By: Ken Boone I started my weekly blog posts in late February 2019. I decided to name it “From Grievance to Gratitude,” which is what I eventually named my weekly podcasts. Not knowing if I would have enough content for a years’ worth of blog posts and podcasts, I started writing anyway. Every week, with the help of my wife, Celia, I met my deadline with a blog post that was clever, revealing, and honest, if I say so myself. I’d never worked with an editor and was surprised that I wasn’t territorial when it came my writing. Those who read it seemed to like it. Initially, the only problem I had was with the title. It seemed that at first draft, there were typically three paragraphs of grievances for every paragraph of gratitude. Things seemed to reach a point of great frustration until about 4 months into the blog posting. I started getting well. I noticed that I had fewer negative things to write about than when I first started writing. I covered everything from my childhood, to my various jobs, to my nearly 30 years as a parent. Just about every blog post started with the setup, in which I shared a perceived slight of some kind. Just as frequently, I’d hit a point in the story when realize that I may have contributed to my woes. Even when I wasn’t at fault, I found a life lesson buried somewhere in the blog. Now, we are 6 months into this thing and I’m still enjoying myself. I love it when friends tell me how much they enjoy my writing style. I especially like it when one of the stories takes them back to a time of great joy in their youth. Last week, Celia, our friend Becky Oliver and I created a Facebook group page. Among our initial invitees are several very good writers, musicians, and public speakers. The administrators and moderators of this page invite you to submit a guest blog post, 600 – 1000 words in length. We are open to varied topics, as long as they are positive or inspiring. As the group grows, I’ll be asking for some submissions to our podcast catalog, and ultimately, our music library. So, stay tuned and thanks for joining us! But wait... there's more!
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By: Ken Boone After last week’s blog post, I sat down to write another one listing more examples of things for which I’m grateful. But, there’s a problem with most self-help tools out there: Many of us tend to quickly minimize the negatives (grievances) and move toward pleasure (gratitude). There will be other gratitude lists in the future. They are fun to do and are never exhaustive. I’d like to take this time to thank Celia and her support system for keeping that recovery tool front of mind. I remember when I was a 15-year-old struggling student and fledgling musician. I would race home on Fridays because my family observed the high holy part of our religion from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. I used to enter “the Sabbath” with great resentment, but by the time I was 15, I had about 10 years of it under my belt and had developed a few coping skills. Sure, I couldn’t watch TV on Saturdays until sunset, but my need for television entertainment was replaced by Family Radio. What’s that? It’s a small network of Christian radio stations modeled after NPR. They featured several local and syndicated DJs spinning all types of Christian music, from choir to contemporary. I wanted to own my own Family Radio network! I also longed to own a record label equivalent to Ralph Carmichael’s Light Records. I dreamed of producing dramatic content in the mold of “Unshackled,” a syndicated show styled after soap operas from the 1940s, which told the stories of people who turned their lives around. It was like an AA discussion meeting on super steroids. I was a teenager, so I wasn’t consumed by blind jealousy. However, I knew that those dreams were quite ambitious, so I only shared them with a small number of people. My mom and stepfather weren’t too dismissive of my ideas because they had a lot to do with church. As my godmother so eloquently put it, “at least it beats selling drugs on the street corner.” You had to know Aunt Rose to see that what she said was funny. As time marched on, I got more involved in the performance aspects of Christian music. While I enjoyed that, I still had a secret plan to make the switch from artist to executive. The plan didn’t work out at the time. You know, the old barrier of entry thing. Also, I was a little weak on the planning and execution back then. I found out that there wasn’t a Family Radio outlet near Celia’s childhood home. I think she would have really enjoyed it, and had she experienced those shows, it could have helped our musical shorthand. As we move to current times, a lot of cool things are happening. The costs for doing things, like recording (podcasts) and music production have fallen drastically. In fact, they’re free, if you get creative. Celia and I are at a very comfortable at our price point. We just published our 50th podcast episode! Before you know it, we will have produced over 100 episodes, 50 music tracks, and whatever else we feel called to do. Our latest, and most complexed podcast show to date, “Songs from the Journey,” has two episodes published and is receiving positive feedback. It reminds me a lot of the old Family Radio show “Unshackled.” We don’t use actor portrayals or the classic soap opera organ soundtrack, but we embrace the energy of those shows. We’ve made sure of that! To my delight, the “Unshackled” producers still record live episodes every Saturday at 4:30pm at the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, IL. To date, they have nearly 3,600 episodes in the can! But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone It’s hard to believe that this marks the 25th weekly “From Grievance to Gratitude” blog post. That’s a half of a year on your typical business calendar. To tell the truth, I would have been happy with ten weekly posts. So to mark the occasion, I’ll 25 things for which I’m grateful. Any grievances will take the form of a gratitude for this week only. Whenever I hit a predetermined milestone, I treat myself to a celebratory hot dog from the Quick Trip convenience store near our local Concord Mills Mall. That’s not so strange coming from someone who prefers his premium cup of coffee from the corner Circle K gas station. Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. I’ll have to pick someplace really special to mark this event.
