In The Beginning

In the beginning was Todd.

Todd was eleven years and seventeen days older than me.
Todd was hanging out with high school friends and getting ready for college by the time I was old enough to remember much about him.

When Todd moved his hometown from Zanesville, Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee I began to know him from my parents' stories, occasional family get-togethers, and mostly his music.  Todd was a song writer, a musician, and it turns out, one well-loved person.

This project - In Search of a Brother - is an effort to better understand the brother that I just lost.  Todd died on March 14th, 2011 in Nashville, TN.  I had seen him, talked with him and hugged him only thirteen days and eight hours before he breathed his last.  At that moment, he looked strong and walked without the cane he had been using.

Our conversation was a fun and informative review of the Benefit/Tribute concert that had just concluded an hour earlier at the Red Rooster Bar & Music Hall (http://nashvillerooster.com).  Margaritaville Mike was a known entity to Todd.  Ty Herndon messed up a few lyrics on No Mercy but had apparently recovered from some interesting events in his past (including a canceled police benefit concert due to him being arrested prior to the concert), and Peter Noone survived a mangled chord change on "Mrs. Brown..."  Todd said that the chord changes on that song are not intuitive and thus easy to mess up.

And so later in the day, on March 1st 2011 I departed Nashville and returned to Rochester, NY to start mixing the videos from the concert and get them posted on You Tube as soon as possible so that Todd could see them (he had not been able to attend the concert himself, but had viewed it through a Skype connection that several of us maintained throughout the night).

As my Dad relayed the news of Todd's deteriorating health, my efforts to mix and upload videos increased.  Todd had checked in to the Alive Hospice (http://alivehospice.org) to better manage his pain. The original idea had been to use it as a day support or overnight support so that Todd could get back to the task of cataloging his "book" - his collection of written songs.  In the end, Todd never saw his home again... after only a few days he never made it out of bed again.

And so my primary response was to keep digging, keep exploring and discovering who my brother was. Who were these people who had taken the time out of their schedules to put together a benefit/tribute concert?  Who were the co-writers that Todd had worked with to create the music in the performances I was video-mixing?  I began to discover the Nashville Music Scene and its web of interconnections and relationships.

When Todd died I had been expecting that I would be returning to Nashville for a March funeral.  When my father called to tell me that Todd had died I learned that we would not be gathering in Nashville... at least not right away.  Todd was being cremated and there would be an "ashes ceremony" later.  Dad and Mom would be returning to Zanesville later in the week (they had been gone for a whole month, helping Todd for two weeks before the concert and the two weeks after when he was in hospice care).

The seed for this project had already been planted and when Kip (Todd's wife) revealed that the ashes ceremony would be held in May on the Flori-bama coast, my sister and I immediately committed to being there.  I knew then that I would do my best to start documenting the pieces of the Nashville Music Scene that I had distantly discovered online (and only briefly encountered first-hand at the concert).  So follow with me as we enter the wonderful world... the frustrating world... of surviving as musicians and song writers in Nashville and the performance venues as widespread as Perdido Key, Florida; Minot, North Dakota; Minsk, Bellarus; Saudi Arabia; and Kristiansaand, Norway.

This is going to be a wild trip.  The key philosophy guiding it comes from the maxim "Show me your friends and I'll show you your future."  In this case, I have flipped and modified it as follows:

Discover his friends; Uncover his life.