Play­ing music has been part of my life since I was ten years old, nearly 17 years ago. For the first eight years I received piano lessons, as so many peo­ple do around that age. My first teacher (Carol Fern of Fen­ton, NC) gave me a good strict foun­da­tion and instilled good basics of the­ory and hand posi­tion. My sec­ond teacher was awful, I was only with her a cou­ple months. My third teacher was Pam McNeil, who gave me what I really needed — not just knowl­edge of how to play music, but the pas­sion to use that knowl­edge and seek more. Pam knew she wasn’t work­ing with the next Horowitz or Ashke­nazy, so she didn’t treat me like one. She allowed my inter­ests to come out and always had my tastes in mind when she chose a new piece for me to learn, or asked what I wanted to learn. I give her a lot of credit for show­ing me how to love music, not just mechan­i­cally crank it out. I cer­tainly wasn’t always a great stu­dent, but find­ing pas­sion in music is invalu­able. Thanks again, Pam, for everything.

But Pam stopped teach­ing and I entered the world of work and school and hav­ing a social life and music became less impor­tant for a while. My grand­par­ents bought me a piano so I always had some­thing to play, but I’m sorry to say there was a cou­ple of years where I didn’t reg­u­larly knock the dust off of it. Around this time, a new guy moved to town. Now, you have to real­ize some­thing here. I was 19 years old, liv­ing in a small town (pop. 1,800) and I didn’t know any one else like me. I was the weird kid who wore a fedora and an old top­coat and played the piano at the cof­fee­house for peo­ple dou­ble and triple my age. Sure, my skills really didn’t sur­pass the level of a few par­lor tricks and man­gled Beethoven sonatas inter­spersed with Star Wars themes, but that was my shtick, and it was my shtick. One day I hear about this guy who moved into town, a few years older than me. I hear he wears a fedora and plays the mean­est piano any­one had seen in this town. I’m think­ing, “Who is this guy? This is my town and this is my shtick! How dare he!” After a cou­ple weeks of rep­u­ta­tion pre­ced­ing him, I finally met him and saw him bust out a cou­ple of tunes and whoa, I was blown away. I’d never seen any­body play piano like that. I think he played the Tiger Rag. His left hand was a blur and his right hand always knew where the melody should go. I imme­di­ately decided that we were going to be friends. That’s how I met Reese Gray.

He opened up the world of early jazz to me, got me lis­ten­ing to greats like Jelly Roll Mor­ton and Louis Arm­strong, Bix Bei­der­becke, J. P. John­son, King Oliver, Wingy Manone, Spike Jones, the Hoosier Hot-shots, so much more. And man, I really dug that music. Some peo­ple call it Dix­ieland, Hot Jazz, Tra­di­tional Jazz, or just Trad Jazz. It wasn’t like the ele­va­tor, Barnes & Noble jazz, the Kroger jazz or John Tesh that you hear so often but can’t whis­tle a sin­gle bar of after hear­ing it your whole life. It had power and youth, spon­tane­ity and vigor, melan­choly and pas­sion, played by humans using all their human­ity. But mostly, it was just fun. That’s how I got into 1920s jazz.

Reese got me off the sheet music, but first he found some writ­ten copies of tunes that he thought I should learn. W. C. Handy’s Mem­phis Blues was the first one he showed me. After I’d got­ten the hang of the first cou­ple sec­tions I played it for him and he picked up his banjo-uke and tried to play along. Now, I’d never played ensem­ble in any fash­ion and had no clue how. I played a few bars and he stopped me. My rhythm was so bad he couldn’t play along with me at all. So he made me tap my feet when I played. Taught me the impor­tance of rhythm. Pretty sim­ple, but it was the miss­ing ele­ment I needed. After a few years, my sense of rhythm increased, while I’m still work­ing at it, I’m steady enough to play with folks. Mean­while, instead of impro­vis­ing being a side act, impro­vi­sa­tion became the main attrac­tion. That’s how I started to become an ear musician.

With my new skills, music became more and more impor­tant to me. I used it to purge emo­tions that I couldn’t talk about, or didn’t have any­one to talk to about. I used it when I needed a way to be angry but not destruc­tive. I used it to purge unre­quited pas­sion. I used it to stim­u­late my mind. I used it to feed my inner human.

Or did the music use me? Psh — semantics.

Back in Jan­u­ary, the Fire­cracker Jazz Band was in need of a piano player because Reese was leav­ing town for a cou­ple months. With trep­i­da­tion, I accepted. With about two weeks notice to learn 30 songs, I stepped up to the plate and prac­ticed hard. After two rehearsals with the band I had my first real, pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence play­ing music with them on Valentine’s Day, 2010. Took me almost 17 years to get there, but man was it worth it. I was ner­vous all that day, but as soon as I stepped up to the piano I knew I was where I was sup­posed to be. Since Valentine’s Day, I’ve played around 25 gigs total, and every one I play is a hell of a lot of fun, but play­ing May 14 at The Orange Peel was the high­light so far. The Peel was nearly packed as we opened for the very tal­ented Car­olina Choco­late Drops. The sound booth recorded our show. You can lis­ten to it below. (Turn up your speak­ers — the gain is low.)

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Play­ing music has been the best, most fun, most ful­fill­ing thing I’ve done with the ener­gies of my life. Thanks to all who helped me along the way, who made me love the music, who vouched for an ama­teur, who believed that I had music in me that had to come out. And to those that didn’t believe in me, you too pushed me for­ward to prove you wrong.