Take gentle care, Ken But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone It’s Wednesday, September 19, 2001 and I’m sitting at my desk after a week of terror and uncertainty. The nation was still numb from the tragic events of 09/11, so we were literally going through the motions. I happened to be living in New York City, commuting to work in Central New Jersey by bus. I can still remember the audible gasps coming from the passengers each we approached the Lincoln Tunnel toll booths. You see, that’s about where we’d typically get our first glance of the Twin Towers. Now, it appears as though someone took a giant eraser and made them go away. Back at my desk, I started reading my emails when I noticed one from the Edison Midtown Little League. The message said that President George W. Bush wanted the youth baseball players of America to help lead the country back to normalcy. He wanted us to resume playing Fall Ball on Saturday, September 22, 2001! As the coach of one of the teams in the Edison league, all that was required of me was to be there ready to coach anyone they put in my dugout. There were still a number of parents who were not willing to allow their sons and/or daughters to socialize just yet. I was fortunate in that all of my parents and players were chomping at the bit to get back on the field. We arrived at the complex at 8:30am Saturday morning to find the outfield fences draped in red, white, and blue buntings. The dugouts had American flags on each end. And if I’m not mistaken, everything at the snack stand was free! The resonant voice coming from the P.A. system kept welcoming us to America’s pastime. All that was missing was the apple pie. I’m sure there were dozens of Chevrolets in the parking lot, and the hot dogs were free. A sense of excitement took over the complex as we stood to sing the National Anthem. And I think just about everyone there sang the hearts out! We played four games that day. I had the honor of coaching more than half of the kids that showed up. Those kids were gung ho to play. Most of them were on the rosters of teams that needed a bit more recovery time. Who could blame them. Our guys welcomed them with open arms and a lot of new friendships were formed. Coaching those kids that day was the second most important event of my marginally successful youth coaching career. Number one, by far, was when I signed my son up to play baseball in the first place. My reason wasn’t because I thought I had the next kid who one day would grace a Wheaties box. I was in desperate need of putting him in an environment that would help socialize him. A little over two years earlier, I was sitting in yet another emergency parent-teacher conference. Once more, I had to take time off from work to hear that my son, my name-sake, was suffering from oppositional defiance disorder. While he was, and is, extremely stubborn, didn’t they have enough experience to realize that this kid was a pawn in a nasty game of tug-of-war between his parents? The “professionals” at the table all chimed in with different possible remedies for this situation. One suggested putting him in a special school, while another suggested medicating him. While being forced to face the fact that they deemed him more trouble than it was worth, I’d been to enough of these sessions to know that, by law, I would be offered a chance to rebut. I had to think of something really fast, or they were going to railroad him into “the system.” “So, Mr. Boone, what would you suggest we do with your son?” The woman who asked me that question was a well-meaning, but overworked public servant who seemed to generally care about her students. Not trying to be a smartass, I adjusted my tone and said that they didn’t have to do anything with my son. I stuck my chest out and said, “I got this. I’m signing him up for Little League”! That bought me a little time, and boy did it pay off. He took to the sport like a duck to water! His fierce competitive streak was fine tuned there. He learned all of the life lessons that are buried in the rules of baseball. And he had fun. Even though his first team had a record of 1 win and 15 losses, he was ready to get out on the field for another game. Even though he was a victim of Daddy Ball, he kept practicing, playing, and leaving rivals in his rear view mirror. By the time we played that quadruple-header on Saturday, September 22, 2001, Kenny was one of the elite 11-year-old players in Central New Jersey. What’s more important is he was one of the most popular kids as well. To this day, many of those players are Facebook friends with him! I know that because from time to time, I get a friend request from one of them, asking “How’s it going, Coach Ken? I'm now coaching myself. Thanks for the life lessons and teaching me that winning isn't everything, but it's not a bad thing either!” But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone In many of my earlier blog posts, I referenced my time in musical purgatory. That was the period between 1987 and 2010. Neither I nor my music was welcome in the places that I used to call home. I couldn’t get near a stage to perform any of my stuff. In other words, I was toxic! As lonely and isolated as I felt during those 20+ years, I came out of it realizing that I was living a lie. It dawned on me that I was really an introvert whose external gregarious behavior was part of an act. I’m not a shy