If you feel love today, thank a musician. Without the language of music and poetry, we wouldn't be able to express our intimate feelings. On their own, our words fall drastically short of emotion. Without musicians, there would be nothing to feel.
Musicians are natural empaths. After all, it takes a lot of emotion to write and perform a piece of music. Musicians are huggers. We say "I love you" to all genders without being shy. We wear our hearts on our sleeve, and we continue to intentionally bear our souls for all to inspect.
Today, I am more proud than ever to be an Oklahoma musician, and I'm honored to be a part of this loving and encouraging community. More than any chord progression or solo ever could, it's the strength of character and abundance of love in our local musicians that impresses me every day.
This brings us to today. I've been in tears all day as I read the comments and outpouring of love from the community to our friend and musician Mike Walker and his wife Rachael, that we tragically lost too soon.
One of the biggest values of musicians to society is that they help people mourn. But before we can help others heal, we have to grieve with each other, and that's what happened yesterday morning.
Before a single news story had been published or a social media post had been written about the Walkers, I had cried and grieved with three different musical brothers about the passing of our friend. That's what's so touching to me and so clearly illustrates the abundance of love in the Oklahoma music community, which is tightly knit. All around Oklahoma, musicians were calling their bandmates and grieving together, one after another. Though devastating, it's beautiful to picture the love and care being transmitted over the air and through the cell towers across the state as the news spread.
The most heart-wrenching part of losing a fellow musician is that these people are not just our friends, they are our mentors. They are our heroes! I can't count how many friends of mine posted yesterday about how Mike Walker was their hero in music or in life in general. Mike Walker toured the world, he was a first-call player for any musical genre. He was a hero to all of us. When I told Justin McCullah, my bass player, that I got Mike Walker to play with us, he was astounded and said, "I've heard he's amazing." I replied, "Yeah I feel so unworthy" with a GIF of Garth and Wayne doing an ‘I'm not worthy' bow. Mike Walker was on that level. He was our hero.
I was recording with my musician friend Stephen Schultz yesterday when we got the call about Mike's passing. After a few minutes of stunned silence and pure grief, Stephen moved over to the piano bench and began playing. That's what we do: when we feel the music inside us, we sit down with whatever instrument is in front of us, and in this case it was an out-of-tune piano. This recording is of that moment. There was no intent, just a pure musical moment of reflection. Take a listen.
If you know an Oklahoma musician, tell them you love them today. They love you too, and they just might be the one to write a song that teaches the whole world to love.