thomaslake @thomaslake - Twitter Profile

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12 months ago

About 15 years ago, just before I became a dad, I bought my first guitar. It was a Fender acoustic, candy-apple red. I couldn’t play guitar. Wasn’t much of a singer, either. And even though I’d been a professional writer for most of my adult life, I didn’t know how to write a song. But I looked up to Michael Brick. Michael was a tall guy from Texas who wore cowboy boots. He wrote for The New York Times. When I hosted a gathering of writers in the woods of South Georgia, Michael strolled in and pretty much set the room on fire. He picked up the guitar and started playing a song he wrote. We didn’t know this guy and we’d never heard the song before. But before it was over, MOST OF US WERE SINGING ALONG TO THE CHORUS. That’s how good it was. How good he was. If you were there, you know. It was a few months later when I bought that red guitar. I was 29. Too old to be starting, perhaps. But I took a few lessons, learned a few chords. My daughter was born. I sat in the hallway of our building, going from B-minor to G, while she crawled around on the carpet. I kept practicing until I figured out “The Beaches of Cheyenne," by Garth Brooks. At the next writers’ conference, people listened politely. I saw Michael about once a year. Bought some cowboy boots because he made them look so good. Spent most of the year looking forward to the next time I could hear him sing. In 2014, there was one song I was hoping he’d play. But Michael was not a jukebox. He did things on his own schedule. He didn’t play the song on Thursday night. He didn’t play it on Friday night. Finally, he played it on Saturday night. It was even better than I’d remembered. A few months later, we found out that Michael had cancer. Some of us flew to Texas to see him. We went back in early 2016, for his funeral. Michael Brick was 41. He was survived by his wife and children. Later that year, The Lake Family Band played a show in our front yard for a local festival called Porchfest. The band included some of my friends and relatives, including my dad, a great lead guitarist. We played cover songs. I played rhythm and sang a few songs like the amateur I was. By then my wife and I had three children, and our fourth was born the next year. I kept playing guitar, kept singing. It got a little easier. During the pandemic, my two oldest started taking Zoom lessons on piano. And I sang “Daddy Songs” at bedtime. One night in 2022, I was singing some lullaby or another when these new words started coming to me. A song of my own. I ran to find a pen so I could write it down. Then I wrote another song, and another. When I played some of these songs at Porchfest ‘23, they were just okay. I listened to the recording and realized I needed to get much better at singing my own songs. So I signed up for voice lessons and did guided vocal workouts several times a week. There’s one part on the workout where the teacher says to “keep it bright and bratty.” My 11-year-old son heard this part, unfortunately. Then he kept telling me to keep it bright and bratty. I did. Last year we played a few times at the Songwriters’ Open Mic Night at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia. It was me and my wife, Sara, with our older daughter on piano. We made the finals one evening, but didn’t win. My singing still needed to improve. Last summer I did something very hard: I gave up coffee. It made a difference. A few months ago, there were layoffs at my company. Losing my job wasn’t great, but it did give me more time to work on music. I found a producer in a local musicians’ Facebook group who had his own studio. We booked a date. On a Saturday morning in April, I put on my cowboy boots and packed up the old red Fender I’d purchased after hearing Michael Brick sing. Then the Lake Family Band went into the studio and recorded our first song. A song I wrote. It’s about fatherhood and unconditional love. I would like you to hear it. I’ll never be like Michael Brick. But I’ll never forget him, either. Happy Father’s Day, everyone.

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