Tonight in parenting

I am very self conscious about my guitar playing. I think I suck and there is very little that would convince me otherwise. When my son was younger, I'd break out my acoustic and play it. He would come up to me and put his hand on the strings and mute them with a very earnest 'stop playing, Dad' look on his face.

My neighbors have noticed me playing back there. One of them told me his dad was quite the musician back in the day. Very versatile, played a lot of different instruments. I said I hoped it was not too loud. He said he could not really hear me play, but could see me. Is that a sign for me to crank it up?

Recently I had my acoustic fixed. It's been cleaned, restrung and had bridge and nut work done so it is a lot easier to play. It's like I have a brand new guitar, it never sounded this good before.

Tonight I was playing the electric in the back room when my Son wandered into the kitchen and looked toward me. I invited him back to sit, and he did. I played a bit on the guitar and he remained seated, whatever I was playing did not seem to be harming him or he would have left the room.

I put on some records as he's still listening to what I put on his iPad. Since he's been listening to I Want You Bad by NRBQ I put that on, and he sat and listened. Then I put the Left Banke on as he's still really enjoying Pretty Ballerina and seems to like She Will Call You Up Tonight.

Put a new one on for him. I know he likes the acoustic stuff so I put Mumford & Sons 'Sigh No More' on for him and he really reacted positively to it. He was listening intently, rocking front to back in the chair. Real connection. So I put it on his iPad while he was still in the back room. As he picked up his iPad to go upstairs I told him I put the Mumford & Sons on there for him.

I returned to the back room and about ten minutes later my wife came back to say she could hear Winter Winds coming from his room.



This kid amazes me.

Trajectory but no target in site

Mumford & Sons - Babel



I consider myself an early adopter of this band. Found them on a UK music blog in the fall of 2009, flipped for Sigh No More. Thought it was a fresh sound full of songs with passion and rousing choruses. It was extremely exciting to see them in a small venue on the stage of Mershon Auditorium in the spring of 2010, a sold out show of about 350 people that met and exceeded all expectations. I knew I’d never seen them for $12 again. They were breaking big. A few months later they were selling out hockey rinks.

Mumford & Sons are a hard working band. Their tour schedule is full. Their competence as musicians is not to be questioned. For the new record they road tested many of the songs before taking them to the studio, toning them for the most impact on their audience.

It did not work.

Producer Markus Dravs merely repeated the same formula of Sigh No More with the same sonic palette of guitars, banjos and the occasional horns. And the songs have the same scripted approach: start slow, build to a stomping middle with a shouting lead vocal, finish slow. Marcus Mumford’s songwriting approach is fairly cautious, if not lazy. Maybe in all the chaos of the past three years he has not had adequate time to pause and write? Mumford & Sons has offered this listener nothing new. Very little pulls me in here, or offers me a memorable line.

Babel’s going to sell, but it’s left me as cold as Arcade Fire’s Grammy hauling The Suburbs. I want to seem them do well, but not coast to an easy win with no risks or experimentation taken. It’s a safe record and I’m too old to take this personally. Maybe it will grow on me, or improve over time.