One of Those Times in a Life - Songs by the Campfire

In the 38th Campfire the long held and deep-seated fears that resided so long

in my unconscious were found and freed and soon running wild. In this, the

39th Campfire, those fears begin to be given names and faces and in the naming

and facing them I am able to begin claiming them. 

It has been a while since we have lit a campfire…this 38th campfire

talks about events in 2001. In the spring of that year I shared a book I

created with a few family and friends. The manuscript contained my journey

for “authenticity, belonging, and confidence” or, put

another way, “a search for truth, home, and to find myself.”

Somehow putting that quest into words freed a number of fears that were unconsciously

lodged inside of me. This campfire ends with The Brothers Four in Japan the

week after 9/11 with both the country and me wondering what all may await.

Between September of 1998 and October of 2000 The Brothers Four performed more

than 150 times in the US and in Japan. It was the only time the group ever

traveled around America by tour bus. It still amazes me the group is going

strong after 55 years. Some years the phone rings more often than others.

Those years were one of those times.A correction: The performance at NHK

Hall was attended by 3000 people not 300.  

My father died on May 28, 1997, the day before my mother’s 75th birthday.

It was heartbreakingly unexpected. A month or so after he died I made a decision

to make him the focus of my work for one year. At the end of the year I had

created a musical memoir entitled Season of the Heart that explored the spring

of 1997. A year to the day after he died I performed the 40 new songs for

the first time in my mother’s living room in front of a lifetime

of friends. The next week I performed the memoir four different days in Seattle

at the Richard Hugo House. When it was over I knew it was time to move on.

It was what my father would have wanted.

At a concert in Seattle on March 22, 1997 every singing group I had ever been

a part of beginning with one in high school appeared on stage together. A

week later in a concert in Spokane I was the opening act as well as one of

The Brothers Four. Looking back those two events felt like one concert with

a week long intermission. It has been something to remember them and write

about them and to realize again how important they were.

In September of 1995 McCoy and I celebrated 30 years of friendship. For his

birthday that month I gave him a songbook containing 52 original songs that

we had sung through the years. At the time I saw that book and those songs

as a culmination. Little did I know that our journey together was only beginning.

1995 was a year of writing songs for friends and family as well as for sale.

I wrote songs for Pat’s and my wedding, Lindsey’s graduation,

and for a concert celebrating 30 years of music and friendship with Mike

McCoy. Of all the songs I wrote that year Let Love Go Forward, a song written

for my wedding, is likely the most significant. It ends most campfire concerts.

Beginning in March of 1994 there were a dozen moments or events that continued

to remind me how close life is to death and how near love is to loss. While

those experiences gave me pause and stopped me in my tracks they did not

stop me from embracing life and celebrating love.

My cousin Jane died twenty years ago a few months before her 41st birthday.

This Campfire describes the time from her diagnosis-November of 1992-until

her death in March of 1994. As I re-remembered that time there was much I

had forgotten while some of it remained as clear and close as yesterday.

Making that time a part of One of Those Times in a Life gives it added perspective.

The early 90’s brought significant changes in my life and career.

I became an instant family man. The Brothers Four committed to performing

more including frequent tours of Japan and regular tours around the US. It

also was a time when I worked as a freelance verse writer for American Greetings

as well as continuing my quest to “make it” as a songwriter.