person, but more often than not, I prefer to keep my own counsel. My son was born in 1990, changing the trajectory of my life. I’d always been considered a fantastic uncle, but now the complete task of rearing a child fell on my shoulders. So I taught him everything I knew. There were things I didn’t know that should be passed down, so I had to learn that stuff. By the time the bulk of the training was done, it seemed like the only things I taught him how to do was tie his shoes, eat with a fork, and play baseball. I felt like a complete failure. Sure, I exposed my son to music along the way. I bought him a couple of guitars that are still playable today. I even arranged for him to get a couple of private lessons from my brother. However, the music fundamentals he was taught didn’t appear to stick. Why couldn’t I teach him anything? It made me feel that I wasn’t even a good musician. Using hindsight to assess the extended period I was away from music, I realized I was using the time to enter a monk-like, deep study period of musical immersion. It was like my initial studies, only much more intense. Although my musical journey started when I was seven years old, I was 15 when music played in an endless loop in my brain. That was when my friend and earliest partner in crime, Fred Odom let me hear the “Andrae’ Crouch and the Disciples Live at Carnegie Hall” album. It literally changed my life! I, like thousands of wannabes said… “hey, I can do that!” What attracted me to his style of gospel music was the fact that he didn’t shove the elements of that genre down your throat. The music I attempted to do prior to Andrae’s was pure, unadulterated gospel. I prefer my musical seasonings to be more subtle. If Fred hadn’t played that Crouch album for me when he did, I might have lasted maybe five more years, and I never would have played keyboards at all. So, thanks Fred, for extending this thing another 45+ years! Although I didn’t play any music during that 1987 – 2010 period, I sure as hell listened to a lot of it. And more than you would expect from someone who hails from East Harlem, NY, if you get my drift. I also took a couple of music electives when I finally decided to complete my college studies. I emerged from that perceived period of darkness knowing two facts: 1. I am and always was a musician 2. If I can’t pick up a subtle taste of gospel in the music I hear, I’ll keep moving on. My son no longer plays baseball, but music is now an integral part of his life. His interests fall more on the production side of things. He can engineer and mix tracks. He creates beats, and knows enough theory to be dangerous. And if you ask him nicely, he can DJ your next event. I couldn’t be prouder of him. He doesn’t do gospel, but he can pick out the elements with great ease. He’s a really good father and is raising my granddaughter by himself. His daughter has a passion for ballet, so it looks like we are adding another ingredient to the gumbo! But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone One of my all-time favorite musicians was the late, great James Brown. My mom told me I wasn’t allowed to listen to his music, but thanks to my Aunt Sarah and my friends in Franklin Plaza, I wasn’t left in the dark. In his classic hit, “Sex Machine”, the Godfather of Soul would suggest to the band that they “hit it and quit” when the song was nearing the end. My absolute favorite musician, my wife Celia, has a more elegant way of describing it. She calls it “landing the plane.” In previous blog posts and podcasts, the narrative would constantly return to a particular church. So much so that sometimes I feel as though I’m obsessed with them. To a degree I am. What’s more important is the drama that Celia and I avoided by walking away from them. For this post, I decided to put myself in their shoes. The first thing we noticed when we walked into the sanctuary was the stage. In fact, that’s what our eyes are drawn to the first time we enter any church. While it wasn’t large, it had a grand appearance. Light oak wood floor planks, moldings on the walls and recessed lighting were just some of the things that impressed us. What really jumped out at us was the music-making equipment. A shiny black Yamaha baby grand piano, accompanied by a guitar and bass amplifier perfectly framed the item I never thought I’d see in a church of this denomination: An electronic drum kit! I thought to myself that we finally won the war. It turns out that we haven’t, but I’ll write more about that in a later blog. One of the greeters shook our hands and invited us to go to the community room for a continental breakfast. We thought that was a nice gesture, so we took them up on their offer. That’s when my nose picked up the scent of coffee, not Postum! Not only did we win the war, it seemed like we were running up the score! Breakfast was interesting. Sitting at a long table, we met a number of people who told us that they, like us, were in recovery from various forms of spiritual abuse. Yellow flags went up because Celia and I don’t take that lightly, yet these people seemed to wear it like a badge of honor. The service started when the band members ambled up and took their places on stage. The songs were performed pretty well, only they lacked decent intros and outros. They pretty much just stopped the songs when they were done, or so it seemed. Some of this is rehashing what I’d written in