We’re still here, working hard to continue to cultivate the power of music in Lancaster.  Below, we’ve noted a few things we’re up to these days. We hope you “dig ‘em”.  Which relates to something the legendary pianist and composer, Thelonius Monk, said; “You’ve Got to Dig It, to Dig It, You Dig?”

Many thanks for your continued interest in, and support of, MFE!

MFE 2012 Grants. Need a grant to enhance your music program? Or, know of someone who does? MFE will be awarding about $60,000 this year to help local school and community arts groups enhance their music programs. Application deadline is March 1, 2012. For details and a copy of the grant submission form, visit our website at MusicForEveryone.net and click on the “Grants” category.

MFE Vol. V CD. For all of you musicians, it’s time once again to submit your song entries for consideration for inclusion on our MFE Vol. V annual CD. All songs must be original and performed by a Lancaster native or Lancaster based musician or band. Submission deadline is March 1. Again, go to the website and click on the “Music” icon, for details.

MFE in the Schools. Our instructors and high school student volunteers are back in our schools after Holiday break working alongside teachers providing both group and ensemble instruction and mentoring.  Each week, we have direct instructional contact with over 250 children in SDoL schools. Check out the “MFE in the Schools” video on our website to get a better understanding of this new MFE initiative.  Additionally, our work in the schools was featured in the January 16, 2012 edition of the Lancaster Intelligencer-Journal. Click here to read: http://tinyurl.com/7dszok6

Support MFE by Simply Filing Your Taxes! If you file your taxes through local tax prep company ITP (Income Tax Preparation), you will be directly supporting MFE. ITP will donate a portion of online filing fees to MFE. For more information visit ITP on Facebook at: facebook.com/DaveTheTaxGuy or at: itptaxes.com.

Monthly Music Download. We are proud to present the first of what will be regular music downloads on our website. This month we offer an upbeat, rockin’ number that appeared on MFE Vol. IV, titled, “Jazzonia (Silver Tree)” by Adam Taylor. To download…..that’s correct…get over to our website.

Volunteers Needed: Do you like the MFE “vibe” and what we’re about? Do you like what MFE is doing in the community? We are always looking for volunteers to help in our efforts to cultivate the power of music in Lancaster. We have lots going on and could use your energy and creativity! If you are interested in volunteering, please give us a call at 717-871-1710 or e-mail John Gerdy at johngerdy@aol.com.

Play on, Lancaster!

Picture this. A magnified image of a cross section of the human brain.  The image shows hundreds of tiny brownish bits. These bits are toxic proteins, called tau, that form after brain trauma.  Tau can inhibit cellular functions in the brain, leading to depression, dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Now, picture this. The same magnified image. This image shows activities associated with vibrant cellular connections. The brain is seemingly swarming with activity, actually brightening the image.

The first image is of a brain of a former football player. The formation of the tau are the result of hundreds, if not thousands, of repeated hits to the head.  These violent hits, in effect, shake or “scramble” the brain, flooding it with chemicals that deaden cellular receptors and tear neural connections linked to learning and memory. In short, the connections necessary for optimal brain function and development are being shaken loose.

The second image is of the brain while playing music. Brain function is about “connections” between cells and neurons. Healthy brains have strong, clear and vibrant connections. And research tells us that playing music triggers activity in cells and neurons in the brain that are linked to concentration, memory and creativity, thus refining the development of the brain and the entire neurological system.  Further, playing music not only strengthens these connections, but also creates new connections, thus widening the brain’s neural network.  That activity virtually bursts through the second image.

Recently, this paper ran a four part series regarding the future of interscholastic sports in Lancaster County. Much of the series focused on how schools are coping with the challenges of maintaining vibrant sports programs in an increasingly dire economic climate.  In a perfect world, no programs would be cut. But with politicians making it perfectly clear that for the foreseeable future state educational funding will be significantly reduced, it’s painfully clear that we no longer live in a perfect world.  That being the case, school districts will be forced to engage in the very difficult debate regarding how to allocate increasingly scarce “extracurricular” dollars. And the fundamental question that must drive that debate is, “Which activities garner the best educational return on investment?”

Traditionally, the analysis of “extracurricular” spending has focused on the choice between elite, interscholastic athletics versus programs in music and the arts.  Unfortunately, this debate has failed to honestly acknowledge the elephant in the room – the sport that is by far the most expensive to sponsor – football.

