and fail to learn how to play them. It was easier to learn Blink 182 and Greenday so I learned those instead. Years past by and now those first folks songs have won my heart again.

Times are strange, these days. Lots of violence in the news and I know it feels as though something has been brewing in this here United States and the pot’s too hot and its gonna boil over any minute. And I don’t hear much of anybody getting it all right and straightened out, cause its like we all lost track of the truth and there are so many competing stories and who has time to figure it all out? We got wealthy merchants and crooked politicians and stoogely officials and corrupt educators and theres drugs that kill the first time you use it and theres plastic everywhere and in everything, and the whole world looks like it’s going to explode in one enormous war.

Something new, yet somehow old feeling, like a good pair of suede boots, something wild and reckless and hopeful has begun pouring from the quiet places of the world. These songs come from those places. May they quiet the worry in your heart, and uplift your spirits.

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