Pete Tyjas strays away from fly fishing for a while
I think I have my life just about right. Well, from a fishing perspective I do.
I work in fly fishing as a guide, I put out this online mag, I’m about to embark on a hard copy magazine that is of course fly fishing based and when I’m not doing any of these I like to go fishing.
Sounds perfect right? From where I am sitting it is pretty much the case.
I do have a slight worry though. Because of how I have shaped my life I sometimes fear that I have strayed away from regular society a little and as I am so deeply immersed in fly fishing.
At times, I find myself mistakingly using fishing terms or words when I should be using everyday words and phrases.
In recent years I have been a lot more aware of the fact and have tried to take myself “away” from fishing for a short while every day.
Before I was so deeply involved with fishing I played keyboards in a band. It was fun. We started covering soul standards from the 60s from the likes of Sam and Dave, Booker T and the MG's and Eddie Floyd. We quickly moved into new wave and ska before developing our own sound.
We’d meet on a Sunday night in a rehearsal room and kick around some ideas and jam for five or so hours. We even recorded half a dozen songs that we’d written and got some airplay too but I think we all knew we’d never hit the big time.
I drifted away from music until three years ago when a life-changing event made me decide to start playing again.
My wife bought me an electric piano for a birthday and I was up and running again. The piano is a vintage, straight from the seventies, electro mechanical , smooth sounding, piece of juicy funkiness called a Fender Rhodes. Think Stevie Wonder, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock from the late 70s and 80s and more recently Lady Gaga and Rag N Bone Man.
Each day I give myself anything from just 10 minutes to an hour of just playing around and pretending I’m actually not bad at playing. What it does do though, is to remove me from my fly fishing world for a short time and takes me somewhere else completely.
When I switch off the piano after playing I have one of those “you’re now back in the room” experiences, close the door behind me and re-enter my fishing life again refreshed and ready to go again.
I love seeing this clip of Ray Charles playing a Fender Rhodes in one of my most favourite films The Blues Brother.
