This is it.  March 18th is my birthday and this is the final post in a 50 day series of a post a day leading up to now.

We had a great party this evening.

I knew something was up.  I always do.  But I must admit the guest list was larger and unexpected.  I was so glad to see so many old friends show up.

Me and my dear wife, Carrie, with our boys Jarrett and Cody and her brother, Stevarino.

This photo is classic Danny Johnson and Dan Goins in the same room.  Wish the time we see each other was not so far and few and in between.  When we went to church together and played music together we were in each others ears and faces two or three days a week.  I miss that.

I can’t begin to tell you how great it was to have Carolyn McAdams in house.  She is the mother of my friend Corner King Lincoln.  I wish he could have been here too.

My Dad with Danners and Barry and Tammy Hall.  They drove down from Jackson County to join the fun.  It was so good to see them all.  Getting Dad and Barry, one of his old football players, together is always a treat.

Steve Hanger, Tim and Michelle Petty, and Mike and Alice Combs joined the fray.  Always a treat when we can get them all together.  I appreciate them taking the time to visit with us.  Thanks also to my sister, Lynn and her daughter Katie.  Danners’ wife, Mellers.  My Mother.  Sarah, Zoe, and Hunter.  We had a great time.

I have been asked how it feels to turn 50.  What else can I say?  It feels pretty good if you can get a crew like this together.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson, age 50.

I just said so long to some of my cronies that came over today for a visit.

Carrie made fine vittles and we had a great time.  How nine hours can fly that fast is beyond my comprehension.

I am just going to sit back and revisit our time and enjoy it.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I love the NCAA Tournament.  Know that I don’t watch much college basketball during the regular season.  I do, however get fired up when it is time for March Madness that 64 team college basketball-palooza that eventually decides the National Champ.  This is fun.

There is always hope that a Cinderella team gets into the Elite 8….or dare I say the Final Four.

One reason I don’t watch much college basketball is that by the end of football season on television I am suffering from severe eye strain.  I give it a rest.

Now, when the daily paper out of Louisville was still worth its weight, as there is not much to it anymore in either content or quality, I could keep up with the National college basketball scene to a decent degree.  I knew which teams were good and which teams might have a chance.  Back then my brackets were better than they are these days.  My affinity for a North Carolina team not wearing blue making a run cost me today.  NC State was my team to make a sneaky stride.  Not to be.

During spring break my dear wife, Carrie, and I go from one basketball nation to another…Indiana to North Carolina.  It is a good time.  The newspapers are fun to read in North Carolina.  That is why my Mother gives me a pot of quarters to gather them up and bring them back home to her after I read them.

I still have memories of particular tourney games.  The day Bryce Drew hit a three in 1998 to beat Ole Miss comes to mind.  The miracle shot by U.S. Reed of Arkansas that beat Louisville in 1981…a half court shot at the buzzer.

The 1979-80 Louisville Cardinal team coached by Denny Crum was fun to watch.  Darrell Griffith was special.  That whole team was.  Indiana’s 1987 win over Syracuse in Superdome was great.  Steve Alford always looked good in red…I think he still would.

I remember watching Indiana State playing against Michigan State in 1979.  Larry Bird v. Magic Johnson was a portent of things to come in the NBA.

Watching Brad Stevens’ Butler teams make it to the finals was great.

Enough of this.  I got basketball to watch.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

Sitting here listening to The Moody Blues’ 1971 album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.

From The Moody Blues, I would say we have gotten our share of favour.

I got it today.  I received my obligatory email alerting me to the latest ticket pre-sale opportunity for The Moody Blues next scheduled, as of now, concerts.  They are in Las Vegas at the end of September and early October.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I will not be there.  We saw our last Moody Blues concert in Nashville on July 22nd last year at The Ryman Auditorium on a very hot day and night.

This is not about anyone getting any older.  Not me, not The Moody Blues.  It is about perfect symmetry.

I have told the story many times.  I was injured in a weight lifting mishap when I was a freshman in high school.  Ironically, it was my 15th birthday the day I picked up the Days of Future Passed cassette stopping at a store with my mother after a doctor appointment for my back.  I took the cassette with me to see The Moodies play Days of Future Passed live at The Fraze Pavillion near Dayton on July 1st last summer.  My sister, Lynn, finally acquiesced and I took her to see The Moodies.  She, among others, have given me a bit of a ribbing over the years about my appreciation of this group.  Guess what?  My sister was humming Moodies songs every time I saw her afterward for at least three weeks.

Justin Hayward and John Lodge with Julie Ragins in the background that evening.

I really did take it with me.

I did not take it to Nashville 3 weeks later.

A great photo from the balcony of The Ryman.   Walking out that night, I knew it was our last Moodies concert.  Folks are laughing right now.  But, it’s true.  That is how I want it to end it.  From picking that cassette up in 1983 to seeing the album performed live 34 years later in The Ryman for goodness sake.  That is where it needs to end.  It is as good an ending as I can think of.