a previous blog post or recorded in an earlier podcast episode. I’ve already said on numerous occasions how they blew us off after we were asked to help. After carrying resentment towards a few of them for several years, I finally got around to considering why we accepted their plea for help, and then were rebuffed by a few others. Now think I understand why. Several years ago, the core members of this church were part of an energetic congregation meeting across town. They were a happy group of people who, while good Christians, didn’t necessarily buy into all of the unnecessary “thou shall nots.” They had a group of great musicians who consistently made a joyful noise. Celia sat in with them frequently. Because the governing conference thought that this group wasn’t as obedient as they would have liked, the conference infiltrated the church with a number of short-sighted malcontents. The fallout was inevitable. Details are not important, because this sort of thing happens everywhere. Their fortunes took a turn for the worst. Several key members who decided they weren’t willing to deal with the drama decided to vote with their feet, taking their sizable contributions with them. It got so bad that the remaining members were forced to sell the church property and rent a small chapel in another church with poor amenities where parents were warned not to let their children eat the peeling paint chips. It was in that purgatory that they started drinking coffee and playing drums. It was also during that time a new leader emerged. Out of necessity, he took over the running of many of the departments. He became the “Church Boss”. He even reluctantly took over the music department, because the most qualified musician had a lazy streak. In fact, she would constantly call Celia to sit in with the band while she went out of town with her husband who worked for the conference. Celia would comply until she found out that the out of town trips (which were made to sound like church business) were actually weekends at a nearby lake. As the congregation regained its footing, they became very territorial. They would quickly vanquish any potential trouble makers before the situation became untenable. This was particularly true when it came to their music. So it should have come as no surprise to Celia and me that our sheer presence would be greeted with indifference at best or resentment and fear at its worst. Because this wasn’t our first rodeo, we kept a safe distance and only helped when asked. Playing and singing for the more traditional late service, we applied our touch to the music and made a big impact. However, drama creeps in even when things appear to be going well. This time, the good guys became the aggressors and pushed the traditional service crowd out the door, forcing them to start over again in a rented school auditorium. Now it seems both congregations are struggling just to survive. As I said several times before on a few different platforms, I have a resentment against them that I’m working my way through. Our intentions were badly misread. They may have thought that we would work our way in, then stage a coup and try to take over. We clearly stated that we were called to take our ministry of music, hope and encouragement to the next level, which involved traveling to other churches on weekends. While we were honing our act, we simply wanted to help them arrange some of their repertoire and help them learn how to take off and land the plane. Nothing more, nothing less. I honestly respect their devotion to their church, and their desire to protect it at all costs. But sometimes people actually do mean what they say. All we wanted to do, all we were asked to do, was to help them. Their church boss does not know music well enough to teach the band how to arrange their songs. Celia and I have 80 years of church music ministry experience between the two of us and are pretty darn good at coming up with intros and outros. Sometimes help doesn’t feel like help, but many times, it does. When good musicians are willing to help struggling ones, it’s pretty short-sighted to treat them badly. I just hope that the next time we hear them, I hope they can least hit it and quit! Not as elegant, but effective still! But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone I must have been out of my mind to completely uproot my life at that particular time. Who buys a house during what many have called the worst recession since the Great Depression? Who sends out their resume’ into the marketplace when companies are announcing mass layoffs every week? That would be me. I can’t believe that it was ten years ago today that I pulled out of the driveway of my house in Pittsford, NY to make the 10-hour drive to my new home in Huntersville, NC. I had come here 3 months before to check the place out, fell in love and didn’t want to leave. As my wife says, I got here as soon as I could. It’s been 10 years since the day I got a large appliance delivery from Lowe’s. One of the gentlemen noticed my Northeast accent and asked where I’m from. I listed all the cities and towns in New York and New Jersey that I had called home. I didn’t tell him that the longest I’d stayed in any one place, not including my childhood home, was about four years. He wanted to help this newcomer get acclimated to the area. He told me where I could find nearby supermarkets, gas stations, and fast