The point of this essay is not to bash football or elite athletics. As the son of a high school football coach and former All-American and professional basketball player, I have witnessed and believe that sports have the capacity to be a powerful educational asset. But the culture surrounding elite, interscholastic athletics has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. Specifically, there has been a steady evolution of sport in American education away from the “process oriented” model (e.g., education) toward a “results oriented” model (e.g., winning). This evolution, along with the skyrocketing expenses required to field a team, has eroded football’s potential as an educational resource and diminished its educational return on investment.

Now the revelations of the serious consequences to brain health and function that result from the repeated hits to the head sustained in football must enter the debate. No longer should the discussion focus on the question of whether footballs’ educational value merits its disproportionate economic costs.  We now have to give serious consideration to the question of whether the potential human costs to students’ health have become too great for an educational institution to assume.

Certainly, there have always been physical costs to participants. Football is a violent game. But we are not talking about sprained ankles and broken bones. Sprained ankles and broken bones eventually heal. We are talking about young people’s brains. Brains don’t always heal.

In the end, this is about community values as reflected through our educational institutions. Should our educational institutions be sponsoring activities that deaden and destroy brain cells and impair brain function? Should football, rather than music, which strengthens and develops brain cells and enhances brain function, receive our economic resources? In other words, is the goal of education to develop brains or “scramble” them?

Perhaps it is time to have a serious discussion about the role of football in our educational system. This discussion must take place against a background that recognizes the fact that America’s economy has changed from one based on industrial might to one based on technology and innovation.  Clearly, the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace of the future will have far more to do with brains than brawn, requiring intellectual and creative skills of the mind nurtured in the classrooms and concert halls rather than muscles built in the weight room and on the playing field.

We should welcome this discussion and analysis because if we approach it honestly, the end result will be better schools serving our children and communities more effectively.

If, during the process, we find that football is in fact meeting its educational purposes, perhaps we should invest more heavily in it. But what if it is not? What if it is determined that investment in music and arts as an “extra-curricular” activity brings a greater return on educational dollar invested? What should our school boards do? What should we as parents and tax paying citizens, do?

And because a picture is worth a thousand words, a good place to start that conversation would be to observe scans of the brain on football versus the brain on music.

Dr. John R. Gerdy is founder and president of Music For Everyone

Well, Thanksgiving is here again.

Thanksgiving was always one of my favorite holidays.

I loved coming home from college to a houseful of relatives.  It seems my parent’s home was the hub for all the aunts and uncles that had no children and the grandmothers who were still living.  There are few things better than sitting around the table with those you love.

Now, having lived long enough to have seen most of them pass on, Thanksgiving is more a time of reflection and a bit of melancholy.  I think back, lovingly, of the times we spent
together.  Of the things, my father taught me.  Of how hard my parents worked to give my sister and me a good home.  And they gave us the best of homes.  Filled with the things that we did together.  Oh boy, do I miss them.

We had a stereo console in the living room and that thing was always hummin’.  I would stack on LPs and play them from the time I got up until I went to bed.  We always had music on in our house.  My parents probably didn’t like everything I played, but they seldom gave me a hard time. They encouraged me to take music lessons on the trumpet.  Of course, the guitar and bass ended up being much more interesting to me.

When I got out of college and we started Big Red, I needed bass equipment.  My father took out money to get me a good amplifier, much to my mother’s chagrin.  He was such a good man.  He probably understood me more than I ever knew.  But anyway, the point is that I was encouraged to play music.  To play sports.  To study Shakespeare in college.  To be thinking, compassionate, complete person.  Thank you.

I played my last song with Corty Byron on Saturday night, October 8, 2011, around 11pm, at McCleary’s Pub.  We played “The Weight.”  I sang the “Crazy Chester” verse.  We sang harmony on the chorus.  Corty moved to California several days later.

He called me last week to say he and Katy had found an apartment in Venice beach.  I miss him.  Over the past few years, I have had some of the best times of my life playing music with Corty.  Although I am twice his age, I think our souls are about the same.  I often joked that he was the little brother I never had.  Corty is a rare talent in an area that has always had a very deep talent pool.  Granted, big fish…small pond, but for my money he is one of the best and most complete performers I have ever met or played with.  I truly hope something good happens for him in California.  I know he will come back to visit and hopefully we will make some music again.

