Anyone can sing and play the blues; it doesn't matter whether you're pink, green, orange or purple. All you need to be is human. Put an 8-bar or 12-bar pattern together with three chords, throw in a few (or a lot of) wrong notes, and sing like you mean it.

All you gotta do is wake up in the morning and look around for your shoes, or go down to the crossroads, or find out that something you never thought you'd lose is gone. If you've ever walked along the railroad track, tried to find your way back home, or made your way to the middle of nowhere... you can sing the blues.

If your best friend done stole your partner, or your partner done found another... you can sing the blues. If you once had money and now you don't and all your friends took off 'cause now you're broke... you can sing the blues.

You can definitely sing the blues if:

• You're fixin' to die

• You shot a man in Reno

• You stabbed a man in Memphis

• You've been in jail

• Your best friend is the bottom of a bottle

• You thought you had it made but now you don't

• Even your mama don't remember your name

I've read that teenagers can't sing the blues, 'cause they ain't "fixin' t' die," and because they ain't older than dirt.

Baloney. Anybody can sing the blues.

Ever been sent to the principal's office? Ever had someone turn you down when you asked them to a dance? Ever found yourself on the playground feelin' so lonesome you didn't know what to do? Ever woke up in the morning and felt that things were just gettin' ready to go wrong?

Anybody and everybody can sing the blues. We all start singing them on the day we're born.

Realistically, though... there are some rules. You shouldn't be singing the blues if:

• Your name is Brittany, Tiffany, or Moonbeam

• You drive a new BMW, HumVee, or an Audi

• You never shop at the Dollar Store

• You have a membership to the golf course next door

As long as you don't have any blatant "out-of-context" qualities, you can sing and play the blues. Just get a guitar, or a harmonica, or just sing with a moanin' in your heart. 

That's the Blues.

Down the road apiece, in another life that comes to me when I think back upon the places I’ve been and the people I’ve seen, I run across two old guys sitting in the front of the soda fountain at the northwest corner of 6th and Evergreen in Redmond, Oregon. One fella slid his way along a metal dobro, the other plucked a banjo.

They were “old world” music teachers: more than happy to show a kid a few good licks, but wouldn’t talk to me again until I could prove that I had taught myself a lesson.

During the winters, those old boys spent their days inside the soda fountain. As I recall, one was partial to Cherry soda floats. The other just wanted 7-up, and on more than a few occasions I saw him sneak the contents of a flask into the bubbles.

They never bought their drinks. If you wanted a new lick, you paid. If you wanted a performance, they would play as long as you kept their glasses full.

They were old then. I’m getting old now. 

Their names escape me. Only occasionally can I put a distant face upon the memory, but recently I discovered just how much I have finally come to appreciate the time they gave to me, and to the other boys my age who had a hankering to make music.

Several of us practiced and eventually formed a cheesy high school rock band. We got more than our fair share of chances to play the after-game dances at school, only because we covered that week’s radio top-forty, which allowed our school mates to pretend that they were at a Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Brownsville Station, or Redbone concert.

We really sucked, but our schoolmates knew the lyrics and could sing along, so we were forgiven.

I didn’t mind the rock thing, but there was this other thing, the stuff that those two old fellas were showing me.

Dad didn’t play an instrument, but he loved to sing. There were two churches in Graham: the white church, and the black church. I have traced my ancestry back to Scotland in the 1600’s. My family line is as white as white can be. But Dad, not really a religious man I’ve come to learn, went every Sunday to the black church. He was playing football for a Texas university, and baseball for a Florida university, and so he had a number of black friends who hung out at our house between games and seasons. We moved through the south depending upon the shape of the ball. The only memories that I have of my father in a happy mood are the images of him singing while several guys strummed a guitar, banged the wooden porch like a drum, and hooted on a harmonica.

I didn’t get any more of that after Mom and Dad split up in the early sixties. She dropped what was left of the family in Greeley, Colorado, so that she could attend teacher’s college. My musical experience was soon an overload of CSN, Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix, Joplin. My first guitar teacher started me on my way with Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Kingston Trio, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul, and Mary... with a shade of Woody Guthrie.

But then came Ten Years After, Led Zeppelin, Traffic... the Viet Nam War... and the world got psychedelic. I suppose there were a few years in there where I went astray. But always, I’ve found my way back to the blues.

I get to thinking about those old boys and my musical history and I know that for me, it’s all about the blues.

It's great to have the EZ Folk site back up. When it went down at the end of this past summer, I scoured the internet for a place to place my tunes, and I found nothing that satisfied me. EZ Folk was the ticket. And now it still is.

I built my own web site and posted my music, but I'm not as computer savvy as I once was, and so getting a player to load and launch on my page was getting to be bothersome... still haven't figured it out. Thus, my personal web site makes me look like Jethro Bodean.

But EZ Folk... hoo doggie... WE'RE BACK!