First Confession: My family wouldn’t BE my family without music.
Second Confession: When I say music, I do not mean things like Raffi, Barney, or nursery rhymes.
The heartbeat of my family has a full-on rhythm; we are our own soundtrack. Day-by-day, season-by-season, my family hums, dances, and sings along with life. This goes back to college days with my husband. We were always counting down to our next concert; there’s just something so invigorating, expressive, and almost primal about live music performances. From Winamp playlists to burned cd mixes, music surrounded us pretty much everywhere we went. Even on the verge of motherhood, the biggest requirement in my birth plan was to be able to listen to music. My husband and I worked for days to create the perfect playlist to motivate me, chill me out, and help transport me mentally to a better place. My son knows exactly what song he was born to (Jimmy Buffett’s “Blue Guitar” if you are wondering) and why I get a little lost whenever it plays. He had no choice, really, but to fall in love with the power of music, too; it was everywhere he went. Over time, he has developed what our family fondly calls “musical tourettes,” which is where statements said by others triggers a song lyric in your mind. Think an ongoing “riff off,” like in the movie Pitch Perfect. Someone observing my family while shopping, for example, would be completely dumbfounded with how we communicate through song lyrics!
This is where the second confession from above comes in. The music our children have grown up on isn’t always “school appropriate,” so to speak. We’ve had really important conversations about how artists write lyrics as a form of personal expression and art. Sometimes there are words in there that are okay to sing along with but would never be okay to use with teachers, classmates, at church, etc. One song my son adores, for example, is “Dirty Glass” by Dropkick Murphys. Part of that just might be that his name is in the title. The first line of the song is, “Murphy, Murphy, darling dear.” When he requested the song play for a dance party at his school’s school-aged child care center when he was in kindergarten, let’s just say there was some explaining that needed to be done. But even awkward moments like those reiterate how important music is in our family. Sure, we get some funny looks when our children can sing songs like “Day Drinking” by Little Big Town and “Knocking Boots” by Luke Bryan as toddlers, but for us, it’s just part of the soundtrack of our life as a family. When our almost-three-year-old squeals with excitement when “her friend Kenny (Chesney)” comes on the radio, it warms our hearts. Music makes us happy. It’s hard not to giggle when you preschooler sings “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” from his bed at night or turn down your toddler when she asks you to dance to Andy Grammar. We often plan our weekends around the Buffett Buffet on Radio Margaritaville. We look forward to when Holly returns to Sirius XM, too. We have a family Pandora station so we all get our favorites, and the variety is the best part! It’s not uncommon to hear from down the hallway, “Alexa, thumbs up!” When we are able to start or end a weekend or summer day with a family dance party, it makes us happy; it’s part of who we are. There are songs specific to waking up, and songs specific to winding down. It’s our soundtrack.
Since music is such a part of who we are, we didn’t even give a second thought to making 2019 our year of concerts. My husband and I were able to reconnect with old and new bands and artists and feel like we were in college again (since that’s where most of our income went then, too). One of those concerts was especially important: our son’s first real concert. I’m not sure who was more excited, him or us! He had been to see shows at Down By The Riverside. He had seen Rend Collective in concert, too (Our family’s anthem is “My Lighthouse), but he hadn’t been to a real full-on, lights flashing, bass pumping, make you want to move kind of concert yet. Over the summer, we gave him the choice of three bands, and he didn’t even hesitate in his answer: AJR. We as a family had been dancing to AJR since their first radio release, “I’m Ready” in 2015. We fell for them, even more, when they opened for Ingrid Michaelson in 2017. Mid-October, our family was ready. I had shirts made with each family member’s favorite lyric. We had earplugs in our pockets. We had full lungs and clear voices. And when my husband hoisted our son on his shoulders and I turned around to see the awe-struck look on his face and hear him belting out every word of every lyric, my heart exploded with pride. It’s so amazing when families are able to come together and share something that really hits the soul of each member at the same time.
Music is the heartbeat of my family, a bonding agent, and I’m incredibly proud that we share that love for music.
