My mother muttered, “Oh my God” as we turned on to our suburban street in Southern California after she picked me up from baseball practice. I was 14 years old.
This was the day I mentioned in RIP Jerry Jeff Walker or How I Fell in Love with the Guitar. My “cool new guitar teacher” was parked in our driveway, leaning on his decrepit Carmengia, smoking a cigarette. He was a large man with even larger hair that fell in curls to the middle of his back. My mother pulled into the garage and we got out to introduce ourselves.
“Hey, really sorry about parking in the driveway but I have to pop the clutch to start my car so I try to park on a slope whenever I can.” In a daze, my mother wandered inside. This was not the way things worked in suburbia. That was the first day of what continues to be a long friendship between Dennis de Castro and me (and, eventually, between my mother and Dennis as well).
I knew from my friends who were taking lessons from Dennis’ brother that he was not going to start me on “Twinkle, Twinkle” or “Bill Bailey” or give me scales to learn. He would teach me what I wanted to learn. Now it was Dennis’ turn to be shocked. I proudly told him I wanted to learn Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and Tom T. Hall’s “Ballad of Forty Dollars.” To his credit, he didn’t say “Really?” but I was friends with some of his other students and I knew they were not asking to learn songs by 40-something-year-old country music artists. After a few minutes to get his bearings, he listened to the songs, figured them out quickly and then said, “Well, all right. These aren’t bad.” The next week I asked to learn “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor which I think struck him as a little more sane. It was also a bit more complex so he was able to challenge me in the process.
For the next four years, that is how I learned the guitar. Dennis would occasionally slip a little theory or some scales in to show how the song I was wanting to learn came to be. I never picked enough of that up to be considered a musician but, by letting me roam the world of music in the places that I wanted to hang out, Dennis gave me the freedom to become a very content guitar player with just enough skill to be able to play with and for others without embarrassment, figure out songs on my own and comfort myself with music when the need arose.
After a couple years, I told Dennis I wanted to learn how to write songs. I don’t remember what he said in response to encourage me to give it a try, but I do remember that he played one of his songs. He said it was one he wrote when he was having some rough times and it just sort of poured out. It was written in about 20 minutes. His point was that that was how songwriting could be sometimes and you just have to go with it. I’ve probably written about 100 songs since then, most of them pretty bad. But I probably have about a half dozen or so that “just poured out” and they are the ones that I tend to play the most.
By our last year, Dennis and I were usually just swapping songs for our lessons. It became clear that I had reached a point roughly equal to my ambition as a guitar player. We concluded that it was silly for two friends to get together every couple weeks, play music, talk about our favorite new albums, baseball and the other things we had in common…and then for me to pay him.
Time, distance, family, jobs and myriad other distractions have interceded over the last 40+ years but Dennis and I still see each other from time to time. We play our latest songs for each other, talk about family, baseball and, most importantly, God. Without Him, I don’t think a clean cut kid from classic suburbia and a hippie rock and roller could have found and learned so much from each other.
That first song Dennis played for me is still one of my favorite songs. It’s called “A Mountain and a Tree.” On a recent visit I asked Dennis to play it so I could share it with you.
By the way, Dennis has been a big fan of country music for a long time now…
A Mountain and a Tree
Words and Music by Dennis de Castro
I hear you are a lonely man and you don’t know which way to go,
The blues are all around you and all you want to be is home,
Tell me what you’re thinking about, tell me what I really want to know,
It’s so hard to see inside you, you don’t have to hide yourself no more.
And it’s a long way to go when you don’t have yourself a home,
You’re thinking about your young years when all you did was roam,
You keep looking for an answer without using your eyes,
And listening to someone who keeps telling you lies,
Where are you going, what have you done?
Why are you walking, you should be learning to run.
Take a look inside your eyes, tell me everything you see,
Who are you now, who are you going to be?
The colors of your dreams they all have scattered to the corners of your mind,
Get rid of the separation, fulfill your destination and mine.
I am a mountain top touching the sky,
You are a redwood that’s grown so very high,
So plant yourself upon myself and feel our strength combined,
The colors of your dreams they now have definite design,
You lost yourself and found yourself by looking through at me,
I am the man inside you, the man you want to be,
So now we are together, our minds they now are free,
Together with the unity of a mountain and a tree.