food restaurants. He told me his sister lives in my development. I had forgotten about that when, three years later, a very nice lady introduced herself as the sister of the guy who delivered my kitchen appliances. My first year in North Carolina, my son used to send me texts almost daily. He would teasingly ask me if the roads were paved and if we had electricity and running water? I laughed it off and held my fire until winter when I sent him pictures of people walking in my neighborhood wearing tee shirts. He cursed and sent me a picture of his car covered with two feet of snow! I remember going online to get directions to the stores and businesses that my Lowe’s hero didn’t include in his list. It wasn’t until I moved the stack of printed directions into a binder that I realized most of the establishments were across the street or around the corner from each other. I made it through the rest of 2009 with some manageable drama that I won’t get into here. 2010 ended up being an eventful year. Things occurred in this order: 1. The drama in my life went away 2. My son moved down here. He has since continued south, ending up in Atlanta. 3. I adopted a beautiful half lab, half pointer named Britney, my faithful companion until… 4. I met Celia, who captured Britney’s heart just like she had mine, and… 5. Facilitated my return to music! In the last 10 years, I’ve made a lot of friends, mostly through Celia. We spent a lot of time in Asheville, NC, a city that I always wanted to visit. We even played at a wedding and reception on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate! I’ve seen the Metro Charlotte area arise from the economic recession that greeted my arrival. There is a lot of new construction happening. As a former resident of NYC, that didn’t bother me much, until I learned that a lot of wildlife, such as coyotes, bobcats, and deer have been displaced from their habitat. I’m just glad I’ve yet to see any of them, or I would have already packed my bags. Save them for the Animal Planet network! I’ve been here many times longer than any other place I’ve lived other than my childhood home. When I lived in the north, I liked to visit new housing developments, walk through the model homes, collect floor plans, and drive myself crazy wishing one of them was my new home. Fast forward to now. Anytime Celia and I see a new housing development going up nearby, the accountants in us come out. Instead of dreaming about buying one of the homes, we estimate the rise in the value of our house. That’s what people do when they’ve established roots. As much as we may dream of walking through those new homes, we can’t because we’re just so busy. We’re still masquerading as busy accountants, but now, we have carved out enough time to make more music! But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone On the day that this blog post is scheduled to publish, my wife Celia, is scheduled to undergo hip replacement surgery. In order to keep things simple, my plan is to publish this post one day early. For those so inclined, please breathe a prayer for a successful procedure and full recovery. The following Monday (07/15/2019), marks ten years since I moved to Huntersville, NC. I’ll devote a substantial portion of that blog post to my reflections on the move and the subsequent good fortune I found down here. Not necessarily financial good fortune, but a much happier, better quality of life. The internet has played a big part in my life these past ten years. Early January 2009 was a time when my unhappiness was at one of its highest levels in many years. Although I lived in the upscale town of Pittsford, NY, near Rochester, I had a job I didn’t want and apparently the feeling was mutual. My son hung up his spikes for the last time, meaning no more baseball games for him and no more social life for me. Of upmost importance was the fact that it had been well over twenty years since I last made music. Music is in my bone marrow. It flows inside of me, but it hadn’t flowed out of me for far too long. I needed to make a clean break from that life, so I turned to "House Hunters" on HGTV and the internet to find a new home. It only took a few weeks to decide on Charlotte, NC. It was through the internet that I found the suburb, neighborhood, and my perfect house, in which I’m sitting as I write this blog. After moving here, I relied on the internet to get directions to my favorite stores whose employees now know me. The internet is where I found my dog, who was supposed to be a birthday present for my son but ended up being a faithful companion to Celia and me. Speaking of Celia, it was on the internet where I found the love of my life! I’d heard that online dating was becoming a reliable way to find like-minded people. These apps are nothing short of amazing. You still must remember the acronym GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) when using dating apps, but by the time I joined a site, many people had met their soul mates online and had married them. Celia and I like to tell people that we met at the Billy Graham Library here in Charlotte. It’s not true, but it sounds more socially acceptable than “we met online.” When I finished putting in the parameters of what I was looking for in a woman, pressed the enter key and her picture appeared immediately on my computer screen. What a beautiful woman! I figured she was totally out of my league. Her