More Songs & Stories From Home

My wife and I moved out to the Olympic Peninsula in 2002. Not long after we arrived we met Flora May and Bob Bradley. That next summer Bob introduced me to the Olympic Mountains. We didn't talk a lot when we were walking, but grand conversations would often happen when we had reached a place where we were looking back from where we came or from a viewpoint where a bigger world spread out before us...

By the end of the Summer of 1968 my dreams of becoming a doctor had been replaced by thoughts of pursuing a music career or continuing to do social work in New York City. After talking with my dad I decided to return to the University of Washington for my senior year. I had no idea at the time that I before the year was out I would be dropping out of college to become a member of The Brothers Four...

The Summer of 1968 opened up new worlds to me and for me. My three college friends and I represented the University of Washington in a national talent show. We got to the semi-finals where we competed against the Carpenters who were representing Long Beach State in their first exposure to a national audience. For the first time in my life I could begin to imagine music as a possible career path.&n...

My two monumental experiences of the Summer of 1968 were connected by a flight from Hamilton, Bermuda where I had just spent a week singing for a group of kids from Manhattan's Lower East Side to Los Angeles where my college friends and I then competed in the semifinals of Your All-American College Show. On one hand doing work that felt like it made a difference, on the other singing with my frien...

In the Summer of 1968 I went back to New York City to do social work. On some level at 21 years old I wanted to do what I could to change the world. Though the world did not change much that summer my life was forever changed and before the year was out going in a direction I never could have imagined.  Early in my time in New York I asked a new roommate and friend if he had any advice on wha...

Albert Einstein famously said that "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." 1968 was a year when the unimaginable came alive for our country and for me personally. For me, prior to 1968 a life different from one I had known was unimaginable. By the end of the summer of 1968 the world I could imagine and lived had grown exponentially. Th...

For me there is something special about putting new memories on top of precious old ones. Something about music that can transport and transform us. As I write this it was more than 55 years since the four of us - John Buller, Mike Dwyer, Mike McCoy and I - made our one recording in the Big Room of the Phi Gamma Delta next to the campus of the University of Washington. More than a year since we we...

It was something special to go back with three guys who became lifetime friends to where we met and sing again the songs we sang when we were just getting to know each other. To do it this time with family there as well, and to sing songs that have meant a lot through the years made the going back even more meaningful. Also, here's a link to the Blogpost of John Buller singing Desperado with Linds...

A lot of times it's hard for me to know how to tell someone how much I care for them. It's easier sometimes to sit down with a pen and paper and put those thoughts into a letter. Once I've done that then some part of that letter might inspire a song idea. That is what happened when I wanted to tell John how much he has meant to me for all of these years. It was good to share the letter and the son...

As I get closer to the end of my career, I appreciate even more where and how it all began. In December of 1967 the three guys I sang with in college - Mike McCoy, John Buller, Mike Dwyer, and I made our one recording in the Big Room of the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity just off the University of Washington campus. In December of 2022 we came back to the Big Room, this time with family there to witne...

It is special to go back to places that hold precious memories. To return with the people who were there when those memories were made and make some more. In December of 1967 Mike Dwyer, John Buller, Mike McCoy and I recorded some songs at our college fraternity. Fifty-five years later we came back and did it again. This time our families were also a part of it.  It mattered that we were sing...

So much of life appears to come down to choice and chance and circumstance. It was a choice and chance that let me return to my high school and sing for my classmates 60 years after singing for them the first time. It was choice and chance that let Pat and me return to Spokane to honor my parents' lives 25 years after my dad died and 100 years after my mom was born. It was circumstance that brough...

For our last stop we returned to the river. To a place our family visited regularly when we first moved to Spokane. There is a suspension bridge there that crosses the river. Pat and I stayed on one side. My parents' passage to the other side now complete.  I shared a letter and a song with Pat as the two of got ready to return to our "normal" lives. It was an important and satisfying couple...

Pat and I left the river and went to the cemetery. It was beginning to rain. After bringing roses to my dad's grave with my mom for more than twenty years it is still a bit strange to see both of their names etched into the dark granite of their shared headstone. Still there is comfort in thinking of their spirits united now. They were each strong individuals in their own right who truly did becom...

My dad died on May 28, 1997. My mother turned 75 the next day. For more than twenty years on the 28th we celebrated my dad's whole life and his dying day. The next day we would celebrate my mom's birth and life. With both of them gone in 2022 we celebrated both their lives on the 28th and then on the 29th celebrated who and what they had become. Part of a Bigger Story, Part of a Timeless Song. Var...

There was a natural progression of places Pat and I visited as we honored my parents' lives. We started with places that represented the lives they had lived. The places they'd lived and worked and worshipped and raised their family. Then we visited gardens that they visited that also represent the cycles and seasons of life. Those gardens offered a transition from who had they had been in life to...

There is a saying out there that "we are as sick as our secrets." As someone who grew up in a family with a secret - in this case that my dad had been in a mental institution when I was born - I accept the truth of that idea. The family secret was unexpectedly revealed at my dad's memorial. That revelation freed me to shine a light into dark corners and to find words for what had long been surroun...

It was challenging yet important to visit places my folks lived and worked and worshipped and raised their family.   The people who now live in the house I grew up in weren’t home. We gave the neighbor our information and explanation of what we were doing. My dad’s office had been torn down so we stood on the corner where it used to be before singing and talking about it at a picnic tabl...

On May 28, 2022 it was 25 years since my dad died. The next day would have been my mother's 100th birthday. Two important days for Pat and me to be in Spokane to celebrate my parents' lives and the roles they continue to play. Pat and I began by visiting places they lived and worked and worshipped and raised their family. We then visited various gardens and celebrated their continued connection to...

It was something special to return to my high school. To sing once more for my classmates, to do it in the auditorium where I first performed sixty years earlier; adding new memories to some very special old ones.  Part of the joy came in writing special songs for specific individuals and introducing them that day.  In many ways our lives are mosaics or tapestries of experiences, of our...

After singing songs for my classmates I began to talk about my experiences in high school. I laughed as I told them that my high school experience might be summed up in four words. God, Music, Girls, and Football. Then I became a little more serious and explained that not that much had changed except the words I would use are Faith, Hope, Love, and Family. Then I sang a song with that as the title...

This Episode contains more songs for classmates. "Offering and Receiving Grace" was written for my classmate, Bev. When she was in high school she loved to run. It was the early 60's and the boys were intimated by her. Instead of fessing up to our insecurities we teased her. After high school I lost touch with her. Eventually I realized that I both needed and wanted to apologize to her, but I didn...

This Episode contains more songs written for individual classmates. "Trunk Up in the Attic" was written for my classmate Clarice Wilsey. Her physician father helped liberate the Dachau extermination camp at the end of World War Two. During those trying days at Dachau Dr. Wilsey wrote a number of letters home to his wife. After the war the letters were locked away in a trunk in the attic of th...

In MORE SONGS AND STORIES FROM HOME Mark Pearson shares a belief that we are all in this together, more alike than different, capable of finding common ground in the stories we share and the songs we sing together.  In this first series of Podcasts, CLASS OF 65, Pearson returns to the high school auditorium where 60 years earlier he performed for the first time. Six decades later a musical re...

In MORE SONGS AND STORIES FROM HOME Mark Pearson shares a belief that we are all in this together, more alike than different, capable of finding common ground in the stories we share and the songs we sing together.  In this first series of Podcasts, CLASS OF 65, Pearson returns to the high school auditorium where 60 years earlier he performed for the first time. Six decades later a musical re...