The music I play is a glue that holds the years together. It was a blast from the

past last Saturday, visited by a guy I hadn't seen since 1971.

In 35 years not a peep, not a postcard. But last week he emailed me out of the blue. He was flying up from St Louis for a conference and had an extra day to spend with me. We reminisced about old times, caught up on people we'd known, but the magical part was the music we traded into the night, some we hadn't played in decades, dusted off and shared again.

I don't know how to describe the feeling when I recognize that this music, these same tunes, the exact same way my fingers slide along the strings, have lived with me nearly all my life. It's not like looking at an old photograph, but more like being one.

Music is the thread that sews together the seams of my being, my soul if you will. I once stayed with a guy in the Yukon. I'd never met him but he played me a tune that sounded familiar.

"Hey," I said. "That's an old Reverend Gary Davis song." It brought me back to late night parties in Manhattan sitting at the knee of The Reverend, listening to him play, watching his fingers like a hawk, then going home and trying the tunes myself.

"Where did you hear this song which came from so many miles and years away?"

"From you," he responded. "Twenty years ago I taped you in a coffee house in Toronto."

I was flabbergasted. I'd forgotten I'd ever played it but there it was, a souvenir of my past preserved like a rose pressed between two pages.

A few months ago I was in my daughter's room on campus of the University of Western Ontario in London. There was a knock on the door. "I'm sorry she's out," I said to the student who asked for her.

Five minutes later there was another knock. He'd brought a half dozen students who'd each downloaded pictures of me to

be autographed. These are kids

who grew up with the Elephant Show and Eric's World.

So this coming Monday I'll be back at Western performing a concert for those young adults, arranged by my daughter as a benefit to help raise funds for her to volunteer this summer in Kenya.

My music took me to work with war affected children in Bosnia, now it will help send Lauren to work with AIDS affected children in Africa. Things have come full circle.

I'll sing Skinnamarink for those Western students and it will be their blast from the past.