cover portrait was taken in front of a beautiful stained-glass window, making her look angelic. Her profile said that she was a musician. She didn’t include a link to SoundCloud on her profile, but I could tell that she was good. She looked the part. I think I looked at her profile for about a month, trying to work up the courage to send her a message or a wink. One Friday, I got a notice from the website that someone included me in their favorites. Ever the Curious George, but with low expectations, I clicked on the link to see who it was. I was blown away when it turned out to be that beautiful woman standing in front of the stained-glass window. What followed was a flurry of emails until we met two days later at a local Starbucks. Several hours into our first date, we got kicked out because it was well past closing time. Well before we left Starbucks, we realized that we would never be apart! We had so much in common it was kind of weird. Topping the list was the fact that we were both musicians masquerading as accountants. We like that line so much, we use it in our promotional materials. Getting married exactly one year to the day we met reinforced our love for, and commitment to each other! Now you’ve all heard the saying that opposites attract. So have we. While I never doubted that we would always stay together, I sometimes wondered if all of our similarities would eventually make things stale. So I set about trying to find some opposites to serve as some kind of matrimonial insurance policy. It wasn’t easy, but I found two. The first one is obvious. Celia is a life-long vegetarian and I’m a confirmed carnivore. Finding that out led our conversation down the path of discovering that we were raised in the same ultra-strict religion. We had the same internal conflicts with that denomination. We affirmed each other’s doubts and made it safe for each other to explore those issues and figure out what we believe and why. Better yet, we chose to go down that path together. Another opposite is this: We don’t perceive beaches and oceans the same way. Celia loves walking on the beach. She finds it peaceful and the ocean breezes blow the crud out of her spirit. The potential for tsunamis scares the shit of me. The sheer power and sound of the ocean is intimidating. And this is someone who not only got used to the sound of emergency vehicle sirens, I used them as a lullaby. I’m definitely New York City born and raised! After Celia recovers from her surgery, we will get another dog. Not as a replacement for our beloved Britney, who went to the Rainbow Bridge last fall, but another rescue dog who can bring the same love, loyalty, and protection that Britney gave to us. With so much in common, we’re doomed to fail according to the experts. After 8 ½ years of marital bliss, we say with confidence that the experts are wrong when it comes to us. But I still don’t want to jinx anything. So, I guess I’ll have to find more things that we don’t have in common. That sounds like another job for the internet! But wait... there's more!
By Ken Boone A big televangelism show was coming to our town for a month-long series of meetings. I described the setting in my blog post of April 8, 2019. The arena was booked. The featured speaker was in place. The opening acts were ready to go. The semi trucks filled with audio, video, and satellite gear were all gassed up and to ready make the drive from Illinois. Heck, even the local volunteers were freshly trained and had their marching orders. All that was missing was the pianist. We weren’t planning to attend any of the meetings in that month-long crusade. So we were surprised when Celia got the call from the show’s booker, asking if she was willing to serve as the pianist for the entire month. After carefully considering the offer, she decided to commit to half of the sessions. It didn’t hurt things when they asked her to fill out an IRS Form W-9. Hooray, a paying gig. We are not mercenaries, but we do have highly marketable skills in the area of Christian music and entertainment. We also feel strongly, though, that it’s our decision whether we get compensated or if we are willing to make an in-kind donation of our services. Delicately getting that point across to some people has proven to be challenging. They don’t seem to understand that the local grocery store doesn’t accept a church bulletin with our names printed in it as a payment for our groceries. Opening night had an air of glitz and glamour. The first thing we encountered was the volunteer parking attendants. I remember asking one gentlemen where we could find handicap parking spaces. Although it was announced from every pulpit in the conference that “our very own Celia Boone” would be playing a big role as pianist for a large share of services, we chose not to make a big deal when we arrived at the venue. No valet parking for us, just a spot near the door. In the previous blog post, I told you how calm Celia was when I let her know that all these television shows would be broadcasted live nationwide and livestreamed in 22 countries. Celia had assumed it would be aired sometime in the future. Though she hadn’t performed on television yet, she took it all in stride. I took a seat backstage. It was a packed house, but I could have found a seat in the audience. I like living the entertainment life from behind the curtain. It’s more interesting and it gives me a chance to lend a hand if anyone needs help. On my podcast, I vented about an incident that happened right after Celia’s first performance on this show. While working our way through the crowded lobby, we ran across several familiar faces. Celia was receiving lots of compliments on her music that night. I have to admit she was damn good! But I can say that about her playing every time she hits the stage. Praise doesn’t go to Celia’s head. On the other hand, if someone heaped praise on me, I probably would have asked them when they last had their hearing checked. I get embarrassed and tend to deflect, but I’m hoping one day I’ll be able to accept praise gracefully. We almost made it out the door when we were approached by another couple we knew. