So little time, so much inspiration…James Smith is still inspiring me to write

Well, I haven’t kept you very well informed.  Forgive me please.  Here’s a bit of my most recent life and a clip of one of the new songs that I’ve written.

We left Colorado on January 14th, headed for Southern Baja, by way of LA, so I could attend the memorial concert for James Smith, my dear friend who recently died of cancer that originated in the brain.  I was so blessed to be able to spend some very precious and private time with James during the last few months of his life and throughout it all his focus was to inspire ME and my writing.  The concert was long, as it should have been.  Remembering James should have been a festival event to last over several days, really.  His hand in modern guitar writing was to inspire and encourage so many people to write and to play, and of course his arrangements, that he urged others to play.  James took the stage in such a different way than most, pushing others forward and to higher levels of accomplishment.  For this reason, it wasn’t a surprise to have an evening filled to the brim with talented people talking about his memory and performing memorable pieces.  Among the people who spoke of him touching their lives was Christopher Parkening and Leona Boyd.  I wish I could remember everyone, there were so many.  Endre Balough, a tender and expressive violinist who performed for more than 30 years with James, played a couple of the duets with Brian Head that he had played so many times with Jim.  Brian did a nice job.  But, somehow there was something missing…not having Jim’s spirit behind the strings.  Endre’s rendition of Danny Boy brought many people to tears, as it has so many times when I’ve heard him and James do it before.  It was a bittersweet evening, one I knew would mean cutting my ties to James in a more definite way.  I learned so much more about him than I had realized.  I was fortunate enough to know him in a different setting that the University.  His mother lives in Delta, Colorado where we live, and with us each having small children and him finding out that I play classical guitar, it was natural that we would be thrown together when he was in Colorado.  He was so generous with his time and never asked for money for the many hours that he would spend with me on the porch gently guiding my music expression and urging me to write down my original work.  He even spent time transcribing my first pieces to be written down.  Antiguan Waves was the first piece that he transcribed, and it was such a joyful moment when he sent it to me and pushed me to send him more.

He wasn’t able to keep up with doing much more for me that way.  But, that encouragement from someone who should know if there was worth in my music or not lit a spark in me that I can’t explain, exactly.  From then on, I was writing for James.  And now, I’m still writing for James.

The 2000 mile trip from Colorado to Los Barriles in Southern Baja gave me a lot of time to think.  And I have a little Breedlove passport guitar that I found myself picking around on while Craig was driving.  After the concert I found a second wind for composing.  Once James died I was left deflated and discouraged, feeling that I had lost the one person in this world who cared if I wrote or not, the one person who would look at my work honestly and guide me without dashing my spirit.  I was working on the third piece to a River Suite when he died and I just couldn’t finish it.  I still haven’t.

But, as I was riding in that truck, melody and emotion began pouring out and by the time we arrived in Los Barriles, I had written 2 new pieces that I think James would be intrigued by.  My goal is to write 10 songs, two versions of each (beginning players and intermediate-advanced players), all titled for James in some way.  I suppose this is a creative way to grieve someone told me, and so far people have enjoyed hearing the pieces and my love for this dear friend.  And maybe my collection will insure that his memory will live on.  My husband, Craig, is helping me to get them transcribed so that the world will be able to play them, too.

Here is the first of the collection, “Dear Heart”.  That’s a phrase that I’m sure that he used for many people that he thought of in a special way.  I hope you’re listening James….Here goes…