David Linhart

I started playing guitar the summer before high school, and I wanted to play Beatles songs. It's funny that this story should be mine, since my dad was young and teaching himself guitar when the Beatles were releasing records, and he jumped on each release. His friend tried to make sense of the lyrics, writing them out phonetically with whatever chords he could figure out. Years later they learned English and looked back on these transcriptions with much laughter.

I had a book of official transcriptions but half the patience of my father and his friend. The quickest route to playing actual songs and not just practicing chords seemed to be working out my own riffs and patterns by ear. From the start, playing guitar has always meant writing songs to play and lyrics to sing. I grew up listening to my dad play. Now, we listen to each other and show each other what we are working on. He has given me all the guitars that I've ever played except one, which he picked out. He introduced me to many of the guitarists who I dig, such as Corey Harris and João Gilberto. Others who I found elsewhere he knew about already, such as Nick Drake, Ben Harper and Baden Powell.

There was a time when I would have sworn to anyone that music saved me. Living it up on a weekend night in college meant sitting in front of my stereo with books of CDs, painstakingly collected and sorted and almost an extension of my very person. Listening to music and getting ideas for my own were the same thing. Before long, music pulled me out of myself. My reserve and quiet fell apart. I suppose everyone needs some way to express their self and some space in which to do it. For me, the way is a song and the space a stage.

But who doesn't have some intense relationship with some music? Who doesn't have memories and passionate histories with music attached? In the end, I think music hasn't saved me afterall; nor can it save anyone. Music cannot take you out of where you are into a new place where you want to be, except for a moment. But that moment can open so many possibilities. We can become open to communicating and creating relationships and writing new stories into our lives. I love music for cutting straight to the heart. That's the measure of a good song and my first wish as a songwriter and performer.