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but we were always cordial to one another. After pleasantries were exchanged, the wife rather spitefully announced that Celia was going to get a big head because she played on the big stage and received so many accolades. I was willing to write it off as nervous small talk, except that she repeated herself at least two more times in rapid-fire succession. The drive home was interesting to say the least. That woman’s comments were not going to make Celia retreat into her shell. Nor did her comments make me want to confront her and her husband with a lecture about showing respect to a superior musician. That would have made me “Asshole of the Month”. We did dissect her motivation and concluded that it was another case of “crabs-in-a-barrel” syndrome. And it wasn’t the first time Celia encountered that. I’ve been on the receiving end of it myself a time or two. It was just another episode of “The Hater’s Ball.” Because my mother always told me to try to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before criticizing them, I was able to identify that woman’s issue. Her husband was the featured (and only) male vocalist of a praise band from a local church, and his wife clearly had an inflated assessment of his talent. He had potential, but regularly sang songs that were too high, clearly out of his range and audibly straining his voice. In addition, he had the stage presence of a scared third-grader in a school play. All that said, he and his family would attend that crusade nightly. I swear he was hoping that he would be called on stage to sing, and get discovered. Hater’s Balls have chapter throughout the United States. The local and conference chapters are just petty. The national and global chapters become blood baths. The skullduggery is mind-blowing. Things get so bad that the threat of a denominational split is openly discussed. That lasts until the very next week, when everyone shows up at church. You may see a couple of paltry “protest offerings,” but that only lasts for about a month. I remember an experience I had when I was still living in NYC. I’d taken a paying church gig at a church that featured gospel music. Parts of the engagement required me to direct three choirs and accompany anyone who could wrest the microphone away from the pastor. While that work load, along with the church politics, were a challenge, on balance I had a lot of fun. All was going well until I received an envelope containing a letter from one of the church ladies from my mother’s church. Although I was a baptized member since before my teens, my relationship with the body church was conflicted at best. So I opened that letter with dread. Since this woman was the paid bible worker, her words carried a lot of weight. And the fact that she probably had all the scriptures committed to memory added to her gravitas. Anyway, after her warm salutations, she proceeded to use the rest of her 10-page letter to rip into me about the perils of taking money to play music in church. Especially playing in a church from a competing denomination. She used multiple scripture verses as weapons towards me. I was stunned and hurt by her hypocrisy and sheer cruelty. The pianist for the church choir she directed (the same choir my mother sang in for almost 30 years) had a paying gig at a church of a different denomination. And that’s not the kicker. Her beloved granddaughter was a first-call studio background singer. She appeared on dozens of Grammy-winning tracks from some of the biggest names in R&B. I guess she escaped the slings and arrows because her tithe envelope was fatter than mine. Actually, I don’t know if she got the same unkind treatment I received, but have just assumed she didn’t have to put up with the same kind of criticism and emotional abuse her grandmother inflicted on me. If I ever decide to write a tell-all book, I’ll devote a couple of chapters to all the times I found myself at a Hater’s Ball. As isolated as the haters made me feel at the time, I can honestly look back now with laughter after surviving them. You come to realize that these are people controlled by fear. They are conditioned to feel inadequate and therefore criticize and tear down others as a means of feeling better about themselves. It’s sad, because these people tend to be accomplished, and in some cases, quite enviable. Celia and I still play in church sandboxes from time to time. We do our thing, say our hellos and goodbyes, then head home. Oh yeah, and once in a while we ask them if they want a W-9 form from us or will they be paying us off the books? (I’m joking … sort of.) But wait... there's more!
