After singing songs for my classmates I began to talk about my experiences in high school. I laughed as I told them that my high school experience might be summed up in four words. God, Music, Girls, and Football. Then I became a little more serious and explained that not that much had changed except the words I would use are Faith, Hope, Love, and Family. Then I sang a song with that as the title. 

Then I began to tell stories and give meaning to each of those words. I talked about how I grew up going to church and Sunday school and Young Life camps before having everything I believed being thrown into doubt in my early 20's. And though faith returned in a different form I could say once again that "faith is strong, hope is high, joy abounds, and love abides."

The came a very special moment in the concert. I welcomed the three other people I had first sung with onto the stage where we first sang together some sixty years earlier. We sang a Tom Paxton song, "Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound." It was something very special to sing one more time in that place with those very special people.

As I talked about "girls' and "love" I explained that until I was in my 30's that the only serious relationships I had were with women in our high school and as it says in the chorus, "On the road to finding out could not see then what I see now. All I needed to be found back in my hometown."

Finally when I talked about "football" and "family" I explained how I'd gone back to the field where we played and remembered those now long ago days. And how were were a band of brothers. Running out on the field as kids. A band of brothers. Come together become this: A Band of Brothers.  

On my website, markpearsonmusic.com, you can find an accompanying blogpost, The Castaways, diving deeper into a song about being back on the stage of the high school auditorium singing once more with the three classmates I sang with 60 years earlier.

In that Blogpost you can also listen to a studio recording of the song "Faith, Hope, Love, Family."

The album, Class of 65, is available for streaming.

You can also see the complete CLASS OF 65 concert on my YouTube Channel

This Episode contains more songs for classmates.

"Offering and Receiving Grace" was written for my classmate, Bev. When she was in high school she loved to run. It was the early 60's and the boys were intimated by her. Instead of fessing up to our insecurities we teased her. After high school I lost touch with her. Eventually I realized that I both needed and wanted to apologize to her, but I didn't know how to get hold of her. Then unexpectedly she sent me a Facebook friend request. The song tells the story about how, following up on that request, it's never wrong and never too late to "practice offering and receiving grace."

One of our classmates, Bill Morlin, was a well respected investigative journalist. As I explained in the song I wrote for him, "He went places Dr. Jeckyll hides to show us where the truth lies." 

As I was writing songs for the Class of 65 I read an article about one of our classmates, Mike Forster. The article talked about how after the death of his wife he had begun talking beautiful photos of old buildings and cars around Spokane. What I realized is he was inspiring us all to see "this old world in a brand new light looking through a camera with an artist's eye."

The next song, "My Witness," was dedicated to Gail Bronson Harsh. She had taken the loss of her daughter and made the world a better, safer place for all of us. What the songs says is "we all need a witness to the stories of our lives and I wanted to tell you I am grateful you are mine." She had been a witness to her daughter's life. We were witnesses to her life. Important stuff. 

Finally I pick up a banjo that was more than a hundred years old. It was the first banjo I ever owned. I explained how I'd given it to a friend of mine years ago and my wife had bought it back fifty years later and given it to me for my birthday. I didn't understand at first why I had trouble putting the banjo down. Then I realized that when I played it all these years later I felt my old fingers were now intertwined with the fingers I first played it with as a young boy. Such thinking gave new meaning to the song "Will The Circle Be Unbroken."  

On my website, markpearsonmusic.com, you can find an accompanying blogpost talking about a song from the Podcast. This time the song is: "Offering and Receiving Grace."

The album, Class of 65, is available for streaming.

You can also see the complete CLASS OF 65 concert on my YouTube Channel.

This Episode contains more songs written for individual classmates.

