Reply To: Thank You to Our Community

[LinkedMusicians]

On jude77 said

Peter, you, and a handful of deeply devoted folks, have built this page from zero.  I, along with many others, deeply appreciate you and what you’ve done.  FWIW this is usually my first stop on the ‘net each day.  It’s always a good way to start things off.

Give yourself credit. I built the initial site on my own — mostly turning to my son and daughter for input — and then the next person I turned to the most was GregJazz. As I soon had Bell’s Palsy and had my left eye constantly twitching when I worked and half of my face paralyzed, I saw building this site as a challenge, as about perseverance. So my family’s encouragement is something I really want to acknowledge (they just don’t come to the site unless I’m showing them something!). But it’s like I built an instrument. It really only came to life when someone came along and played it with skill and emotion.

That is what you and everyone else here have done. They made this all come to life. That’s the most important part of the story, what it became and is still becoming. We only opened this to the public, in, I think April of this year and we’ve grown to what — based on what is publicly known and shown — is likely more than 10x the community most of us met at. I like what Jorge wrote, using the metaphor of planting a seed.

I think of it like when I was a young working musician. I would play clubs, colleges, fests, and various venues with different bands (I got to know agents and would work in some bands regularly and fill in for other drummers in other bands). I would take all the work I could get, because I loved to play. In college, I met a horn player (trombone) pursuing a master’s in music (he passed away earlier this year; he eventually taught jazz performance at Purdue University and was a school band director). He told me that he had a gig coming up and his drummer refused to play it because it didn’t pay. It was a fundraiser for an 11 yr old boy with cancer. So, I started doing fundraiser gigs. It felt great to do something meaningful and combine my love of playing music. And then on Sunday afternoons, I would invite musicians I got to know from all of that playing for jam sessions where we could perform music we loved that we weren’t able to play professionally. The jam sessions might run from 2PM to 10PM — and I’d only stop them due to noise ordinances.

I look at LinkedMusicians a lot like I look at my organizing those jam sessions back in the day. I supplied the place, I sometimes even bought the pizza, but it took the musicians coming and playing — all of us playing together — to make it special. It’s the same here. I was happy just to be a part of it all. I mostly would play drums, but sometimes jumped on piano or organ, depending on whether or not someone else could play drums. But my joy was in playing with talented, inspiring musicians. So, much like those Sunday jam sessions I organized, I’ll take credit for starting and guiding this place. Managing digital — website, advertising, email, search, etc. and then starting a small dot com of my own — is my career. So, I have the skills and experience to lead this. But that’s not what makes it special. It takes ALL OF US to bring it to life and make it special. It takes you being here. So thank you for being a part of this.

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