Almost a year ago to the day, I gave my grandfather the last recording I would make for him. He died a little more than a month later, right before Thanksgiving.

Grandpa must have heard me sing 5,000 songs, from the little ditties I wrote when I was a wee thing riding along on the tractor to the Jesus songs he’d request at events up on the hill. He continued to ask me to sing for him long after I’d given up the dream, put my voice through six different kinds of hell, and stopped practicing or performing.

He wasn’t an artist himself, but he loved to listen to music of all types. Whether it was Granny playing the accordion, a local guy strumming a guitar, or his granddaughter singing, he would close his eyes with total absorption, rocking slightly to the rhythm and immersing himself in the sound.

Gramps was not well in his final months. Bedridden and blind, there wasn’t much to keep his mind occupied, so he drifted through a fluidity of time and place that some might call a loss of sanity. But he still loved to listen to music. So as a gift, I sat down and recorded him an album full of cover songs I thought he’d enjoy.

The Music

This is a small sampling of the songs I put on his album. All vocal tracks are mine, but all instrumentation comes from backing tracks I bought through iTunes.

These songs were recorded out of love and are far from perfect. My voice shows the decline of inattention and lack of exercise, and there is nothing production quality about these tracks: they were recorded in the living room of an old house using a 6-year-old version of GarageBand and a Snowball mic without even a shield. Oh, and I claim no recording skills whatsoever, as you will certainly notice by the obvious lack of leveling.

But as imperfect as these songs are, this was a really great exercise that allowed me to connect with my Grandpa in his last days using the language we knew best. And in a way, it was also his last gift to me: a reminder that music makes me feel complete, singing is a powerful form of meditation, and the pride of requiring perfection is a lousy barrier to let get in the way of something that brings such pleasure.

Annnd, now that all the qualifications, caveats, and explanations are out of the way, here’s the music…

The Man

Photo by Shamrock Farms

Photo by Shamrock Farms

Photo by Shamrock Farms