I’ve owned an old Martin D18 for a long time.  Several years ago, someone stole Corty’s guitar so I loaned him the Martin to use until he got another guitar.  I love that old D18.  I remember the day I got it.  I got a Martin!!!  Played the heck out of it for a number of years.  Retired it when I got another new guitar that I still play out.  I never made the Martin sound like Corty does.  He says that guitar has more mojo than any guitar he has ever played.  I hope I put some of that mojo into it.

People told me I was crazy to let him take it to California with him.  How can you let that go?  Do you know how much that is worth?  Yeah…I have a good idea.  It is worth a lot to me.  But so is Corty.  I love them both.  So what do you do?  I know what I did.  I sent that old D18 along with Corty in hopes that it might help him in his quest.  Whatever that might be.

It took me a while to know what I was going to write about Corty.  I think Thanksgiving coming gave me pause to think of loved ones and family and that is what spurred this.  I miss my family. I miss my sister and her family.  They live on the other side of Philly, now, and I won’t get to see them.  They have their lives that happen where they now reside.  My nephews are married and are starting families.  I know that they will all be sitting around my sister’s table on Thanksgiving and I will think of them.  I will think of my Dad and my Mother and Uncle Mooney and Aunt Millie and Nana and Grandma and my old dogs Blue and Buzzy and Bubba and Snuffy.  I’ll think about that kitchen table that I often go back to in my memories.

I am going to call Corty in California and say hello, happy Thanksgiving.

Here we have the MU Music Business Class producing, promoting and running a fundraising event for a music related non-profit. This is the same group that runs Millersville’s student run record label (FDR Records). MFE has partnered in the past and will continue to partner in the future, with FDR Records. For example, in the upcoming year, MFE will provide the opportunity for at least five schools to have one of their  student musical groups or ensembles go into FDR’s studio to record a song or two. Some of those songs may end up on MFE’s annual CD.
MFE’s core mission is to cultivate the power of music as an educational and community building tool. This relationship and these programs are prime examples of how MFE is delivering on that mission by building synergies between and among various educational organizations to advance educational objectives and build community.  
These programs are good for MU as they provide practical, real life experiences for Music Business majors to produce, promote and run a fundraising event. Further, bringing school groups into FDR’s studio provides meaningful opportunities for MU students to practice and refine their recording skills. These opportunities enhance the educational experience of MU students and strengthens MU’s Music Business major.
And the benefit for our school children is enormous. The opportunity for these young people to go into a real recording studio makes them all feel like “rock stars”. And don’t we all need to feel like rock stars every now and then? And the opportunity to perform in public provides them the chance to “shine”, which builds self-esteem and confidence.

But it is the potential long-term payoff that is so intriguing.

Maybe, the end result is that for some of them, their first visit to a college campus will be a very cool experience. An experience that they will feel good about and remember fondly. And maybe, it will be the difference in them saying to themselves, “I want to go to college one day.”

I’m sure your response to this news is, “What’s the MFE Award? And why did MFE establish it?”

While not as visible as our grant program or our Keys for the City initiative, we feel that this award contributes an important element to MFE’s mission. Specifically, a key component in our efforts to “cultivate the power of music as an educational and community building tool” is advocacy – publicizing and educating the public regarding the value of music as an educational and community investment. Part of our strategy in this regard is to recognize and bring attention to individuals who have made a significant impact in our schools and/or community through music.

The fact is, you can provide every child in the county with a brand new instrument, but without dedicated and talented teachers and mentors overseeing their use, those instruments will never unleash their magic. Unfortunately, teaching music is often a thankless job. Challenges include high student to teacher ratios, never enough instruments, no budget for instrument repair and never enough time to give the individual attention that our children deserve. Yet, so many of our teachers tirelessly work to instill the values necessary for success in life – discipline, cooperation, dedication, and communication and leadership skills – through music. MFE believes that these individuals should be recognized as a way to thank them for all that they do.

This year’s recipient is Michael Jamanis,  Jr., former faculty member at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music and violinist for the internationally renowned Newstead Trio. Michael is being recognized for his work on behalf of PAM in the School District of Lancaster. He has worked alongside teachers in Washington, Wheatland, King, Lincoln and Wickersham Elementary schools as well as J.P. McCaskey High School, providing in class assistance, private lessons as well as leading various ensembles. He has also provided private lessons and conducted two summer music camps on behalf of MFE.

With the recent closing of PAM, Michael is going to continue his work in the schools under the auspices of Music For Everyone’s  “MFE in the Schools” program. The purpose of MFE in the Schools is to help address the music “mentoring/instructional gap” in our schools by placing professional musicians and instructors in the school system to work alongside music teachers to enhance both the quality and quantity of music education experiences for Lancaster children. As state funding for education continues to be slashed, this “gap” will only increase. Needless to say we are excited about Michael’s involvement with “MFE in the Schools”.

