Dear Frank

Here is the latest in a periodic series of emails I have written to famous musicians.

Dear Frank, 

Frank Turner
Hello from Edmonton, Canada. From a dining room table in a house in a little bungalow in a west end neighbourhood of Edmonton, Canada. Where just now, thanks to your music, a neat little scene in the history of fathers and sons unfolded. 

Michael is our youngest son. He's a big fan of yours. As I type that last sentence the cliche alarm goes off. Big fan of yours. What that really means is he is a thoughtful, sensitive teenager in North America at a time when nobody with the money and power to get images in his head really gives a shit about him. And because he instinctively knows that, your music gets through.

And to us. 

Through his bedroom door as he sings and strums your music. From the laptop as he shares your music. 

Just now we listened to Nashville, Tennessee together. And talked about knowing who you are, where you're from, what your voice is when that knowledge and that voice go to other places, are informed and altered by travel and new sounds and new people. And how music is an  offering. 

But I'm not a songwriter, so I'll stop. I'm a father. And I know in my bones how vital it is to find good things to be able to talk about with my sons. Michael and I talk about Frank Turner music. 

And I love it that he brought your music to the table. 

Thanks very much. 

Glenn

PS. We'd love to buy you a beer next time you are through this way. 


And the first time I've gotten a response:

Frank Turner
Apr 28 (2 days ago)
to me
hey glenn
thanks for the mail and the kind words, your mail genuinely brightened up my day. i should be back through edmonton in the fall, big north american tour coming. see you both then.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughe...
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit ...
Read more