by: Kyle Vallone
The year 2009 and has been noteworthy for me because this marks the 30th year I have been playing harmonica. As the years have rolled by, the old French Harp (as my kinfolk called it in Tennessee) has been riding in my pocket and making music with me everywhere. Like a fine bottle of wine, the longer you do something you love the better you feel about yourself and the hobby you have. Not that my hobby of playing harmonica has always been smooth sailing.
There have been a few times in my playing career where I have played the harmonica in the wrong key live (oops) or tried to play a song in public that I had practiced and played well in private and then came up short. But those days are few and far between. They are the boulders that I have had to climb over to get where I am today. Where am I today you ask? I would say that with time and experience and practice I am better than I have ever been. Am I good enough to go on tour with Eric Clapton? No! But I do just fine in most playing situations.
The reality of being a harmonica player at this stage of my life is that it is not about aspiring to be one of the great players of all time. It is about the journey of the perfection of the craft. When I say “perfection”, I mean perfection for me to be as good as I can. That is it.
There is nothing more satisfying than sitting in and playing for old friends or around a campfire or on a hilltop looking over a valley and letting the sound sing out. I know that I play a special instrument that traces its history back to the early Americana and is just as relevant today as it was then.
Is this a hobby? Yes it is! Is it a personal obsession? Yes it is! Is it something special that I want to share with the world! Yes it is! Now I am approaching year 31 of pursuing this fantastic hobby and I look around at all of the things that make up this hobby – my old Fender amp and bullet microphone, my first harmonica that I received as a kid, which sits in the display case in the family room with my father-in-law’s chromatic harmonica.
I look at the stacks of old harmonica instructional books I have collected all of these years, every one of them rich with some nugget of musical treasure to fill my life with joy, and my old harmonicas I have collected all of these years!
It is all beautiful and it is all part of this wonderful hobby that has been a lifetime’s passion.
