My New Idea
By John Byrd

My new idea is to be a musician. I realize that at age 27, I'm a little old to be pursuing this dream. But compared to my other dream of being a great NBA center, it seems downright attainable. Any realistic chances I had of becoming the next Bill Russell died ten years ago when my last growth spurt left me a foot short of seven feet. Luckily-since I didn't know what an NBA center was-the tragedy of my stunted growth passed me by largely unnoticed. Back then, I couldn't have told you who Bill Russell was if he walked into the room and scored twenty points.

Bill Russell was the great NBA center. He played when Wilt Chamberlain played. Bill played for the Celtics. Wilt played for the Bucks and then for the Lakers. Wilt was the showboat: he scored a lot of points; sometimes he passed the ball. One time, he scored a hundred points in a single game. Bill Russell played defense. Bill won eleven championship rings in his career. Wilt won one.

I've never seen either one play. I hear that they replay the great games between the two on cable TV sometimes. Maybe I'll catch a game one day.
I play guitar. My parents bought me my first guitar when I was seven. I've worked on it on and off since then. Last month I bought a banjo. I don't play either one too good.

I still have my first guitar tucked away in my closet. It has a small body and high action, giving it a sharper tone that was popular with blues musicians back in the twenties and thirties. I don't play it much anymore. The action, the distance between the fret board and the string, on that guitar makes it harder to play. Mostly I play a beat-up Gibson acoustic that Joe Hayes gave me a few years back.

Joe Hayes might as well be my uncle. My folks have known him since I was eight or nine. He tells stories for a living. In his spare time, he is a musician. He plays guitar and sings old songs. Most of the songs that he sings are sad. I couldn't tell you who wrote most of them; no one really knows. He favors songs that Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie sang. His favorite living songwriter is Utah Phillips'

Utah Phillips is an old, wobbly anarchist. I don't know where he is from but these days he lives in northern California near San Francisco. My favorite Utah Phillips song has something to do with religion. I've never heard Utah Phillips sing it, only Joe Hayes. The chorus goes something like:

"If I could do
it all over again
I'd be here
with you
La la da di da"
The chorus doesn't really end with "La la da di da." I just forget the rest of it. You'll have to ask Joe Hayes or Utah Phillips to fill in that part. Joe says that Utah wrote the song when some record exec told him that he needed to record a spiritual gospel tune to make it big. Utah Phillips has yet to make it big.

A few years back, Ani DiFranco-a New York musician of dubious fame-decided to bring Utah Phillips to the masses. She took recordings of Utah rambling and telling stories between songs at his performances, played them back over hip-hop breaks and called it a record. Her idea was that "this" generation could learn a lot from Utah but didn't have the patience to listen to Utah's songs straight up. I like the big beats on the record, and Utah tells a good story, but I still say the best way to hear a Utah Phillip's song is to ask Joe Hayes to sing it to you. He'll play it to you straight one summer night in your backyard, just three chords on his favorite guitar.

Joe Hayes sings in my parents' backyard a lot. When he started telling stories, Joe was just piecing a living together. To help him save money, my parents offered to let him stay at their house when he had gigs in the area. Joe got to be a close friend of the family and the arrangement stuck, even after Joe began making a little more money. It just worked out better that way.

So after Joe finished work for the day, and we all had dinner, Joe would tune up his guitar and start singing and playing. He and my father both love old songs and my mother loves spiritual numbers. So, with Joe leading the way, we sang old cowboy songs, Carter family tunes and whatever other old songs that Joe knew.

Joe knows more verses of "Good Night, Irene" than any other person that I know. I think he makes up the verses as he goes along. My father even contributed two or three to the pile. One time, when Joe had brought his girlfriend and her son to town, and we were celebrating something really special, we sang "Good Night, Irene" for half an hour, with Joe adding a new verse after every chorus we sang.

I used to sit with my guitar while Joe was singing and try to strum along. I followed Joe's fingers on my own guitar and tried my best to stay in time. But after Joe left town I never could figure out how to play the songs. Even when Joe tried writing out the music for me, I never could make them work on my own. I would try to play the first few measures, get frustrated and set my guitar down.

I quit my job today so that I would have more time to be a musician. I don't know how I'm gonna make rent after my last paycheck clears the bank. I can struggle through basic renditions of three songs on my guitar. I'm on the verge of playing my first song on the banjo.