Long before he met Don Henley, long before The Eagles, Glenn Frey was just another Detroit boy who liked music and had some want-to.\u00a0 The want-to took him to Los Angeles, where a girlfriend introduced him to J. D. Souther, another musician.\u00a0 The two of them soon met singer\/songwriter, Jackson Browne.<\/p>\n
Jackson Browne, \u201cI\u2019d show up at their gigs and they\u2019d show up at mine.\u00a0 I needed to \u2018economize\u2019 so I moved into a basement beneath their apartment.\u00a0 My rent was $35.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glenn Frey, \u201cIt had just one door, just a cubby hole, probably illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson Browne, \u201cIt was big enough for a stereo, a bed, a piano\u2026and a teapot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glenn Frey, \u201cWe slept late in those days\u2026except around 9 in the morning I\u2019d hear Jackson Browne\u2019s teapot\u2026and then I\u2019d hear him play piano.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t really know how to write songs.\u00a0 I knew I wanted to\u2026but do you just wait around for inspiration?\u00a0 Well, I learned, through Jackson\u2019s ceiling and my floor\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cJackson would get up, play the first verse and first chorus, and he\u2019d play it twenty times, until he had it just the way he wanted.\u00a0 Then there\u2019d be silence\u2026and I\u2019d hear the teapot go off.\u00a0 It\u2019d be quiet for ten or twenty minutes, then he\u2019d start to play again.\u00a0 There\u2019d be a second verse, and he\u2019d play it twenty times.\u00a0 And then he\u2019d go to the top, play the first verse and the first chorus and the second verse\u2026and he\u2019d change a word here and there\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026and I\u2019m up there going, \u2018So that\u2019s how you do it!\u2019\u00a0 Elbow grease.\u00a0 Time.\u00a0 Thought.\u00a0 Persistence.\u201d<\/p>\n
_____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 ____<\/p>\n
This Daily Bread Thing…<\/strong><\/p>\n If you cherry pick Bible verses you can make the Black Book look like a genie bottle. Rub it and out pops smoke and all you gotta do is be smart with the three wishes.\u00a0 Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026and yet cemeteries are filled with people who sought love and never found it, asked for healing and died anyway\u2026<\/p>\n My father, the preacher\u2026he spent his life grinding against Bible verses, seeking truth in the words, beneath the words, in the spine of the words.\u00a0 He went left when he should\u2019ve gone right, started when he should\u2019ve stopped, but in his old age he\u2019d found a faith that worked, which he\u2019d reduced from complexity to simplicity.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should pray for our daily bread,\u201d he\u2019d say, \u201cbut God expects us to do our own baking.\u201d<\/p>\n Baking is work\u2026but is work Work\u2026or is work a gift?<\/p>\n _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 ____<\/p>\n There Is Grace In No Free Lunch<\/strong><\/p>\n I grew on a farm.\u00a0 I was putting in man hours on a tractor long before I had a driver\u2019s license.\u00a0 Summer vacation, all my town friends knocking out a few morning chores, and then living a Leave It To Beaver life, while here I was on a Case 930, making dirt smaller, diesel smoke in my face, June sun cooking my gimme hat, from dew down to sun down, $7 a day.<\/p>\n Ole school tractors, no cab, no a\/c, no radio, no nuttin.\u00a0 Fuel up, grease up. then ten solid hours of round and round, all by yourself, day after day\u2026the kind of thing that\u2019ll get you thinking you got it bad\u2026until I met someone who had it worse.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll never forget the first time I was around a Little Rich Kid.\u00a0 He was like a bell with no ringer, a shape but no sound.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t know Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey, or that most nuts on a plow are 9\/16, but grab one socket bigger and smaller, just in case.<\/p>\n That impression has held, and been reinforced through the decades.\u00a0 The people most hollow, with the most echo, are those who had it too easy, and haven\u2019t done the work of life.<\/p>\n _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 ____<\/p>\n Glenn Frey did the work.\u00a0 He\u2019d already taught himself how to play guitar; now he taught himself how to write songs.\u00a0 \u00a0 He pulled a band together, and began the work of going from here-we-go to let\u2019s-see-how-good-we-can-be.<\/p>\n Go research around on the history of rock music and you\u2019ll find The Eagles at the top of best selling albums of all time, because their songs touch us; they touch us because somebody did the work to make them touching.<\/p>\n Their first hit was a song called Take It Easy, which is ironic, because everything about greatness is anything but easy\u2026<\/p>\n _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 ____<\/p>\n I\u2019ll Avoid The Butterfly And Cocoon Analogy\u2026but go ahead and think about it, since you already are\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n God gives us the gift of life, and a mixed assortment of traits.\u00a0 Whatever talents we have, they\u2019re chips off God\u2019s block.\u00a0 He could just make us the audience, and we could clap, at how cool He is, but instead He\u2019s put us on stage, and it\u2019s Him in the audience, watching us figure out who we are, what we\u2019re best at, and what we\u2019re supposed to do, with our talents and lives.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve often joked, wondering why Jesus came before mankind had figured out Community Coffee and comfortable footwear\u2026but I believe it was fitting that He arrive at a time where living was all manual labor.<\/p>\n For most of the New Testament Jesus walked.\u00a0 Only at the end, did He upgrade, and get to ride a donkey.<\/p>\n His mother, yes, her, even her, she baked their daily bread.<\/p>\n _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 _____\u00a0 \u00a0 ____<\/p>\n This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtimes Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, which encourages you to be about the labor of living, which is the labor that creates and reveals.<\/em><\/p>\n Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories can be found on Eighty-one\u2019s Facebook page.\u00a0 You can reach Uncle P at 81creativity@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long before he met Don Henley, long before The Eagles, Glenn Frey was just another Detroit boy who liked music and had some want-to.\u00a0 The want-to took him to Los Angeles, where a girlfriend introduced him to J. D. Souther, another musician.\u00a0 The two of them soon met singer\/songwriter, Jackson Browne. Jackson Browne, \u201cI\u2019d show [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[59,894],"yoast_head":"\n