Editor’s Note: Austin, TX-based musician Brian Willey was gracious enough to share a personal essay with us centered around his father, who recently passed away. It also explores how his father’s love of music shaped Brian’s childhood and his journey to becoming a musician. Brian Willey’s music project is The Black Drumset, and the third album, Friends in Dark Places, was released on Friday, July 17th. A couple of days ago, Alex took a look at one of the songs from the album as a part of SWT’s Singles Spotlight series.
My father passed away earlier this year under particularly difficult circumstances. He fought desperately to control his mind and stay connected to reality as he lost his grip on the people and world around him due to an accelerated and aggressive form of dementia. I have spent a lot of time since he passed thinking about his life and our relationship.
What do our parents give us, intentionally and, maybe more interestingly, unintentionally? My father, like many fathers, was less than perfect. But he gave me one gift that set me on a path that has enhanced and given my life joy from childhood to today, and that gift was exposure to a broad range of adventurous music, including jazz, prog-rock, funk, and synthesizer music.
I grew up in the deep south in Alabama, and while there were many wonderful things about the south, the general culture I was surrounded by at that time was narrow, conservative, close-minded, and segregated. However, when I was a child, our house was filled with music made by racially and artistically diverse artists. The music that I was exposed to at home opened up a universe or window into a broader (and to me, more exciting) world than the one directly around me. My father raced motorcycles competitively, another manifestation of his adventurousness. He once hit 115mph with me on the back of the bike on the highway (do not try this at home!). I imagine it was from the biker culture that he discovered some of the more interesting music that he brought into our house. Some favorites around the house were Mother’s Finest, Herbie Hancock, Edgar Winter, War, Yes, Idris Muhammad, Triumvirat, Robin Trower, David Bowie. I am certain this early exposure to music is what led me to become a musician.
And it wasn’t just the music. The album covers were my first exposure to contemporary visual art and design and artistic culture. As early as 5 or 6 years old, I was obsessed with the album covers of Traffic (oddly shaped covers), Edgar Winter and David Bowie (androgyny), Yes (fantasy and surrealism). The people, fashion, and art on these album covers were wildly different from things I saw in my daily life. I am certain that this ignited my lifelong interest in visual art, and sparked the wanderlust that led me to move from Alabama to New York at 18.
While I am certain that my early exposure to music and art in my home environment are directly linked to my strongest life interests, I also know that my father did not intentionally push me to learn an instrument or make art. He was skeptical when I showed interest in becoming an artist/musician as a profession, and pushed me to find a more stable profession. Nonetheless, he brought adventurous music into my environment in a substantial way when I was developing as a child. And at the same time, his example was one of openness. Openness to see the “different” or new as interesting and worthy of exploration, rather than seeing everything unusual or new as threatening. It is a way of engaging with the world and other people. He loved people and would talk to anyone.
Music has provided my life with beauty, humanity, sources of community, and opportunities for living creativity. My father first brought this into my life, and I think his openness to music culture and his enthusiasm for sharing it represent some of the best aspects of his personality. And for this, I am forever grateful. As I struggle to accept the circumstances of his passing, these are some of the things that I will hold onto.
You can connect with The Black Drumset via the links in Brian’s author box below
Brian Willey
Contributor
Brian Willey is an Austin, TX-based musician. Friends in Dark Places, the third album from his music project The Black Drumset, was released on July 17th.
