Welcome to the table, Jeanie! It's a real delight seeing you.

As for family music, I have an interesting story. It relates to your story to, Stephen, in that it involves meeting a cousin after an absence of many years.

In October, my cousin Roger Holliday came to visit us here in Connecticut. Roger's father, my Uncle Walt appears in two songs that I've written: Roger hadn't heard either of them.
   
"Alfred told my Uncle Walt, who married Alfred's sister, Edna"

I'd only seen Roger once since I was a young teenager, and that very briefly about 30 years ago. It was less a matter of catching up, than starting to get to know a near-complete stranger.

Roger's father was my Mother's brother, and at one point in the conversation Roger said, "The Hollidays were never singers." I thought that it was an odd comment, because Roger's father, my Uncle Walt was the inspiration for another song that I wrote: Poppa Was A Preacher with the line "and my Poppa sang the bass." Mu Uncle Walt had a powerful, deep bass voice and sang the blessing before we ate at family picnics. And so I told Roger about the Hollidays: how my Mother and her sister, my Aunt Ruth, sang as a duet as little girls and were quite the sensation, and how her Mother and all 8 kids loved to sing around the kitchen table, or riding in to town on the wagon on a cold winter's night (another song.) There weren't a lot of instrument-players in my family, although my oldest sister played violin, and my youngest sister played autoharp (Hi, Jeanie.) It's funny how reality hardly puts a dent in old misconceptions.

This time of year reminds me that I first learned to sing harmony by going out caroling with my sisters when I was a little kid. Singing harmony was a natural part of growing up, for me.

Jerry