For 10 years I did Friday Morning Music with John Paul Young my dear friend and colleague at Thumbs Up. Our time there together was magical.
We had a wonderful way of complimenting each other's skills bringing out the best of each other to provide the ultimate musical experience for our participants. I found this to be a completely enriching way to end the week. A day I often cherished.
I was proud of John Paul when he told me he was moving on to support people at the Mary Potter Hospice. His skillset there would be invaluable to people at this time in their life.
Ultimately that left us with a what’s next situation, as all good things eventually do come to an end.
There are still times now when I grieve the loss of the magic that we created together when I do songs that we used to do together and I remember what we were able to create and I know it's not nearly as good it was without JP's contribution and that's not me making it understatement that's actually the truth. I have the voice but JP's musical skills are phenomenal.
I knew we had to do something different to create a new experience for our participants that really honoured them where they are and it was different after doing this type of project for so long that they deserve to have a new experience that really respected them for who they are now.
I was interested in giving them something that they haven't tried before rather than replicating an experience for them again. I thought this is a real opportunity for me as well.
This is how The Mutual Appreciation Society was born.
I wanted to look back at our Spotify list that we created during the pandemic and really goes through all of the songs and see what we enjoyed listening too. There's a lot of music that John Paul and I both covered in this period of time both on guitar and audibly over Zoom and thought I really want to know what our participants like and what could they like if they had more optional musical presented to them and if they had more time to digest music, talk about it and learn about it.
What would that be like? That's the first thing I started with when I created it, this new beginning. Curiosity. Always a great place to start.
Jump over to my article on the Mutual Appreciation Society to hear all about how it has been going.
