Musicians Unite To Save Small-Town USA!

Howdy Guitar Gang!  I pen this blog during "wave two" of the Covid scare having just spent time on main-street USA. Actually a small town in the northern part of the country, but it could be anywhere.  We just enjoyed some excellent coffee from a locally owned shop and wandered up and down Main Street.  It was AWESOME, but also tinged with a good bit of sadness, and longing for days-gone-by.  You know the "good old days" ... like waaaay back in ... say early 2020, otherwise known as pre-covid-19 America.  Yes we were glad to find some shops still open (as long as you wore a mask while walking in).  But what REALLY struck me was the number of newly vacant storefronts.  As if small-towns were not struggling enough, this 2020 insanity has really been the death-blow for many.  By now, y'all know that I'm a HUGE proponent of revitalizing small towns and putting an end to the awful herding together of people as if they were livestock in a confinement feeding barn.  But is resuscitation even possible any more? At this point the patient might be dead.  This is emergency field-hospital triage folks, and we ALL need to lend our hands. 

Let's talk about what WE can do!

• First and foremost, LIVE LIFE!  Do whatever crazy stuff your particular state might tell you you need to do (wear masks, etc.), and then get out and live that darn life you've worked so hard for.  What good is living anyway, if you are huddled at home scared of everything and EVERYONE?

• Buy stuff from locals.  Friends, local restaurants and shops are struggling ... BIG TIME!  Stop enriching Jeff Bezos, he doesn't need your money, but the folks who live down the street and run your local music store do!  To them, it's a matter of life or death!  Same goes for little mom-n-pop guitar and guitar parts makers, I might add!

• Participate in the economy while investing in your future.  Use this time to change guitar strings, upgrade tubes and speakers or pickups and guitar hardware.  These are win-win ideas here friends.

• Play music!  As musicians, we MUST do this.  This is our gift to humanity, and for many of us it's the bridge that links our spirits to this physical world.  A world without music is a dismal, bleak, depressing place.  Do your part to NOT let that world take over.  I just purchased a little battery-powered PA system and plan to give impromptu outdoor concerts wherever I can find folks who will let me.  Parking lots, outside the windows of nursing homes, even on residential sidewalk.  I'm DOING it baby!

• TEACH music!  In case you have not noticed, kids EVERYWHERE are going crazy with no school and no social interaction.  If we continue on this "socially distanced" course, we're going to produce the most screwed-up generation of young people yet.  And that's saying something!  Grab that old guitar collecting dust, clean it up, tune it up, and take it to the neighbor kid; hand it over and let him know you'll be available to, six feet from him, give a "socially responsible" guitar  lesson regularly each week.

• Get outside!  Darn it, it's extremely well documented that too little time out-of-doors makes people depressed, so get outside and DO SOMETHING PHYSICAL!  Better yet, get outside and play some music :-)

• If you still have your job, look for those who are struggling and find ways to help.

Let's all pitch in and look forward to a world we all love so much that it's actually WORTH staying alive to live in!  And for many of us, that starts and ends with music and musicians!