Lately I have been finding myself listening more and more to local radio. I have been musically starving for a few months now. So I go from about 10 radio stations flipping about trying to find that one song I can drive to and sing really loudly and most of the time badly to. Most of the time I end up finding commercials. I hate commercials, and usually flip to another station. But this one caught my attention. On a few radio stations they have been playing a commercial for an organization called “Musicians On Call“, and if you go to their website on the About MOC page it says:

Musicians On Call brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities.

Since 1999, we have performed for over 250,000 individuals and counting!

I really dig what this organization is doing, I know the healing power of music works. When I was about 10 years old my father had a couple of strokes. The last one made him a sort-of quadriplegic because he could not move any of his limbs besides his right hand (barely) and his head could turn. I was a kid and didn’t know much, but I knew my dad and his love for music, he was a musician back when he was younger and I sang all the time with him when we went driving around. Somehow deep in my little heart I knew I had to do something to make my daddy snap out of it as much as he could. So I spent hours making him a mixed tape, parts of it where songs that I knew he loved. Other parts were of me singing to him, or songs I thought were inspirational i.e. Gloria Estefan’s “Get On Your Feet“. I remember giving the tape, my prized little stereo and dads favorite headphones to my mom when she was going to visit him at the hospital. He was in ICU at the time and was hooked to machines to breathe. I couldn’t visit him as much as I wanted to. I couldn’t wait for mom to tell me if it helped at all, and that night when she came home I asked. I remember her saying how they both cried, and that it was the sweetest thing I could’ve done.

Now that I am older, I know my dad at that moment in his life wanted to give up because he knew that his life had been forever changed. I fully believe the music tapes I made him helped him make the decision to want stay around. And he did for quite a long time; longer then the doctors expected, by YEARS! So to make this sweet & short; if you can help out this cause for Musicians On Call…go for it. Pass the word on. Thanks.