A Legacy in a Lay-by

Growing up I took piano lessons and failed miserably. I learned three chords and two scales before all my hopes of musicianship atrophied. I can’t play the piano but giving it a try sparked my love for keyboard-oriented rock music. It started with Keith Emerson and spread to other virtuosos such as Rick Wakeman and Nicky Hopkins. 

I went through the 80s new wave kick and lost a bit of zeal for classic rock before the passion returned around 2000. It was then I discovered a band named Porcupine Tree, fronted by Stephen Wilson. These dudes reminded me of Pink Floyd. I wanted more of it. Not more of the bands I’d heard my older brothers and sister playing since I was four or five—although you never forget your first loves. I wanted something new inspired by Syd Barrett or Robert Fripp or in Wilson’s case— heavily influenced by the harmonies of the Beach Boys. 

I joined an online progressive rock forum and moused around. I sought recommendations. A guy from Brazil wanted to send me some music. There was no legal means to transfer digital files— no Apple Music or Spotify. Just the leaning tower of compact discs and maybe a few cassettes lying around if I wound up dragging the old double-deck boombox out on the side porch. 

The guy named Dario asked for my mailing address and with some hesitation, I gave it to him. No one with criminal inclinations showed up at my door. But in my mailbox a package with six CDs did show up, with a return address somewhere in Sao Paolo. I guess I should have checked for anthrax in the mailer, but I didn’t. Like Christmas mornings long since past, I ripped those discs out of the package and popped them in my stereo.

Among many obscure artists, included was a song by an act called Chroma Key. It’s a solo project by the former Dream Theater keyboardist named Kevin Moore. The first of his catalogue I listened to featured a record titled Dead Air for Radios. I dug deeper. I loved what I heard. But no one else I knew had ever listened to the guy. I told my friend Franny Loftus, an avid Porcupine Tree fan, and he liked what he heard. Now there was one more Kevin Moore fan in my circle. 

Sometimes as a person in your wiser years, you never know if you’re onto something really groovy until it transfers from generation to generation and takes hold. My friend Franny was an easy mark. We grew up listening to Genesis and Yes and Santana and I knew he’d like the same music I discovered. We trade artists all the time. It’s more difficult to convince the young ones listening mostly to stuff I can’t connect with. I enjoy many different genres of music, from classical to world to Qawwali, but I just can’t get into rap or crossover country. With rap, I’ve tried and can’t. With the pseudo-cowboy stuff, I just won’t. But many kids dig it— and who I am to judge even though I evidently just did. 

So it turned out that one day I had to pick up my then twenty-year-old son Colin and his two pals at the Newark Airport. They’d just returned from a trip to Europe. I had Chroma Key playing when they sat their tired butts in my car. I figured if during their decompression I could squeeze in five more minutes of my music, I’d tolerate the balance of the ride home. That’s two hours besieged by Migos, Kendrick Lamar and Playboi Carti. We soon got detoured off the highway someplace in suburban New Jersey and when the kids needed a rest stop, I threw in the towel.  

“You could put on whatever you want,” I said to no one specifically. 

My son couldn’t reach for his iPhone fast enough but his buddy Mike said, “No, Mr. T. I’m digging this Chroma Key. Leave it on.” Neither Colin nor Matt protested because they were too jet-lagged. But I felt victorious. I was taking a little-known artist who I love and putting him in the hands of the next generation. Mike got married recently and I was at his wedding and I should have asked whether he ever listened a little more to Chroma Key. But I forgot about the whole story until yesterday when some random song triggered the airport memory. And I like to keep my illusions intact

I have no illusions about playing the piano like Kevin Moore or Keith Emerson. If anyone can, they should run to the nearest audition because they have a glorious musical future ahead. Moore made a lot of fans and some money with Dream Theatre, a grand metalish act more popular globally than in the US. (If you’d like a treat, listen to their cover of Perfect Strangers by Deep Purple. It is perfect.) So maybe he didn’t really need or care for any more scratch when he released Dead Air for Radios. Discussions suggest the name of the record exhibits how he doesn’t want the spotlight that mainstream musicians receive. Maybe Moore likes it that way. He wants his own sound. And he just wants to write what he wants to write. 

Like I said, I can’t play the piano but I can identify with writing what I want. I started writing as a side job in 2016 when I spent hours on shit blog posts that paid me eight bucks— if the client decided to use them. Most of the time they didn’t. I stuck with the business writing thing and have been able to earn a little more than eight bucks a pop. But the topics are still yawners. 

A friend asked what I’d really enjoy writing about, and I stumbled at first. Fiction was out of the question because I’m not very imaginative. But I do enjoy baseball. And my mom always said someone should write a book about the characters in her childhood stomping grounds of Cork Lane, a Pittston Township neighborhood in Northeastern Pennsylvania. So I mashed up family and baseball and Cork Lane. And I wrote a non-fiction book. 

A book’s no good unless other people read it. That can be a challenge when you consider other caveats. The general populace doesn’t read books as much as it once did, and the days of getting a memoir published by a major player are gone, unless you’re Brittany Spears.

Publishing is a big business and no one in the upper reaches of the industry will even look at your manuscript if you don’t have 500,000 Instagram followers. No one wants to read about the average person’s life even if they do have a good story to tell. However, you can, as a celebrity, hire a ghostwriter to piece together 300 pages of anything and you’re still gonna make the publisher a lot of money. And that, folks, is how the literary world turns. 

But not always, said my friend Mike Aquilina. He’s written more than 70 books and has a feel for a good story. When he told me he loved my book, I was overjoyed. When he sent my manuscript to one of his editors— someone who did not know Thom Tracy from Tom Petty— she loved it too. She loved it so much, Jane Greer edited the whole damn thing on terms I still can’t fathom. I was almost even more overjoyed with Jane’s vote of confidence. 

Mike contacted some folks he knows who are connected to major publishers. They politely said thanks, but no thanks. He wouldn’t have had to try so hard if I were Tom Hanks and not me. He wouldn’t have had to try at all. But for Mike, where there’s a worthy book, there’s a will to grant it life. His son Michael owns an imprint in Pittsburgh and the two Michael’s are willing to give my book a chance. Like in '69 when some of y’all gave peace the same treatment at the behest of John and Yoko. 

With that I’m off to Pittsburgh in May 2025 to see what’s in store for one of the things I’d always said I’d do but seemed too lazy to do it. And my friend of 57 years— and perhaps some divine providence— has had a big hand in all of it. 

I can tell you more but I won’t spoil the rest of my story. I hope, in a sense, you’ll do that on your own.