Trail To Silverton

The trail from auditioning for Jack Petersen and studying in the school of music at NTSU, to performing live as a winner of the Silverton Jubilee songwriter's contest was a wild, exciting one. I managed to do well in the performance guitar program, earning top marks on my jury playing three movements from Frederico Mompou's Suite Compostelana, and subsequently being invited at the end of my second year in school there to travel to Spain for a summer of study under Andrés Segovia in his Música en Compostela. I didn't realize at the time how my guitar instructor, Michael Craddock, had so cagely set me up to impress by playing those specific three movements (in a jury which students were usually only allowed to play two pieces) to the dean of the school of music, Marceau Myers. Dean Myers had even stopped me when I announced the three movements I would be playing to tell me I was only allowed to play two. Michael had leaned over and told Dr. Myers that he would not regret hearing me play all three. Myers corrected my pronunciation of Frederico's surname and allowed it. I fell into the trance, managed to play without drooling on my guitar, and was awarded with a score of A+, which I later found out was unheard of in those days. Regardless, that jury was the highlight at the trailhead of the long, convoluted but highly invigorating trail to Silverton.

However, the cost for tuition and to go and study at the Música en Compostela was steep. $1,500 then, somewhere between $5K and $7K in today's dollars. I just didn't have that kind of money available, having spent a whopping $100 to lay hands on what would turn out to be a pretty fine handmade classical guitar to replace the old Sears & Roebuck Silvertone I had started with during my first semester in the guitar program. Something else happened then that shook me to the core. Some of my classmates who had graduated the previous year came back from the east and west coasts emaciated and penniless. I too was running out of money, so I declined the invitation to study in Spain, worked a couple more years as a common laborer, and then changed my major to the much more lucrative subject of civil engineering. During two years in engineering school I laid hands on a personal computer and began learning to write code in several programming languages, loved it and changed major one more time to finally earn a bachelor of science in computer science and math.

Thus began a twelve-year career working in seven different industries for as many different companies, including work in education, advertising, petroleum exploration, retail, and banking. It was in the banking job that I laid out my detailed plans to become self employed.

Upon twisting off from the job at a big bank in a big Texas town where I had just been promoted to vice president of software quality assurance in its wealth management division, I walked away with a pocket full of cash from the sale of employee stock options accumulated over five years working there and purchased wilderness land in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I spent eight months working for another company which trained me in JAVA and multi-tiered web applications development, then finally fulfilled a life-long goal by landing another job for which I moved to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains where I had longed to live and work for decades. The plan was simple and direct: work another six or seven years while building a high-tech home/studio, and start my own consulting company.

At eight months into that job, the dot com bubble burst and I was unceremoniously laid off.

I went directly home after verifying that I had indeed been laid off and collected my severance pay, packed an ice chest full of food and beer, grabbed a guitar and banjo, and drove north up onto Thunder Basin so I could enjoy a full moon rising while pondering over my situation and decide what I should do next. That unplanned road trip produced the song Dreaming Plains, and I knew just what to do while applying for jobs as a software engineer.

Putting new strings on my guitars and banjos, letting them stretch and tuning them up, I developed a set list which could span ten minutes to an hour, spent two weeks polishing it to a fine gleam, then hit the road as a traveling singer/songwriter living the dream performing along the Front Range and deeper west into the Rocky Mountains. Those four months playing anywhere and everywhere I was welcomed by appreciative audiences, selling a few CDs, and eating free meals offered up at high elevations in cafes, on ranches, and at festivals happening alongside rushing, crystal clear mountain streams were the finest times of my life.

Four months later job offers rolled in and I chose the one closest to the wilderness proeprty I had purchased and began the final leg of my professional career working as an employee. I married and helped my spouse survive an ordeal battling cancer. As she emerged from that, I submitted songs I had written, including Dreaming Plains to the Silverton Jubilee songwriter's contest, winning 3rd place for that entry. I drove with spouse to Silverton where we enjoyed the festival and I performed my song to one of the most wonderful audiences I had ever played for. We returned home and I was then locked out of the house when my spouse was feeling stronger and desired the company of someone more exciting than I was.

No big deal. I was kicked out of the house during my first marriage too. Already accustomed to that kind of treatment, I did just as I had in the first marriage: walked over to the local courthouse and filed for divorce. The judges promptly granted my petitions (which I presented and defended myself sans legal counsel) both times without argument. I then set about starting my own creative consulting business, living and working in my newly constructed home/studio ensconced in high wilderness of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I was once again living in a dream made true by my very own mind, hands, and determination.

That sweet dreamtime persisted for seventeen years, well into retirement, before dimwits working for the USFS irresponsibly played with fire when they shouldn't have, burning my homestead and everything I owned to ash. Today I wondered if the Silverton Jubillee was still a happening thing and checked. Its final festival was held on the year I started my company.

Ah well, the two times I was at the festival to hear artists like Guy Clark, Mark O'Connor, and Tony Furtado, to name only a few, were enough to satisfy. I have no regrets about not going to Spain to study classical guitar, it was simply an economic impossibility for me at that time. Michael, if you ever stumble across this account of that period of life, I do appreciate what you tried to do for me then, and for all the fine musical knowledge imparted in the lessons. It was a long trail and my fame was mercifully brief, saving me from suffering the grind of it all. Music making has continued and remained pleasurable throughout this meager life to date.