Every Tuesday evening, mum and I would drive 10 minutes to Auntie Pat and Uncle Steve’s – her to get her roots done, me for guitar lessons with Steve. I was 14 and deep into AC/DC. Steve’s guitar style was strictly roots; finger-picking not plectrums, acoustic not electric; country and folk, no metal.
For over a year, we sat in the corner of the dining room, the tips of my fingers sore, my hands aching. Steve playing and teaching with the lightest of touches; ever-patient, unhurried, full of praise, whilst my mum’s roots returned slowly to brown in the kitchen next door.
Twenty years later Steve sang the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” at my wedding in India, where he befriended Burzis, an Uncle from my wife’s side.
Like Steve, Burzis was an accountant (from Bombay not Birmingham). Burzis sang too, the wedding crowd stilled then silenced by the voices of 2 gentle men, spirits soaring into the dark Goan sky, a lifetime of love swelling into a song – the power of good men who wear their passion lightly, who change us forever without ever knowing.
“Time Will Tell On You” is track 4 of my debut album “Your Best Thinking Got Me Here”.
The finger-picking style in the video is all Uncle Steve.
Musical tastes come and go but some things run deeper.
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