I appreciate the transparent look into what makes Joe V be Joe V. I'll play too.

When I was a kid, I was also in a very poor family. I had to wear the same shoes in 4th and 5th grade, despite my growing out of them. The soles were worn through, and my mother took cardboard and plastic wrap and made inserts to at the very least keep my socks dry. I had started music lessons at an age of 4 yrs 10 months. By age 10 I was becoming bored with it. I was playing accordion, like all little Slovenian boys did. That got old even in the last 2 years when I switched to piano. So I pulled out of those lessons. I still played on my own, but when I wanted to, not because I had to practice for my next lesson. (Monday nights at 6.) I ended up playing at block party type places with some of the polka music heavyweights in Cleveland. And remember we had Frankie Yankovich, the Polka King here. At one such gathering some old guy with an accordion walked up the driveway about 6pm. He started playing. They had me start playing with him. I was reading from music and he said "Move that stand closer so I can see the music too." Everybody laughed, but I didn't know why. That guy's name from Joe Trolli, and he wrote every song in those books. Shortly after an upright bass player showed up. Then a drummer. Then a banjo player. Things went non-stop until about 9pm at which time Yankovich himself showed up. He joined in and we played another hour or so. When we finished he came over and said "Hey kid, how old are you?" I said "I'm 10." His reply was "Whatever you do, wherever life takes you, never stop playing music. You have the gift of a very good ear and exceptional rhythm." I said "I do?" At which point he picked up his accordion, turned his back, played a note and said "What note is this?" I said "A flat." Then he started playing a song and said "What key is this in?" I said "F". He said "My god. You have perfect pitch." and then turned to my mother and said "You see to it that he stays with music." And then they talked privately for a bit. Soon after The Beatles became a thing and I wanted to play guitar. The following Christmas they bought me a cheap acoustic and I started learning on my own. They found me a local teacher, recommended by the old accordion teacher, and I started lessons in spring. After 12 weeks, at the end of the 12th lesson, he said "Would you call your father for me?" I did, and he said "I will drive him home because I want to talk to you." He drove me home and we all sat in the kitchen as he told my parents "I have nothing more I can teach him. He came to me with such a solid foundation that it now comes down to how much he wants to practice." So I stopped paid guitar lessons.

At this point though, I was turning 12, and all I wanted to do was play baseball. I didn't really care much about anything else, because baseball, even in 1963, was my way to fame and fortune. My father was supportive to the point where in winter he would shovel a spot on the long sidewalk of your yard where a pitching rubber and a home plate were painted, and pitch to me so I could work on my catching all year. We'd be out there in 25 degree weather in many sweatshirts, him pitching, me catching. Throwing curve balls, mixing in pitches that were wide to both sides, that bounced... I had to learn how to block bad pitches. At 12 I played on a traveling team of 15-16 year-olds because I was already better than their catchers. Played in high school. Star level. Home run hitting very good defensive catcher. Second team all state.

But there's a however. I didn't care about grades. I didn't study AT ALL because I was going to be a rich baseball player so who needs to know when the Battle of Hastings was fought? (1066) My IQ was measured at slightly over 160 and I got D and F grades for 4 years of high school. (More on that later.) Colleges wouldn't touch me, and I was not good enough to turn pro. I graduated 478th of 498, and I think they passed me through because they felt sorry for me. So I had a diploma but didn't know how to do anything. My friends were all off at college, learning to be accountants, lawyers, 2 are doctors.... So I went into the Army.

After 3 years of that, I came out with the GI Bill in my pocket and went to college. And here's where my parents both shook and scratched their heads. I finished a BA in Music in 14 quarters, and in every one of those 14 quarters I was on the Dean's List. I never got anything but an A in college. It was really just a story of the Army making a man out of me and making me understand that the world didn't play games. However, here I was with a BA in my hands, and what was I going to do with it? Teach? I didn't want to teach. So I kicked around a number of jobs while playing music on the side. The longest run at a straight job was the 8 years I spent as a mailman. In that 8th year, at age 35, I sat down by Lake Erie one day and stared out at the water and asked myself "Are you good enough of a musician to make a run at it full time or are you going to admit you are not?" I walked in and quit that post office to play full time. It took me 4 months to find a full time band, and I did music full time for about 10 years. I was then 45 and it was clear that I was NOT going to be the next John Lennon level songwriter, and I was NOT going to be the next Eric Clapton level guitar player, and I was NOT going to be the next Freddie Mercury level singer, so I went back to college and played part time while I got a degree in computer science. I had all my core classes from the music degree, so I really didn't need to take English again. So in a year I had a BA in Computer Science and I headed off into a career in IT. At that point, 1996, I stopped playing completely. I worked in IT until 2013, when I was able to retire at 62. In 2009 I had set the studio backup and started writing again, fueled largely by having returned to playing in 2005 when I did my old band's annual reunion show. That turned into a 2 show weekend, and there were compatibility issues with some of the players and I really didn't like most of the material, so I stopped doing those about 4 years ago. So while I had dreams, I fell short of all of them. Baseball, nope! Rock star, nope. Husband (3 times), father (2 times), nope. I was awful at those things too. I finally gave in to myself and spent some time with a psychiatrist and we came to some conclusions, the main one being that I struggle with PTSD in that I don't trust and I don't allow people to get close to me. (That will probably not come as a shock to anybody here who has seen my moodiness on display.) So I now live alone with my dog, have no interest in women at all because I know how that is going to end up 4-6 months down the road when I get bored with them, and pretty much don't leave my house because I am so uneasy in crowds and around strangers. I am an introvert to the highest degree.

Somewhere back in the songwriter forum, WAY back, I posted a song called "I Hope Somebody Cries". It really opened a window into what is going on in my head, and I got a lot of "Wow. You laid it all out there." type replies. That song was easy to write, because it's just a story of the loose wires in my head. It was hard to SING though because it's a story of the loose wires in my head. It was a baring of the soul moment and it was hard to sing.

So item by item, I have failed at every dream I ever had. In life though, I'm a survivor and I'll always land on my feet somehow. At 69 years of age, I am in a safer financial place than I have ever been, which lends itself to a sense of security, life is finally good and I am at a higher level of inner piece than I have ever been. Once I realized that MOST people who have dreams of being a rock star or an athlete do not achieve them, I was fine.

EDIT to add:

My father died in 1991, 5 months shy of his 74th birthday. I was 5 months shy of 40. He never understood the "soul of an artist" concept and in his depression era mind he didn't consider what I did to be work because it didn't involve a lunchbox and a timecard. His concept of musicians was the people saw playing as a hobby in the bands he saw when he went to weddings. He never once came to see me play. (My mother came out exactly twice.) He died disappointed in me, not only because I didn't have a "job", but that I was twice divorced (thrice now!) and in his frame of reference I was expected to stay married to a horrible, lazy, stupid woman JUST because there were kids involved. I asked him once "What is you think would be the benefits of those kids growing up in a house full of anger and hatred? It is BETTER for them that I am not there." And again, depression era mindset, where divorce was a dirty word, my life was totally unacceptable to him. I have been carrying that around for almost 30 years now, and it eats at me.

Every. Single. Day.

Last edited by eddie1261; 12/05/20 06:44 AM.