The Birth of a son and a career!

"Graduation"
After that moment I struggled less and less. I began to improve daily. Let me share a little bit about the school. MI at that time was still a small intimate friendly group. Face it we were all very scared about being far from home and in LA and being in Hollywood. The interesting thing about both LA and Hollywood by the mid-way point, nature had separated the men from the boys...and the "Wanna Be's...from the Gonna Be's...." by the 6 month point most of us really were a "village" in the purest sense of the word. In my year there I never heard any weird "Ego " abuse among the students Some of this was ..face it..you were performing daily in front of 200 plus other guitar players...tough crowd(to say the least) It was always interesting to watch ego's deflate after about 10 minutes whenever some kid would show up, being the big guitar hero from...say "PO Dunk Iowa and realize he was in the "Tall weeds With the Big Dogs" and didn't know his ass from his elbow..and watch visions of rock stardom slam head first into..stark reality!!!!.....but many of us seemed to be "watching each others backs"...face it..all "real musicians",,find themselves in a village alone from the rest of the "working stiff"world. So many of us welcome the company of those that share our weird world view.
The school was in a real sense, a melting pot of people from all different backgrounds countries,religions and life experiences. All unified by the love of music and a desire to learn. It never ceased to amaze me daily this mix...something I never saw growing up in the remote north of Alaska.
And there was never any politics involved..poor musicians just want a gig,it's the rich ones that worry about the politics involved.
Meeting players from Europe was an enlightening experience. There was a guy I got to know from Germany "Herman"...yea "Herman the German"..a serious rocker who told me what it was like giging back home(Lots and Lots of Beer halls) I met this rich kid from Switzerland who had played in Austria quite a bit. I got to know this older fella from Iceland who took up the guitar in 1955. Was there to study Jazz. There was a group of French guys who hung together. A serious group. Very very good players who were totally into fusion. There was even a student who had come all the way from Japan to study.(something rare back then)
Some of the best concerts I heard that year were in fact student ones. One in particular stood out. Armando the Brazilian guy put on a "Hendrix" show for us. Here was a guy whose lanky bass player had to interpret for him..He gets up on stage...and BOOM....Hendrix to the note..That day he played all these tunes.."All Along the Watchtower,Purple Haze, Voodoo Chile,The Wind Cries Mary, Little Wing,Stone Free"..did them all note for note...and somehow made a Peavey amp sound like "Jimi at Winterland" amazing!
My best friend in school was a guy from New Jersey named Steve. A bass player who had gone from being in rock bands to "discovering Jazz" and Jaco Pastorious...famed bass player from Weather Report..Steve would become a total fan..He and I would spend hours and hours playing Real Book tunes. It was like every spare minute..he'd go..."Hey Real Book...lets go"..it was from Steve I learned how to develop what would become a major part of my solo jazz guitar style..walking bass lines. Steve was a walking fool. I remember asking him how he did it..his answer was simple.."I aim at the next chord in the song and if it's major,minor,dom7 I used chromatic notes to get me there". By the end of the year I had begun to develop this along with comping chords in between. Just like Joe had my first day in school...in fact several of the other students began to ask me to show them that technique.
Steve was forever the joker. And he was always pulling chain over something. He ended up living with the wife and I the last half of school(He had gotten tired of Hollywood). By then we had moved to a larger place with two bedrooms so she could get ready for the new arrival. Little did either of us know the baby would sleep in our room or bed fro the first year or so... and I would wind up on the couch!
LA,block to block can be a walk thru "The Twilight Zone". Not moments after the doctor said she was pregnant the wife insisted on finding a bigger place..mumbling something about"nesting"...liked our three palm tree swimming pool one bedroom...although we would find our manager passed out in the azaleas one night after bingo at the local AFW hall..a common event..So when she insisted I said this.."Find a place not to much more than we pay here. It doesn't have to be furnished but it has to have a pool and not be to far from here".
One block over and two blocks down and we wind up in...."CRACK CENTRAL"...only in LA could you stand on your porch and "spit" into the next town!!.We had to get a new phone number,utility company and zip code. We had looked the place over during the day,it seemed fine except for the 12 member latino family next door and the oriental guy downstairs who had some electronic side job where his entire apartment was piled floor to ceiling with boxes(I later find out places like that were rife with cockroaches).