So, join us as we take a break from the music to recognize an individual’s extraordinary efforts to cultivate the power of music in Lancaster County.

 “Ten years ago on a cold dark night,

there was someone killed ‘neath the town hall lights.”

Well, it was a lot more than ten people, wasn’t it?

And it was in the morning, not under the lights.

A day that changed things as we once knew them.

For one brief, shining, blood stained moment, the country stood as one.

Today, we are a compound fracture.

That day in early September was just so strange.

What happened?

What was going to happen?

We were stunned.

We were afraid.

We were resilient.

We needed each other.

I remember being in Jethro’s and people were just dazed.

We congregated.

We talked.

We comforted.

WE LISTENED TO MUSIC.

I loaded the playlist with music from our younger years.

Warm music for cold times.

Music of the late 60’s and early 70’s.

James Taylor,”Sweet Baby James”.

Bonnie Raitt,, “Takin’ My Time”.

Grateful Dead, “American Beauty”.

Neil Young, “After The Goldrush”.

Randy Newman, “Sail Away”.

Jesse Colin Young, “Songs For Julia”.

Tom Waits, “Heart Of Saturday Night”.

Jackson Brown, “Late For The Sky”.

Joni Mitchell, “Blue”

C.S.N.&Y. “Déjà vu”.

Maria Muldaur, Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen.

THE BAND, “MUSIC FROM BIG PINK”

“Take a load off Fanny,

take a load for free.

Take a load off Fanny,

And and and Put the load right on me”.

BOB DYLAN, “BLOOD ON THE TRACKS”.

“Well I’ll see you in the sky above,

in the tall grass,

and the ones I love.

You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go”.

We hung out all night in the bar listening to this music.

I think we played that music right through the holidays.

I remember nights where not many words were spoken.

Friends and customers alike sat and ate and drank and listened to the music.

It was a quiet time. Not a lot of laughter.

Hushed voices talking amongst themselves.

Talking about what had happened.

Wanting to feel close to one another.

Seeking community.

I still have vivid recollections of those evenings.

Hanging in the dimly lit bar.

Looking at each other.

Listening.

We played our first Lingering Doubts gig of the fall

several weeks after 9-11. The room was packed.

It had the feeling of a church service.

It felt solemn.

We started to play our set.

The room started to shine.

There was undeniable magic in the air.

The power of music cannot be under estimated.

As the evening progressed, so did the warmth in the room.

I’m not really sure why, but during our last rehearsal for the show, we came up with the idea to try to do “The Boxer” by Simon&Garfunkle. I guess it reminded us of New York City. We had never attempted this song before. I think we tried to figure it out and ran through it once or twice. George and I practiced it over the phone a couple of times.

We closed the evening with it and the place just erupted.

The emotional impact of that song on that evening in that place in time was soul stirring.

“In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade

and he carries a reminder, of every glove

that’s laid him down or cut him

till he’s cried out, in his anger and his shame,

I am leaving, I am leaving,

But the fighter still remains……

THE FIGHTER STILL REMAINS.

and so it goes

Before you even turn the corner around Central Market you can hear him playing the bricks out of the buildings.  Ben belts out rhythm and blues on the piano–one of many provided to Lancaster by Music for Everyone’s Keys for the City initiative–with forceful accompaniment from “Bongo Tommy,” who slaps his drums like he’s possessed by a thunder god.  Together they keep passersby helpless to do anything but stop and tap on something.

They’re playing like R&B is going out of style, which isn’t the case—the truth is, it’s being wiped out entirely.

“Ben’s part of a generation that won’t be here in 15 years,” Bongo Tommy tells me.  ”Rhythm and blues is a unique combination of rock, jazz, boogie woogie, gospel, and a few others–but yeah, it’s on its way out.”

Tommy shakes his head in sad astonishment at what he just said.  ”It’s sad.  Ben is a pure joy to play with.”

It seems ridiculous.  There’s a woman next to me who hasn’t stopped dancing since she put down her grocery bags.  The shops around us are filled with merchants who couldn’t be happier that the trade winds have blown Ben to the keys of this brightly stained piano.  How could something that sounds so pleasing, so celebrated, so damn cool, be on the verge of extinction?