"Trunk Up in the Attic" was written for my classmate Clarice Wilsey. Her physician father helped liberate the Dachau extermination camp at the end of World War Two. During those trying days at Dachau Dr. Wilsey wrote a number of letters home to his wife. After the war the letters were locked away in a trunk in the attic of their home. After their parents died Clarice and her siblings rediscovered the letters. The letters inspired Clarice to write a book, "Letters from Dachau." The letters were donated to the Holocaust Museum. Our fathers were friends. They both brought home unspeakable trauma from their experiences during wartime. I was inspired by how skillfully and thoughtfully Clarice found hope in healing in the darkest of places.

"Breathing in the World" was written for Bill Yake. He was an amazing poet who helps us see and appreciate the beauty and wonder of the natural world. I appreciate how his words let us breathe in that world in different ways. How his words about that world take my breath way. How the natural world offers us breathing space, a place to truly exhale. Bill wasn't able to be at the reunion. I sang his song to him over the phone. Sadly and unexpectedly he died a few weeks later. His voice was silenced but his words contain to resonate.

While many of the songs were written leading up to the reunion, "The Magic Carpet" was written years ago for my friend, Dan Eaton. Dan and I started making music together in 8th grade and continued through high school. It was a time of discovering so many things for the first time. A lot of the things we discovered had to do with cars and the freedom that came with them. In 1983 I wrote a song for him that compared a car to a magic carpet. The song's remained a staple for some 40 years. It was fun to sing it to him at the reunion and also to realize that these days he's driving a Tesla.

Dan and I started out playing four string banjos together. After singing "The Magic Carpet" I invited him to join me onstage where we picked up the banjos one more time. It was hard to believe as we were strumming away that it had been more than sixty years since we had first played together. 

On my website, markpearsonmusic.com, you can find an accompanying blogpost talking about a song from the Podcast. This time the song is "Trunk Up in the Attic."

The album, Class of 65, is available for streaming.

You can also see the complete CLASS OF 65 concert on my YouTube Channel.

In MORE SONGS AND STORIES FROM HOME Mark Pearson shares a belief that we are all in this together, more alike than different, capable of finding common ground in the stories we share and the songs we sing together. 

In this first series of Podcasts, CLASS OF 65, Pearson returns to the high school auditorium where 60 years earlier he performed for the first time. Six decades later a musical reunion filled with songs and stories for and about his classmates, celebrating where it began and the roads traveled from there to now.

In this Episode three of the songs are written for and sung to classmates who were in the auditorium that day. There is the song for Sandy who years earlier was given only a few months to live. Still around. Still vital. A song for Carol who immortalized her love for our classmate, Ron, in her book of poems, "Catapult." Then a song for Kathy and Ken who not only walked the Camino de Santiago multiple times but put their story into a book, "Every Step Together." 

On my website, markpearsonmusic.com, you can find an accompanying blogpost talking about a song from the Podcast. This time a song sung before singing songs written for classmates. "As Healthy as Our Stories" talks about how though we may think of ourselves as being as sick as our secrets we can be and often are "as healthy as the stories the ones we tell ourselves, healthy as the stories we tell everybody else." 

The album, Class of 65, is available for streaming.

You can also see the complete CLASS OF 65 concert on my YouTube Channel.

In MORE SONGS AND STORIES FROM HOME Mark Pearson shares a belief that we are all in this together, more alike than different, capable of finding common ground in the stories we share and the songs we sing together. 

In this first series of Podcasts, CLASS OF 65, Pearson returns to the high school auditorium where 60 years earlier he performed for the first time. Six decades later a musical reunion filled with songs and stories for and about his classmates, celebrating where it began and the roads traveled from there to now.

In this Episode the songs talk about returning to significant places with important people, adding new memories to unforgettable old ones.

On my website, markpearsonmusic.com, you can find an accompanying blogpost talking about a song from the Podcast. This time it's "Heartwood." When he sees life "going out in circles like the growth rings on a tree," his classmates are in the center of that circle, part of the heartwood.

The album, Class of 65, is available for streaming.

You can also see the complete CLASS OF 65 concert on my YouTube Channel.