One of the nice things about managing the local arts council is that I get to meet a lot of interesting musicians.  Musicians are different from normal people in a number of ways, but most musicians are harmless (unless they’re into drugs).  And because musicians do have an unusual perspective on life, musicians frequently find themselves in unusual situations.

Unusual situations are, of course, fodder for some great stories, like that of a guitar player friend from Rapid City. He once went out for ice at 2 a.m. and forgot which room the band was staying in at a motel (it was one of those where all the doors open to the parking lot).  Not wanting to wake people at random trying to find his friends, he ended up sleeping in a tree the rest of the night.

Recently I got an email from another musician friend that tells of an even worse experience, and since it came to me over the Internet I know it must be true.  (After all, everybody knows that everything on the Internet is true.)

This friend (a different friend than the one who slept in the tree) is also a guitarist and plays as many gigs as he can.  And because he is just one of millions of guitar players out there looking for work, making money from his music requires going lots of different places and doing lots of different things (he calls himself a “full service” musician).  As a result he gets a lot of unusual performance opportunities and often has good stories to tell.  But his most recent has got to be one of the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) that I’ve ever heard.

Here’s how it was explained in the email: “The other day I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper’s cemetery in the back country. As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost.

”I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch.

”I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started to play.

”The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I’ve never played before for this homeless man.

”And as I played ‘Amazing Grace,’ the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished I packed up my guitar and started for my car. Though my head hung low, my heart was full.

”As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, ‘I never seen nothin’ like that before and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years.’ “

I’m pretty sure this story really happened because that’s the sort of thing that happens to me every now and then.  And besides, since I got the story over the Internet, it has to be true…