Topic: Music

Author: Chris Dunn

Christmas time always meant driving. We’d pile in the car to visit Uncle Bobby and Aunt Glenda. We’d drive to pick the largest tree we could afford, strap it to the roof, then watch dad cuss up a storm trying to put together the tree stand. We’d drive all over the neighborhood and the nicer neighborhoods searching for the best Christmas displays. We’d drive Uncle Ed and Aunt Lee’s on Christmas morning, leaving all our gifts from Santa sitting barely touched, the sheen of anticipation still clinging to them.  And everywhere we drove, we would sing.

I don’t know if every family did this, I always assumed growing up that my family was normal, but as the years compound the evidence, I find there are many activities we engaged in which were well outside the norm. For example, we would sing Christmas carols in the car to pass the time as a group. Each member of the family would have a turn and get to pick a song, and then we’d all merrily join our voices together. Dad’s deep sonorous baritone, mom often providing the harmony, and all three of us kids belting out as best we could from the back seat. As students in catholic school, we all sang in church and what we might have lacked in training, we made up for with enthusiasm.

We kids would mostly choose songs about Rudolph and Frosty, or a church song we knew like Hark the Herald Angels Sing or Oh, Come All Ye Faithful, while our parents would typically stick to songs from their work in the church choir. Occasionally my dad would pick a song I didn’t know. One of my least favorites was a song called, Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming. I don’t know if you know this song, but is so NOT, Here Comes Santa Claus. I would sulk in the back groaning in protest while mom and dad took their turn with it. But by and large, we all sang together, and the many miles of holiday driving melted into a musical montage.

Then, a teenager happened, and it was me. Around 11 or 12, I started being too old for the kid’s songs and too cool for the church songs and too awkward to trust my own voice. The singing would still go on, but I found myself sitting in the back trying not to listen and hoping we could just get to our destination already. It was the same songs every trip - in practically the same order, and the same songs as last year, and the year before that. I was so over and above it all, or so I pretended to be. The real reason, of course, was that I could no longer trust my voice. It didn’t sound right even to me, and when I did sing, my mother would comment, “Oh, your voice sounds so different. Everybody listen, Chris’ voice is changing.” Better not to be heard at all than to be the object of such acute observation.

And so, I went for years in silence. Listening as my very musical family continued to sing it up every chance they got. If you’ve ever been to a Dunn family birthday, you’ll find our rendition of the birthday song second to none. Carols in the car faded as the family grew older, but there were still plenty of opportunities for song. My parents continued to sing in the choir for years, and my sister, Bridgid, had voice lessons in the living room and took her amazing talent to State Fairs and school musicals.

But not for me, I couldn’t sing. I still loved music, and once I eventually learned to drive, I found that belting out songs in the car was just as fun in the front seat as it had been in the back, just as long as no passengers were around to hear it. I toiled in obscurity this way for twenty years. Until the day I found Rock Band.

Let me explain… First there was Guitar Hero, which let people play out their air guitar fantasies to a small list of hits on a plastic vertical version of a game we used to call, back in my day, Simon. Follow the colors on screen, hit the notes in time and the crowd would cheer. Very engaging!  A brief craze followed, and part of that video game genre, was a game called Rock Band. Which took things to the next level, a drum machine and bass were added to the mix and even a microphone for vocals. You could get together with your friends and pretend to be rockstars. Of course, each song someone had to take a turn on the mic.

We were all down at Curtis’. My turn at the drums had passed, and I wanted to move things along, so I could get back to try them again as soon as possible, so I downed another beer and volunteered to try singing, and to my great surprise, I was good, better than any of my friends. I was soon upping the difficulty to medium and then hard and still the meter belied my greatest fears. I was no longer that awkward teenager, and like most in my family, I could carry a tune. People had told me over the years, “Chris your voice is alright.” Or “No, really you sing fine.” But I had never believed it. It took science to convince me. That was 11 years ago, and I’m still playing this game. I have over 2000 songs in every genre of music and I can sing them all. My score is in the top 20 out of thousands of players. I’m a singer, like my mother and father before me. At least in the privacy of my own home.