“I love him,” says Lori Hemphill, owner of The Perfect Plan Wedding & Special Event Planning.  ”I want to book him.  I want him to play First Friday.”

It seems serendipitous that Ben wandered from Western PA into Lancaster, a town with a growing number of pianos on it’s street corners.  Though his work responsibilities in the Pittsburgh area keep him going back and forth, he is inevitably pulled back here, to this bench, where he finds the occasional musician abusing it.

You have to understand, Ben put a lot of time into finding this piano.  He’s tickled ivories all over this city and settled here at Central Market for specific reasons.

“”I was always attracted to the piano; my uncle had one in his garage so I pretty much lived in there,” Ben says.  “This piano is the closest to 440 concert pitch that I’ve found around here.  But it all depends on whose playing it.  Sometimes I have to and ask someone, ‘Would you please stop spewing that bullshit…?’” he admits with a chuckle.

A Pittsburgh garage was just one stop on Ben’s tour to this point.  Having lived in Ohio, Florida, New York, and California, he’s worked as a cabbie, a bouncer, and a lumper, but never strayed too far from his inspirations in Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, and The Temptations regardless of his line of work.

“It was a long, hard road,” he recalls.  ”But I am perfectly satisfied at my age.  I’ve done a lot, I’ve seen a lot, and I actually do a lot of networking here.  Now my son wants me to do a CD with him–he’s a hip-hop artist.  He released an album and he didn’t want me to hear it at first… I was like ‘my son knows those words?’”

It doesn’t matter if rhythm and blues is thriving out here in the sun or fading into the dark,  Ben Gerideau’s found an instrument to his liking, and he’s going to play the hell out of it.

“Maybe the English stole a lot of this sound from guys like Muddy Watters and Little Richard, but real art transcends time, space, age, and race,” Ben reflects.  “And to me, this is real art.”

He laughs.  ”It’s like… ‘oh, Richard; get over it.’”

My questions have held up Ben long enough as Tommy darts over, clearly anxious to start playing.

“This man’s the express,” Tommy exclaims, “my job is to keep the train running.”

Ben shakes his drummer’s hand.  ”Where were you last Saturday?  We played a wedding!”

“Oh, yeah, I was sorry I couldn’t make it,” Tommy laments.  ”Did you knock ‘um out?”

“We knocked ‘um out,” Ben replies, as if he even had to ask.  ”If you’d have been there, we would have rocked ‘um out!”

They go to work.  Slowly, shoppers wander out of Central Market’s spacious entryways to watch the man with the magic fingers and soothing, gravely voice.  He rattles off a string of R&B tunes as if he’s been wailing since the day he was born.  It’s 11:37, and Ben Gerideau has clocked in.

“I love Lancaster,” the woman next to me mentions offhand, her hand tapping fervently on her thigh.  “I love it for this kind of stuff.”

- Justin Klugh

Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix all appeared in the later sixties, a time of great social upheaval and unrest in the country. Kurt Cobain showed up at the end of the eighties, the early nineties, Generation Xer, whatever that meant. I guess

it somehow related to a generation that didn’t have a Vietnam War and a Draft to give them something to rally around. Most of the social causes had already been dealt with, or so we thought. So Kurt wrote and sang with a passion and nihilistic angst that captured the heart of the day. Amy Winehouse showed up towards the end of the first decade of the new century. They wanted her to go to rehab, she said no no no. I think we all want to go to rehab after what’s been going on in the twenty first century.

Janis sang with a voice that had never before been heard from a white woman. Deep, guttural, and a little scary to those of us not accustomed to hearing such a thing. Hendrix

took the sound of the electric Stratocaster to a place no one had ever been. It was out of this world crazy guitar steeped in the blues and acid. It was kind of scary at first. No one has ever done it since. Jim Morrison, now there was one tortured soul. Lived out his demons and destruction right before our eyes. Took Blake to a whole new playing field.

Cobain made music that was so radical for the time. It became the formula for rock success for years to come. The quiet, sensitive build up, to the screeching, howling refrain became the staple of rock bands throughout the nineties. Kurt, too, destructed right before our eyes.

Amy Winehouse came right at us like a train wreck. No qualms here. She was not going to rehab although she obviously needed to be there. But using the modern technology of today she managed to create one of the best sounding albums since 1963.

This sound became the standard to a whole new set of artists seeking that retro sound.

Amy was pretty scary too. Just watching her perform created anxiety over whether she would make it or not. Ah…the stuff of rock stars.

