When he played "Free Fallin'" I had my usual flash of nostalgia for the horse care program I attended in PEI, because that song was all over the radio as we worked in the barn.

I also remembered the rather delightful story Matt Mays told Stan Carew on CBC radio a couple of years ago, about how he first got into music. Apparently his sister played piano, which he thought was cool so he taught himself to play the theme to MacGyver. And then the sister started seeing a guy who played guitar, and that was even cooler (it's totally his sister's fault he's a musician!) And their uncle gave Matt a guitar and taught him to play "Free Fallin'."

Matt: "And I played it over and over and over, for weeks, until my uncle asked my sister, 'Is he still playing that one song?' And she said 'yes,' and he was like, 'Tell him to learn something else!' And I was like, 'I'd love to!'" small helpless voice ""How?""

Yeah, the next step is the killer.

Apparently the next step rather rapidly involved a book of Bob Dylan songs, which led to the discovery that most songs involve only about three chords--although obviously Dylan had a lot more chords "in his head"--and that led to Matt writing "bad, terrible, awful songs--tons of them!" for quite some time. The current output... is not terrible.

Anyway. Ahem. "Free Fallin'."