We signed a years lease,went to the local Salvation Army and loaded up on used furniture and moved in...then the shoes dropped!!!!. As soon as the sun set like cockroaches crawling out of the every crack, out came the freaks!!..and the cops followed!..this block was worse than Hollywood! I found out that almost every one on that street paid their rent by selling drugs!!!! It was a nearly common nightly ritual for the police to drive up and down the street with speakers blaring "LOCK YOUR DOORS AND BOLT YOUR WINDOWS"!!!!..The police choppers regularly buzzed the apartment next door with sirens and spot lights...once again I thought.."What have I gotten myself into?"...and we signed a years lease!..It was so bad that one morning I was coming home from work(I had had to get a job the last part of school with the wife being close to giving birth, I was delivering newspapers at the time) to find several police cars parked outside the main entry to my apartment with police tape stretched across the door. I get out and I remember this cop standing there smiling...smiling and drinking coffee..I ask "Uh...scuze me I live here. What happened?..he's still grinning and goes.."A couple guys got murdered her tonight"...he stated this as matter of fact as if he was saying..."the sky is blue"..needless to say this gave me a jolt!..another thing I never saw back home..growing up in a place where we hardly ever locked our doors at night...I asked the guy if it was safe to go thinking only of my pregnant wife..he goes "Yea sure, just don't step in the blood!!...I look down to see a rather large puddle next to the door!!! I found out later that the guy two doors down was one of the main drug dealers and had shot two guys over a sour deal...popped them right under my bedroom window!!!the wife said she thought she heard a "fire cracker" go off...but nothing more and rolled over,went back to sleep. One guy stumbled down the stairs an died out side the door, the other guy stumbled about a block before the grim reaper caught up with him...shocking to say the least.
Not long after that I came home at 6 in the morning to find Steve pacing back and forth outside the door..He goes.."Dude the contractions are 2 minutes apart"!!!Now he being the joker he was and the fact that I had called two hours earlier and all was fine..I go "Man you're yanking my chain again"..he replies "Dude would I be up at 6 in the morning to "yank your chain?"...I think...oh no..here it goes...I walk in to find the wife on the phone trying to find me in the middle of a contraction!!..She had insisted on a natural birth so we had found a doctor who delivered babies in his office not far from a local hospital..out in the city of Newhall..about 20 minutes from home..needles to say at 6 we got there in 10 minutes.
Two and a half hours later into the world and into both my life and my soul would come my son. Jeremy Fitzgerald Olsen. My life would forever be changed. Of all the things I would ever do NOTHING would ever compare to becoming a father. He would grow to become a tremendous blessing to me always. From that moment on I would forever define myself not as..Steve the Christian,Steve the husband,Steve the musician...I was Jeremy's Dad...I would always cherish him and my daughters that would follow, and look at this precious gift as an honor and privilege to be a father and never took them for granted ..that moment was intense, emotional visceral and spiritual all at once..and once again I had crossed over...and I was about to do so again.
The latter part of school was brutal to say the least. I was working 7 days a week tossing papers three times a day,still spending 8 to 10 hours a day in school. I slept in shifts whenever I could and was almost constantly broke(something would remain a problem for all my years in LA) But finally the day arrived.
Graduation! I had taken my final exam from a teacher named Chaz. Chaz was this bespectacled funky guy who taught the "Travis Style" picking course. Unlike the rest of the teachers who all sported high end guitars, Chaz would show up in rumpled clothes, a beat up old classical in a cardboard case with no handle. Simple guy. GIT was a players school so tests were few and usually easy. My final consisted of some sight reading and several examples of the different styles I had learned. I was most proud of my example of a chord melody piece I had arranged for the song "Misty"..the first of many I would do over the years. Out of a possible 130 points I scored 110..had I submitted a written transcription of something it would have been 130..I passed none the less.
The ceremony took place in the hills above LA at a nice hotel with a large ball room. Everyone was there. Ron Benson,Pat Hicks, Howard Roberts all the other teachers. Kimbo showed up in a suit and tie(he had been fired earlier that year for calling Pat Hicks a "scum bag" but they kissed and made up later) Tommy Tedesco got up and like the big hearted italian he was got all emotional. As did the rest of us. It had been a year to remember for all involved. It had been utterly live changing for me. I would miss many of my friends who were returning home. There were 3 other guys from Alaska that had attended as well, One from Anchorage, A guy from Seward and another from Homer. We had gotten together a week before graduation and talked. They asked me what I was gonna do,if I was returning home or not. At the time I was unsure. The guy from Homer said he would be on the plane before the ink on his certificate was dry.
During the ceremony several of the students got up and played(myself included on the harp of all things) They awarded the "Player of the Year" to a guy from Norway, gave him a shinny new Gibson 335 and special certificate. And finally we marched across the stage to get ours. Never in my life did a piece of paper mean so much to me...I was now officially a "Professional Guitar Player" It is one my few accomplishments I'm proud of and that piece of paper remains displayed in my studio today.
After all the good byes and not a few tears we headed back to town. I decided to take a walk. The wife,little Jeremy in his stroller and I drove down to Venice Beach. It had rained a day earlier and had washed away all the smog. So that evening was an exceptional one. Clear skies and sunny. We walked down the skate path and stopped to watch a breath taking sunset. Both of us began to cry. The importance of the moment finally dawned on us...We had crossed over again...I stood there weeping silently as I held her hand and looked down at my new son...I felt overwhelmed with love..It would be a memory I would cherish for years and was one of the most happiest moments of my life....