As a matter of fact, all of these artists were a little scary. Could you imagine, today, going to see a Monkees concert and Hendrix opened up the show with his sexual thrusts and setting his Strat on fire? What would Fox news do with that story? Janis was always on that line between sexy and scary. She shredded her emotions and her voice on a nightly level. I think she had to. It was her. Cobain did the same in his time. Grunge became him. Amy, well like I said before, we all feel a little rehabbish with what’s gone on this century and that sweet sound of 1963 sure sounded good when it came out. Jim Morrison, wow, probably the granddaddy of all the “better hide your kids from him” artists, he was the dude of going down the road to “see ya later”. The Doors had that sound. The Farfisa organ playing with Morrison’s voice and lyrics and the nightly forays into Freudian psycho-sexual drama…..i mean can you imagine that today?!

Is 27 a mystical year or did these people just not have anything left after living so hard and putting out so much. I don’t know. I am glad I made through 27, although 27 was a year of very significant changes for me. BIG RED broke up when I was 27 and that ended my life as I then knew it. But, heck, I lived through that. I have a couple of friends and buddies that I am definitely pulling for to make it through 27.

When the music’s over,

bob

Being a Blues musician, I find myself encouraging them to “Go ‘head, play it.” All too often the response is, “I don’t know how to play the piano.” To which I respond, “That’s crazy! Everyone can play the piano.”

You may disagree, but it’s true. And I am going to tell how.

There is a strong church and gospel influence in the Blues. The Devil has a bit of influence on the Blues, as well. It’s the friction between the sacred and the profane that fuels the intensity of the genre as there’s not much distance between the sins of Saturday night and the sacraments of Sunday morning. But that’s another story for another time. One of the staples of gospel music that has found its way into the heart of the Blues is the “call and response”. The preacher, or bandleader, calls or sings a line and the congregation, or crowd, responds. Like a preacher encouraging a few “Amens” from the congregation, Blues performers are doing the same with their “congregations”. “Got My Mojo Workin’”, “Mustang Sally”, and “Wang Dang Doodle” are only a few of the hundreds of Blues songs employing the “call and response” technique.

Yeah, I hear ya. Shouting a response in a packed, booze-laden bar is not the same as sitting down and actually playing a piano in public at the Central Market or the Prince Street garage. Particularly when people are strolling by, looking and listening. Well, actually, it sorta is. Because Keys for the City is about everyone playing, regardless of training or ability.

In other words, that tired old excuse about “not being able to play piano” just doesn’t apply in this case. Because a fundamental tenet of Keys for the City is that everyone can and everyone should play the piano. It doesn’t matter how you play it as long as you play it. But I hear ya again. “I’d at least like to sound decent”, you are thinking, “and that’s just not possible because I know nothing about playing piano”. Read on, because that’s going to change. You can sound not only decent, but pretty darn good by doing no more than reading the next few paragraphs.

Here’s how you do it in two easy steps. 1. Play the black keys only. That’s right. If you only play black keys you can never play a bad note. Something about some fonky scale (pentatonic) that all the black keys are a part of. It’s beautiful! Just play the black keys and you can’t go wrong. You will never hit a wrong or a sour note. You can put those black key notes together any way you like and it’ll sound like you know what you are doing. and, 2. Work the Sustain Pedal. Between your feet, you will find three pedals. Step on the pedal furthest to the right. It’s the sustain pedal. And as the word suggests, holding it down will allow the notes or notes you are playing to sustain their sound. I can’t say I know the physics behind it, but using the sustain pedal, in combination with the black keys only, makes you musically indestructible. Anything you play will sound good.

As you become more comfortable, you can release or pump the pedal. Do with it what you want, it won’t mind. Now that you no longer have to think about whether any of the keys you hit may be a bad note, you are free to bang away in any way you like. Play slowly or speed it up. Add some upper body movement, maybe close your eyes for a bit and produce a slight grimace. In short, put a little feeling into it. And, sure enough, you have got yourself a song that will be guaranteed to draw some attention.

And when someone asks, “That was beautiful. Who wrote that song?” You can respond, “I did.” And it’d be the truth. Oh, and one more thing. Have a stage name at the ready. Everyone can use a stage name. There are a million of them – Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Pinetop Perkins, and Blind Lemon Jefferson among them. No reason why you shouldn’t have one too. Because after they hear you play, they’re gonna want to know your name.

Play on, Lancaster,

Willie Marble