Music and Family

 For this project, I thought it would be really interesting to interview my paternal step-grandfather, aka "papa Richard." I hadn't seen him in years, with the exception of my grandmother's (his wife's) funeral in early January. He mentioned to my dad at the funeral that he actually really wanted to talk to me about some of the music things I'd been doing. I realized that all this time I had thought I was the only one in my family that played an instrument, because I simply forgot that he was into music like that because I was a kid the last time I saw him. When this project was mentioned I thought it was the perfect opportunity to talk to him a little bit more. 

For starters, I found out that not only does he play plain acoustic guitar, but has also worked with different techniques like slide guitar, and plays harmonica and piano. He started playing around age 13, and said that him and his sister playing gospel music is where he really started. I mentioned some of the church gigs I've done in the past year, and he mentioned that last Christmas eve a bunch of people at his church ended up playing guitar together in a very fun, community orienting way. While he was telling me about this, I realized another question that I didn't know I was going to have- How has music had an influence on your faith? 

"Yeah. Just the wording, lyrics, the way it's played, I don't know if you've ever heard How Great Thou Art. You ever heard that song? Songs like that they- it gives you time to think, y'know?" 

The next bit of questions I had were about the music that he liked growing up. He said that he could never get tired of Sweet Home Alabama no matter how many times it's played. There was also a little bit of a separation between music that he considered to be more relationship-centered, versus music they liked at parties. For the party side, he said the typical artists would be bands like ACDC, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd- and his parents hated it. He said he wasn't allowed to play that stuff in the house. He said he's always been really into the blues, and he actually knew a lot of the history of it too. We got a little bit side tracked talking about the syncretic nature of it and the 12 bar blues and everything that we've just learned about in class, it was really fun to find someone in my family that I could talk to about that. One genre that he absolutely hates is "that hollerin' music," aka heavy metal, rap, anything super intense like that. 

For the relationship side of the music he liked growing up, he said the typical artists were Faith Hill and Hank Jr. I kind of wanted to go a little bit deeper with this one and asked if he had any special songs with Rita, his wife that passed in December. He had a little bit of a list for this answer. Some of the songs were It's Your Love by Faith Hill, The Blues Man by Hank Williams, and Tennessee Whiskey by Chris Stapleton. He said she really wanted him to learn how to play Tennessee Whiskey, and he did learn a bit of it. 

I really enjoyed this project. After the interview, he stayed for dinner and we talked for a really long time at the table with my parents and my sister. It was a really nice night- well worth the hour and a half drive through Greenville at 3:30p.m. He also invited me to come over sometime and see his harmonica collection. I feel like this project helped me gain a family member that the business of life had kind of separated me from.