Dad Rock by Charlie Melkonian

At around the age of ten months, sitting in my dad’s office/makeshift recording studio, I said my first word: guitar. I was pointing at his Gibson 335 that he bought in 1993, hunched over in my designated brown folding chair, as he sat in his creaky blue desk chair, when I mumbled the word: GUH-TAH.

My dad was thrilled; it appeared that I would be a budding young guitarist just as he was at fifteen. Every night when he came home from work he would play fancy jazz chords for me: 13ths, flat 9s, diminished and half-diminished 7ths. I was enraptured by the magic tricks he performed, gliding seamlessly from low octaves to high, leaping across the fretboard, demonstrating scales and arpeggios effortlessly. 

He would sing out blues licks on his 1978 Sunburst Les Paul, play glittering jazz lines on his weathered ‘52 reissue Tele. He played loud, turning up his Princeton Reverb to 7; a neighbor once remarked “I didn’t realize we had a rock star in the building.” He did not mean this as a compliment, which only made it cooler. 

When I was old enough to competently talk, and attempt to sing, we would record together. I would assign him extremely difficult tasks, a notable one being demands for a perfect recreation of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” We toiled and toiled well past my 9:30 PM bedtime. He became transfixed with the minutiae of the song, with unraveling Quincy Jones's intricate production. I sat patiently waiting to record my vocals. 

Soon we would take these backing tracks to my lower school talent show, then on to middle school. In 8th grade, I wore a full Michael Jackson Thriller costume as I gave my best shot at “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5, singing along with my dad-made backing track. He joined me in the dimly-lit auditorium, playing the funky Louis Shelton rhythm part on his tele, as I sang. Every bass part, keyboard part, guitar part, was a near-perfect recreation of the Motown production. 

For a while after middle school, I stayed away from guitar. I don’t know if it was the frustration of not being able to play precisely, my fingers sweating and aching when attempting to play barre chords. Perhaps it was the feeling I would never be as good as my dad. 

I remember getting frustrated during jam sessions with him. I played the same 2 blues licks over and over, copped from my Hal Leonard beginner book, while he seemed to fluently switch between blues and jazz and back again, everything completely new and undeniably creative, playing over each chord as if for the very first time. I sighed as he soloed instinctively, and concluded that perhaps this type of music wasn't for me. 

In college, however, I discovered Steely Dan. It was during one of my dad and I’s “listening sessions:” a co-created Spotify queue where I played a song, and then he played one, until the queue reached roughly twenty songs. During this particular session, I played him “Off the Lawn” by The Brook and the Bluff. He told me the song reminded him of Steely Dan, following “Off the Lawn” with the Steely Dan song “Time Out Of Mind” from their 1980 album “Gaucho” to illuminate the influence. 

I had always heard my dad talk about this guy Steely Dan, but for years, I was uninterested. I preferred the automated autotune and formidable mosh pits of music festivals like Rolling Loud and Gov. Ball. But when he played me this song, I (supposedly) lit up, understanding the progressions and guitar fills after hearing it in the context of the Brook and the Bluff song I would play every day en route to my 11:00 AM lecture. There was no Dan, I learned; they are a band, not a solo act, a fact I would triumphantly relay to anyone who referred to Steely Dan as “him.”

As time passed, it seemed my stubborness, my need to be different from my father in my musical preferences, slowly melted. I played Steely Dan songs in college apartments, referring to them as my dad’s favorite band. I took his 1977 “Steely Dan Complete” music book home and memorized the chords to “Bad Sneakers” and “Kid Charlemagne.” I even learned some of the solos, imitating players like Larry Carlton that my dad, at 22, worked tirelessly to imitate. 

On a Sunday night in September, when “Somebody Feed Phil” turns off, and my mom goes to bed, it is the unspoken time for a blues jam. I still struggle to competently take a jazz solo and not rely on my pentatonic blues licks. I still forget whether I am playing a sus2 chord or a sus4 chord. But my relationship with guitar has become less and less about perfectly memorizing every single arpeggio, or matching my dads extensive chord knowledge. I have begun to lean into the curiosity, the excitement of learning something new every time I pick up the instrument. 

The less I know, the more I get to ask; my dad lights up when explaining the possible extensions available within a minor 7 drop 2 chord shape. Instead of frustrated sighs, I am eager to accompany him, chorus after chorus, closing my eyes and listening, as long as he shoots me a single smirk in the middle of his solo when he knows he played something “hip.” My shaky hands drip sweat onto his tele; one final time around the head of Autumn Leaves before I go home, and all that is left is a sigh of relief from the neighbor when the music is gone. At least for now. I put my headphones on, board the One Train, and throw on “Time Out of Mind” by Steely Dan (the band, not the solo act).