Psychologist - Writer - MUSICIAN - Steve Bonham
Wide brimmed hat. Long dark coat. Guitar slung on back.
21 years on the road.
A 100,000 miles and half a thousand hotel rooms.
From the Berlin Wall to Atlas Mountains.
From Sahara Desert to the streets of Hong Kong:
A memory brewed in the long simmering soup of people and place.
A man who has learned to watch and to listen
to walk and talk in the ebb and flow of meeting and parting.
He is a chronicler of the human spirit in words. and music.
The Birth of a song Nashville.
Another time, it was a fine Sunday morning in Nashville. I just made my debut there. I was on my own and I just had one of those insane American motel breakfasts. I love them really, it's a terrible confession. I shouldn't do. Environmentally, they are just off the planet. They take packaging to the level of high and demented art. There's little parcels of this and that wrapped so tightly you need the fingernails of Cruella de Ville to get into them, and pots of ‘half and half’ that explode when you open them and jelly tubs and sausages in strange shapes and scramble egg that's so bouncy you can catch it again if you drop it. And the coffee is thin and mean and wiry. There's always a smiling big bosomed Latino lady waiting to explain, once again, to be bemused Englishman the intricacies of a waffle iron the size of a battleship.
But I digress
So that morning, I was strolling on my own around the streets of Nashville as the city slowly staggered into life. The blast of the music from all the bars was turned down a little as a barman swept out the wreckage of the night before. I guess I was feeling that strange sensation when you think you've done something rather well, but no one you know saw you do it.
I wandered down Broadway, passed the Johnny Cash Museum until I came to the Cumberland river. There's a bridge over it towards the Nissan American football stadium and people were crossing for the midday game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Nashville Titans. It was a sunny generous morning and the individuals and groups and families walking across the bridge to the stadium were laughing and singing and the mood was lovely.
But on the corner of the bridge, there was a man with a megaphone preaching. He called out to the fans that passed him, "If you want to appreciate the cure, you've got to know the sin." I just loved that. I just thought about it. If you want to appreciate the cure, you better have tried it out first! A bit like, who was it? Saint Francis or Saint Augustine saying, "God grant me continence, but not quite yet."
It was wonderful, so I just sat down on the edge of the bridge and just
listened to him and made little notes of other things he was saying, and
that created a new song ‘Bridge Across the River’ that's going to be on
the next EP or the one after,. Because you see phrases like "if you want
to appreciate the cure, you’ve got to know the sin," they're full, they're
redolent, they're resonant. There's stuff in them. You say them to
yourself in your head, all sorts of ghosts and thoughts arise and you
can make up entire stories just from those few words.
There's something most special and magic about them.
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