It’s a chilly Saturday night in Flagstaff, and I’m lounging on the couch, eating Carmelized Pear & Toasted Pecan ice cream, and jamming out to Stevie Wonder on my iPod. I’ve been listening to Stevie quite a bit lately because 1) he’s amazing and 2) I just saw him last Sunday night in concert. You see, Stevie Wonder is one of the many musical artists I grew up on, but one of the few that my parents actually agreed on. My parents are both music aficionados in their own unique ways. My mom, being a pianist, band geek, and music teacher, has a love for more classical and traditional music. She loves things she can sing along to and is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to music theory and classical composers. She loves ABBA, Bach, and the Carpenters. On the other hand, my dad is my own personal music wikipedia. He has a massive music collection (even more than me) and can spew trivia and random facts about the past 6 decades of music. He loves CSNY, Steely Dan, and Cream. I always tell people that the simplest way to describe my parent’s different musical loves is my mom adores Neil Diamond and my dad loves Neil Young. Growing up, music was always playing whether it was my dad’s early morning Oingo Boingo jam seesions or my mom’s mid-afternoon piano sessions. It was a natural progression in our home that both Zac and I develop our own eclectic and broad musical style (and obsession).

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