If you're anything like me, you have an insatiable appetite for information. This has led me to follow, oh, about 200 blogs in my Google Reader. A couple of those blogs follow the music scene in Louisville, KY, my hometown. Even though I recognize very few of the bands and venues these days, every once in a while something will pop up that sends me careening down memory lane.

Well, this morning, I happened across this post on "Backseat Sandbar," about the 'ville's very own "Merry Pranksters" band. They've been playing a Sunday gig every week for TWENTY TWO years, a truly epic accomplishment.

But what really caught my eye is the gentleman at the far left of the photo above. His name is Tom Browning, and he taught me how to play the guitar (or, in his defense, perhaps I should say he did everything he could to teach me how to play the guitar!). I guess I was about 14 or 15 when I first began taking lessons from Tom, in the unbelievably tiny back room of the music store where he worked (man, I wish I could remember the name of that music store).

I think Tom gave up pretty quickly teaching me the fundamentals of music- chords, notes, scales and such, because my method of learning guitar was to bring in a (cassette tape of a) song I wanted to learn (usually something a beginner had absolutely no business attempting, like the multiple, entwined guitar lines of "The Song Remains The Same"). Then, I would sit back and watch Tom listen to the tune once, twang a string or two, hit "stop" on the cassette player, and then proceed to play the holy shit out of the tune. No matter what the tune was, he could play it.

Perhaps more amazing, when Tom played his acoustic guitar, it seemed like he could make it sound like anything. If he was chugging through a meaty Zeppelin riff, the guitar sounded thick and heavy, almost electrified. If he was playing a flamenco passage (I remember wanting to learn The Doors' "Spanish Caravan") his beat-up acoustic sounded for all the world like the classical guitar of a flamenco master. To this day I can hear Tom in my mind, playing that descending Fender Rhodes line from "Riders On The Storm." (for some reason, I was always trying to learn songs with little to no guitar in them. See Hubbard, Freddie, below for confirmation of this pattern) Anyways, somehow, when Tom played it, his acoustic chimed and rang out like he was tickling the ivories on a vintage electric piano. I swear I could even hear the Leslie speaker.

My lessons with Tom only lasted for a year or so. Soon I would leave Kentucky for the bright lights of big city Chicago. But Tom, to you I offer my most sincere and heartfelt thanks for helping me discover and nurture what has become a lifelong love of music...even though I still can't play "The Song Remains The Same."