Our band practices and performances have been difficult lately. Craig's 13-year-old daughter has brain cancer and has been hospitalized for close to a month. He is, to say the least, distracted and in pain. Yet on the rare times we can manage to play together, we seem to have become a far more cohesive ensemble. I think that a winter's worth of drudgery practice has helped us, but just as important, we are all so full of feeling. Sid is Craig's uncle; Brian has been Craig's friend since they were teenagers; my children have grown up alongside his . . . we all feel a deep and helpless distress about the situation, and music is a way to say so. Talking about they feel is not something men tend to do all that easily, but all of these men can sing about how they feel.

The other complication is that no one knows if Craig will be able to show up at a gig, so we've had to get into the habit of creating two set lists: one with him, one without him. This means that I've had to relax and figure out how to just roll with what happens on stage. It's been a good lesson for me, the anxious, note-taking, unconfident improviser. I'm learning all the time: simplify, depend on triads, fill the gaps, let the 48 years I've spent absorbing sound flow through my fingers.

Muscle memory, ear memory, and a sad, sad heart. I can play the blues. I had no idea.