Campfire Chronicles

In the summer of 2004 I released a solo CD called “The Missing Peace.” At the same time my lifelong friend, Mike McCoy, joined me in The Brothers Four and during the 2004-2005 concert season The Brothers Four did a series of performances in the US with The Kingston Trio and Glenn Yarbrough and his group. In 2006 McCoy and I released a 25th anniversary edition of “Between Friends.” The 41st Campfire talks about how those events put me on The Road To Going Home. 

The 40th campfire talks about the spring of 2004. That season I successfully completed the vocals for my most ambitious solo album, there were significant personnel changes within The Brothers Four, and I had a life altering moment with my older brother. Together those experiences propelled me on “The Road That Leads Us Home.”

In the 38th Campfire the long held and deep-seated fears that resided so long in my unconscious were found and freed and soon running wild. In this, the 39th Campfire, those fears begin to be given names and faces and in the naming and facing them I am able to begin claiming them. 

It has been a while since we have lit a campfire…this 38th campfire talks about events in 2001. In the spring of that year I shared a book I created with a few family and friends. The manuscript contained my journey for “authenticity, belonging, and confidence” or, put another way, “a search for truth, home, and to find myself.” Somehow putting that quest into words freed a number of fears that were unconsciously lodged inside of me. This campfire ends with The Brothers Four in Japan the week after 9/11 with both the country and me wondering what all may await.

Between September of 1998 and October of 2000 The Brothers Four performed more than 150 times in the US and in Japan. It was the only time the group ever traveled around America by tour bus. It still amazes me the group is going strong after 55 years. Some years the phone rings more often than others. Those years were one of those times.A correction: The performance at NHK Hall was attended by 3000 people not 300.  

My father died on May 28, 1997, the day before my mother’s 75th birthday. It was heartbreakingly unexpected. A month or so after he died I made a decision to make him the focus of my work for one year. At the end of the year I had created a musical memoir entitled Season of the Heart that explored the spring of 1997. A year to the day after he died I performed the 40 new songs for the first time in my mother’s living room in front of a lifetime of friends. The next week I performed the memoir four different days in Seattle at the Richard Hugo House. When it was over I knew it was time to move on. It was what my father would have wanted.

At a concert in Seattle on March 22, 1997 every singing group I had ever been a part of beginning with one in high school appeared on stage together. A week later in a concert in Spokane I was the opening act as well as one of The Brothers Four. Looking back those two events felt like one concert with a week long intermission. It has been something to remember them and write about them and to realize again how important they were.

In September of 1995 McCoy and I celebrated 30 years of friendship. For his birthday that month I gave him a songbook containing 52 original songs that we had sung through the years. At the time I saw that book and those songs as a culmination. Little did I know that our journey together was only beginning.

1995 was a year of writing songs for friends and family as well as for sale. I wrote songs for Pat’s and my wedding, Lindsey’s graduation, and for a concert celebrating 30 years of music and friendship with Mike McCoy. Of all the songs I wrote that year Let Love Go Forward, a song written for my wedding, is likely the most significant. It ends most campfire concerts.

Beginning in March of 1994 there were a dozen moments or events that continued to remind me how close life is to death and how near love is to loss. While those experiences gave me pause and stopped me in my tracks they did not stop me from embracing life and celebrating love.

My cousin Jane died twenty years ago a few months before her 41st birthday. This Campfire describes the time from her diagnosis-November of 1992-until her death in March of 1994. As I re-remembered that time there was much I had forgotten while some of it remained as clear and close as yesterday. Making that time a part of One of Those Times in a Life gives it added perspective.

The early 90’s brought significant changes in my life and career. I became an instant family man. The Brothers Four committed to performing more including frequent tours of Japan and regular tours around the US. It also was a time when I worked as a freelance verse writer for American Greetings as well as continuing my quest to “make it” as a songwriter.

As I began to write about The Brothers Four’s connection to Japan and the Japanese people it all became more amazing. I realize that I have gone to Japan to perform for 45 years and the group has been going for more than 52 years. It is a connection that defies explanation and continues to fill me with gratitude. We will be returning again in May and June doing 20 shows and releasing a new album.

One of Those Times in a Life is a continuing journey of Gratitude and Grace as well as Memory and Discovery. It had been years since I thought about and remembered a solo concert I did in the fall of 1987. It was only in remembering it all those years later that it became clear how important it was to everything that followed.

Not long ago I was talking with a friend and told her that One of Those Times in a Life was sort of a Thank you and I’m sorry Tour. That is a humorous way of saying that it is a Journey of Gratitude and Grace. It has been a chance to get in touch with people some of whom I haven’t talked with in years and to thank them for being in or having been in my life. Where it was appropriate the reconnecting also gave or gives me a chance to apologize for something I did or that happened.Yes, I am grateful for a chance to express both regret and gratitude to those who have joined me in this journey. 

There have been a few times in a lifetime where I have suffered a crisis of faith. The summer of 1983 was one such time. In the year that followed I found out that it was still worth loving even when it meant losing…an important lesson. I continue to be grateful to those who were there when I needed them most.

When I was in grade school I remember someone coming up and asking, “Did you hear about the guy who swam across the ocean got half way across and realized he couldn’t make it so he turned around and went back.” Well, it’s too late to turn around now. With this Chronicle the rest of One of Those Times in a Life becomes a journey home. Quite an adventure.  

Of all the Chronicles this may have been the most challenging. That is part of why it took so long to finish. I have also spent time in these last few months doing Campfire Concerts. It’s been great to do more live performances. The Mission Statement for all aspects of One of Those Times in a Life remains unchanged: To inspire others to share their stories around the campfires of their own lives.One of the goals of these Campfires is to discover what is universal in my personal experiences.This Campfire is the halfway point in the journey. The Chronicle will be published in two parts. Part One is the end of a journey outward. Part Two is the beginning of the journey home.

One of the bigger challenges of sharing a life and the stories that make up that life is finding ways to tell my story and stories while trying not to tell the stories or intrude on the privacy of people I love. For a hundred years my family had a “secret” connection with illnesses of the mind. Through the years people I love found many different ways of dealing and living with that often unspoken relationship. For me there is cleansing and healing that comes in spinning the threads of my relationship with mind illnesses into yarns and weaving those yarns into a larger tapestry. I do that forever mindful that is not true for everyone.

It is a gift to relive a significant moment that took place long ago and to see it and feel it again with the perspective of time and space. It is challenging to build a bridge of words across the years and try to connect who I was then with who I am now.It would certainly have been “easier” if my dad’s visit had not been the day I was going into the studio. And yet…and yet…each experience is important and even precious (defining that word differently in each case.) That together they became part of some larger experience continues to resonate and shimmer and shine brighter through the years.