Why I Sing

 

When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul
~Horatio Spafford~

 

 

My sister had a copy made of an old cassette from the early 80s of me singing and playing the piano in a restaurant or garden pub with some other musicians. There were songs on there I forgot I’d written and sung— but oh, I did.

I was a singer/songwriter for a few years out of high school playing with many musicians in the Stillwater "music scene.”  I played with Jimmy LaFave who went on to Austin to become very successful. I sang backup with other musicians in Stillwater as well. I sang jingles for banks, wrote songs, sang in the studio, was the opening act for Don McLean at Cain’s Ballroom and Michael Martin Murphy. I sang alone, in trios, with bands, in weddings and funerals and on and on. I’m not trying to toot my horn or anything—just trying to get to the main point. 

 

Out of all the venues I’ve played in my life, funerals were the most fulfilling.

 

This may sound morbid but stay with me. I felt, and still feel called to sing at funerals. Why? Because the people who asked me to sing, It is Well With My Soul or Amazing Grace needed someone to sing “something, anything.” It wasn’t about my voice, more about willingness. 

There was the son who’d just turned fifteen but was much younger inside—always seen playing outside in the small town where he lived. He built dams in ditches, contraptions in cement drains—his blond hair always dusty with earth. He didn’t come home one night. They searched for him until morning. His brother and a policeman found his legs sticking out of large pile of sand near a construction site next to his house. He’d tried to build a tunnel.  

His mother asked me to sing something, anything, and I did. 

Two children lost their father because he was murdered by their mother. It was in the news for a long time. The pastor asked me to sing something, I did. I remember the daughter and son on the front row, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll” and for just a little while, they unburied their faces from their grandparents' shoulders and listened.

 

So, after sitting in my car this past Tuesday listening to the CD from my young “career,” I found myself asking where and for what purpose was I singing back then? I love music, don’t get me wrong, but as a singer and up to this point in my life, I realize now what a powerful role music plays in people’s lives, when they just need to hear anything, something, most often---even so, it is well...