When he wrote the lyric, “I was born/ One dark gray morn/ With the music comin’ in my ears,” Paul Simon could have had Talman Welle in mind. Whether it really was dark and gray is not certain, but this is Bremerton, Washington we're talking about, so chances are good that it was. He certainly came into the world surrounded by music.
Scientists now tell us that babies are affected by music in utero. So maybe it was preordained that Talman Welle would be a musician.
“I did have both the genetic component of both my parents being musicians, and having music everywhere in my life, growing up,” Talman said. “There was always music playing, growing up.”
His mother, a concert pianist and teacher, as well as a composer of her own music, became his first piano teacher, instilling in him a lifelong love of the classics. His father was a rocker, a keyboardist with a touring band in the 1960s and ‘70s. So Talman also grew up with a louder influence, with a hard, four/four beat. Particularly after his father decided it was time to take him on tour.
“In 1968 he decided he wanted to go back on the road. So, I grew up after age five on the road, surrounded by a bunch of rock musicians – which is as colorful as it sounds,” Talman said. “It was like the Flower Era, and I remember being on a blanket at rock concerts and seeing all these hippies walking around with long hair. By the time I was in seventh grade, I’d gone to about 50 different schools. There was a time when we had a tutor travelling with us, too. But it was kind of nice, you were on your own schedule."
Talman Welle: If You Can’t Imagine Anything Else
By Manny Frishberg