By: Ken Boone It’s been 25 years since I last attended Franklin Plaza Day, and I can’t make it this year either. However, I told my friend Spoon, one of the event coordinators, that I’d like to make a donation for refreshments. This is where I’m from, and it’s the least I can do for a group of guys who literally saved my life! Franklin Plaza Apartments were a collection of 20 story buildings in the East Harlem section of New York City, on the island of Manhattan. But to us, it was an oasis in the midst of urban crazy. For almost 60 years, it has stood tall, taking on all comers and coming out on top. It has been 38 years since I first ventured out on my own. The first time I came back home was when I was in between apartments in my mid 20s. The next time was when I separated from my first wife. Both times I was warmly greeted by the guys who stayed in the neighborhood. We picked up where we left off, but with kids in tow. When my mother unexpectedly passed away in December 2002, more of my friends from Franklin Plaza showed up at the funeral than did friends from the church I had attended and where my mother was a beloved member for decades. I don’t even know how my Franklin Plaza buddies found out – they just showed up, replete with rib-bruising bear hugs and broad shoulders that readily absorbed tears. I was 5 years old when I got hit with a triple whammy – my parents split, we lost our house in Queens to foreclosure and Mom made us attend a vastly different kind of church, where I had no sense of belonging. The people in that church worshipped on a different day from that to which I was accustomed. They imposed a lot of restrictions on church member’s behaviors. Worst yet, they had an unwritten, yet well-established, pecking order. I reluctantly took my place at the back of the line at the “Thou Shalt Not” church. Franklin Plaza was a new apartment complex, so we were all new kids, and thankfully, there was a strong sense of belonging there for me. That complex seemed to be part of an anthropological experiment to test the nature vs. nurture theory. We were surrounded by public housing projects, tenements that were inhabited by ethnic racial groups who resented being pushed out by urban renewal, and let us know it! We were targeted for harassment by our “neighbors”. We were bullied constantly. All of us except Vee, who became something of a legend because of his rare combination of fearlessness, loyalty, smarts, and humor. He never hesitated to go for it when someone picked a fight. We all looked up to him, even though he was shorter than most of us. I’m Facebook friends with a lot of the guys now. I got dozens of friend requests immediately after Franklin Plaza Day 2018. I don’t who’s passed away since the last time I was there. I think I just want to keep them young in my thoughts. Big Cliff “likes” a lot of my postings on Facebook. He was always that type of guy. He, Smitty, and Pretzel made up the core of the “Big Guys” group. They were a few years older than us, so they got first dibs on the basketball court, leaving us to use the garbage cans as our hoops. Sometimes we got picked to play with the big guys. We were mostly used as placeholders until one of their crew showed up. Big Cliff would even pass the ball to us from time to time. He was clearly a hero to us. As you can see, most of us had nicknames, and most of the nicknames stuck to this day. Since it’s my blogging policy not to name names, my friends are easy to write about. Thank God for policy loopholes. My brother and I had nicknames, although they lacked imagination. He was Big Boone, whereas I was simply known as Little Boone. I’m actually four inches taller than my brother, but who’s counting? We did suffer our share of tragedy and loss. We lost friends to murder, car accidents, drug addiction, and the ravages of unchecked mental illness. But we keep marching on. Forging careers as attorneys, accountants, academicians, musicians, cinematographers, to name a few, the kids from East Harlem have done pretty well in life! I don’t remember when they began to celebrate Franklin Plaza Day. I do remember that it was always held on a Saturday, which was not convenient for me. You see, that was the day that my mother chose for us to worship. Her decision also prevented me from playing in the more influential basketball leagues growing up. There was a neighborhood music program that I couldn’t partake in. The guys didn’t tease us. They would wave to my brother and me as we walked to the bus stop dressed in suits and carrying bibles. When we were younger, the Catholic guys would race out of mass to meet us in the basketball court on Sundays. The Baptists and Pentecostals would get there as soon as they could. Then we would play until our parents chased us upstairs to eat dinner and finish our homework. These guys weren’t like “The Fellas” I referenced in a prior blog post and on my podcast. We came from various parts of New York City. Our pecking order was based on ability, and assholes were shunned. Some of us came from two-parent homes. Some were raised by a single parent. Others were foster kids. Some of us went to church on a day and time when the rest sat down with a second bowl of cereal to watch cartoons. We’d have vigorous debates about everything from Tricky Dick Nixon, to our favorite athlete, comic book hero, or professional wrestler. And we all were very knowledgeable on every topic. But when it came to basketball, no one knew more than Spoon! As I said earlier, I’m not going to be able to make it to Franklin Plaza Day 2019. In fact, I may never attend another one. Not that I don’t want to see the guys, but because I made a vow to myself that I would never return to New York City. There are too many mixed emotions for me there. I will make a donation to go towards refreshments. So when you pour that glass of iced tea, and the pitcher says “sweet tea,” you’ll know it’s Little Boone saying “What’s up, my brother?!?” But wait... there's more!
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About the AuthorAs owner of the Descant Music & Media Group, Ken is a creator and producer of several podcast shows. He is also a music producer, as well as a writer and an accountant for small businesses and nonprofits. Archives
June 2020
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