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Last week I had the great pleasure of spending the afternoon with Matt's brother, Elliott. Our last visit together had been... uh, not so great. But on a Sunday afternoon in North Olmsted, we hung out in his mom's living room, watching old SNL videos, playing the Wii and sharing a few beers. There were moments during those couple of hours when he lit up talking about music and music theory. Man, the guy should be teaching music. He could inspire so many kids to rethink how they play guitar. I know he made me rethink music. I started listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan again after watching a live performance of Stevie play "Riviera Paradise."

"Listen to the way he makes his guitar cry. It's the end of the story he's telling with the strings." All of these years I hadn't heard this song in quite the way E. described it to me. It was awesome.

I spoke to him on Friday to tell him how much I enjoyed our visit. I realized that night that The Band will forever remind me of E. I was glad to be able to associate some music, separate from Matt, with Elliott. As "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" played over his iPod, we just bobbed our heads and listened to Levon sing.

"The niiiiiiiiiiight, theydrove old Dixie dawn."

I'm glad that our friendship is moving beyond the two of us commiserating about Matt.

Aloha

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