All You Need is Love

Signing the wall outside of Graceland in 1996

   "Nothing you can do

But you can learn how to be you in time

It's easy."

-"All You Need is Love"

The Beatles

(Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)

Music has been apart of me since the day I took my first breath of life on a cold January night in 1989.  Born fourteen minutes after midnight, I was just in time to celebrate the birthday of Elvis Aaron Presley, or more simply known as "The King" by millions of his adoring fans.  This coincidence should have been a flash in front of my parents eyes of the years that were to come: forever going to concerts, digging through piles of vinyl records at flea markets to find just the right ones, and putting up with me listening to the same song over and OVER until I had learned every rise and fall of the artist's voice.

If I had to make a soundtrack to my life there is no possible way I could even begin.  Every time I hear one of my favorite songs it brings to mind another memory; a flash of nostalgia that can only be aroused by the cry of that old steel guitar, a saxophone howling into the night, or that singer's lyrics that strike so close to home that it touches my very soul.

Loretta Lynn's "You're Looking at Country"?  Sitting in the Ryman Auditorium where all the greats have played, and being so awe struck that I couldn't even stand up as the one I've sang to, repeated every line to her movie of, and adored since I was a kid: the Coal Miner's Daughter herself started to sing.  Practically crying as this seventy-six-year-old beauty belted out the notes that sounded just as good as the day she recorded them as the audience nearly drowned out the first stanza from their cheers.

Bob Seger's "Night Moves"?  Being in my mom's room listening to old LPs and spinning around so fast that I fell and my tooth decided to take a nice dive into my cousin's forehead. [Que some blood, a killed nerve, and lots of dental work.]  Or to sound like Sophia from the Golden Girls..."Picture it: Freedom Hall, Louisville, Kentucky, 2006.  The lights were low, my heels were high..." [Que a fall  right down the stairs from row J straight to A and a knee so bruised that I had to walk around thug-style with my pants rolled up at school for the next month]. The Ramblin' Gamblin' man has caused me some aches but all have nestled themselves warmly inside the covers of my heart and dang well make for some good stories. =]

Point being, music has always been there for me if I'm lonely, having a bad day, or just need to jam out with my best pals.  My hair brush serves as a microphone, my steering wheel a drum, and the air as a guitar as I show Tom Cruise that he doesn't hold a candle to me when it comes to sliding across a hardwood floor to classic Bob Seger.

This blog is going to be about life, my life, and the struggle for me to 'get rhythm', so to speak, along it's twists and turns.  It's going to be about the things I love and the rants I want to make up on my soap box.  Music, of course, will play an intricate part in my writings because that's just who I am.

The sass of Reba.

A crush on Conway.

And all the upbringing of a child who could match any older generation's knowledge of musical melodies.

<3 Kellie