"Music can be very emotional"

I have been trying to learn how to be a better news writer and less of a blog writer, but tonight I'm going to write blog-style and from the heart.

I was moved tonight.

​First by listening to students thanking Steve Johnston for his dedication to them and then learning of the death of Gordon Lightfoot. Two nostalgia moments put lumps in my throat. Maybe it's aging closer to mortality, but boy this night sure made my mind go places only music can take it.

First off, Steve Johnston emailed me earlier today asking  if I would cover one of the upcoming Franklin music department shows. He listed four, one of which was tonight.

I've come to know and respect Steve over the years and I've been blown away by some of the performances I've had the privilege to cover. He appears to be a teacher who demands a lot of his students, but knows they can deliver.

His students praised this in him. One student matter-of-factly said that he doesn't really get interested in much, but "J" (as the students call him) helped him find a love of music - helped him find purpose. And that was echoed several times.

This took my mind to Mr. King in my youth. Tom King was the guy who put a camera in my hand. Other than my grandmother and my parents I'm not sure anyone has given me such an important gift. 

And that gift came from that same place Johnston and other mentor teachers give from - their soul.

The concert tonight featured a range of music from Bach to the "Looney Tunes Overture" performed by the Franklin High School Black Knight Marching Band. The crowd wasn't huge, which was a shame because this band can really play.

During the show Johnston recognized his seniors and they thanked him with gifts that included an assortment of snacks (gummies and pop.) There was also a big blowup rubber ducky that was part of a yearlong running joke.

There was a rather emotional moment for Johnston when his band helped him honor one of his friends and mentors, Dwight Oltman, who passed away earlier this year. "Music can be very emotional," he told the audience as he choked back tears. "The beauty of music itself and the importance of performing that music at the highest level possible is what he ingrained in me."

"That piece was dedicated to him and quite beautifully," he said.

Listening to Johnston made me think of my friend and mentor Enrico Pinardi.

I think many of us have this person, or maybe persons.

​Writing this I am thinking of Chuck McCleary and Jim Stefanucci too. Folks who see in us something and then help us figure it out. I know I owe these folks, and many others, my life and I saw that tonight in the student's praise of their teacher.

Teachers, even in this crazy mixed up political world we're in now, still make a difference.

And we should be applauding them instead of making their lives more difficult.

After the concert I learned that the song writer that brought us the "Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald," Gordon Lightfoot had died at age 84.

I remember being little with a small transistor radio going into my "fort" in an upstairs crawl space closet in Scituate, Rhode Island and hearing "Sundown" for the very first time. It was really the first time I knew music could be story telling. It really grabbed me.

And from there I think it shaped where and how music would play a part of my life.

I couldn't play, have now rhythm, but I can listen and be moved. I learned how even a few notes without words even, could tell a story.

​I later learned of the "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

​Even though I wasn't a huge fan I began to realize how much he influenced how I appreciated music and found other music that took my mind places.

In 2020, smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, I came across a video of what I thought was a homeless guy singing on the steps of some building somewhere. He was singing a song that was familiar but not really. It blew me away. Then this homeless man broke into a "If you could read my mind love," by Gordon Lightfoot and it was better than Gordon Lightfoot.

To my surprise, thinking Gordon Lightfoot died years ago, it was Gordon lightfoot singing both songs.

I must've watched that video five or six times. It was so good.

And tonight, learning that he passed away it was the first thing I went to find and listened again. "I'll tag along" may very well be one of the most beautiful songs ever written. It ranks up there with John Pines "Hello in there, Hello" and Hunter/Garcia's "So many Roads."

His version, as an 80 year old man on the steops alone with his guitar is hauntingly poetic and beautiful. And "If You Can Read My Mind Love" was also much better in his old voice.

You are right Steve, "music can be very emotional" and thank you for that, and thank you for giving that notion to generation after generation.

Up coming events at Franklin High School:
May 9, 7 p.m. the Spring Choir Concert.
May 16, 7 p.m. Elementary  and Junior High Band Concert.
May 23, 7 p.m Jazz festival featuring the Franklin High School stage band performing with some special guests.

​Johnston also mention the band will perform in the Memorial Day Parade and at the annual Blues and BBQ where they will perform with special guests Max Schang and Miss Freddye.