The Moody Blues have not failed us.  Carrie and I have seen them every year since 2003 after I took a concert hiatus to concentrate on my own music after I saw them in 1999. My first Moodies show was in 1986 on the heels of the album The Other Side of Life and the top ten hit Your Wildest Dreams.   I was 18.  I got 57 Moodies shows in over the course of 31 years with a storybook ending.  I know that plenty of folks would have liked to have been in The Ryman last summer to see that show.  I was fortunate enough to be there.

I met up with Julie Ragins before the show.  She and I have been complimentary of each other’s music and she is just flat a great person.  She and her husband Curtis Brengle are quite the Pear Duo.  In fact, you can find them at pearduo.com.  I wrote some nice words she shared on one of her blogs.  In addition to being a great person, Julie is a gifted musician and vocalist.  I recommend her work highly.  The Moodies are not fools.  Julie is proof of that, having played with them since 2010.

When I was 16 I would slap a pair of headphones on and listen to an entire  Moodies’ album just like I have been doing as I write this post.  It has been fun.

The Moody Blues are to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in April so to me the place finally is legit.  Never was too high on those places.  Folks are shocked when they find out of all the places I have been I have never been to The Pro Football Hall of Fame.  It just never drew me there.  I don’t plan on stopping by Cleveland as we head to the Northeast for a summer visit any time soon.

A Moody Blues concert on the calendar has been a fixture.  It has been something to look forward to.  It has been an island that I know I can get to and find some great memories while listening to music that I get and means something special to me.  No, when I started recording I did not try to sound like anyone else but me.  I write my songs and record them the way I need to.  The Moodies learned that from Buddy Holly and guess what…they passed it on.  Will I be a famous recording star?  I doubt it.  I make music for two reasons… because I love it and because I can.  Most folks don’t get that chance.  I know that.

Waving goodbye at The Ryman in 2014.

So a last big thank you to The Moody Blues.  Justin, John, Graeme, Ray (we miss him), and Mike (though I never got see him). All the best to you and yours! I still be listening.  The shelf is rather full.  But I will keep on making music anyway.

And I will keep speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Day 46 of the journey.  I suppose I need to turn Neil Diamond off and play something with a little more fire in it.

We started this trek in January.  A post a day for fifty days leading to my 50th birthday.  I think I will pick some random photos and comment on them.  Hope that is okay.

Carrie and me at a very special place on a very windy day!

I enjoy having these on my window everyday.  And to think, a Brownstown guy, my dear friend Jerry Brown, made these for me.  I don’t think I was supposed to tell that.

There are field trips and there are field trips…but there is only one place where you can kiss a yard of bricks…Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The place is beautiful.

Never get tired of seeing this picture.  Adam Disque, a Great American.

Carl, the possum, gets around.  East coast and…

West coast.

I could never forget Bonnie Hunsucker and Turkey Lurkey…

Walden Pond is as sweet as you can imagine.

My mother will always be the 4th of July Queen.

Words for that?

I was caught writing a song.

Young Justin Hayward behind not quite as young Justin.

The Rose Bowl November 2016.

My Dad and Barry Hall having a good time before they tore the old Blevins Stadium down.

Carrie by Lake Erie.

Me looking out at Lake Ontario.  It was something.

My Aunt’s back yard in Mississippi.  Just as wonderful to me.

The Art Institute in Chicago.

A lovely sight.

Me and Brother Tim at Bama v. UT 2016.  Guess who won?

Mike Hunsucker getting us there and back safely.  I miss Mike so much.

I don’t know why I have been blessed in so many ways.  I have an adventurous streak, I think.  There is always another thing to accomplish and another road to  go down.   That is just the way I live.  I don’t know what else to do.  It is only in times when I look back at my speaktherights.com photo library that I think, man, you have been a great many places.  That was then and this is now.  There is much to see and do.  There are more songs to write and more folks to help out.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

I spoke with my mother on the phone after school today.  I normally try to do that every day.  When I was driving 54 miles one way to Medora for a decade and a half it was easy to do.  There was plenty of time to get caught up while I drove home.

The subject had to come up.  In a few days I will turn 50.  My mother says she can’t believe it.  I tend to agree.  My back argues with that, though.  Just one of those things.

When I was born at the Bartholomew County Hospital in Columbus, Indiana on March 18th there was some concern.  Something about my lungs not cooperating when I got here.  Imagine that.  All I can say is that I have made up for it.  A day or two after I was born a six inch snow fell, according to reports.  It was like the one we had last night.  It was gone the next day.

Today a student at school, they caught wind of my birthday being on the way.  The student told me fifty years is a long time.  Gee thanks kid.  But the student was right.

Honestly, I am proud to say I have made it this far.  This is a crazy world we live in.  I could sit and talk to you about folks I have lost over the years and what they meant to me and how their passing has affected me and we could be at it for a while.

Not far from where I type these words is a picture of me and Todd “Corner King” Lincoln, Sr on my wedding day.  We are looking off in the distance in slightly different directions.  I thought the photo was way too cool soon after we got the gagillion pictures developed that were taken by the great Bryan Moss.  Talk about a nice wedding present.  Thank you, Bryan.

There we are.  Me and the Corner King.  Standing beside North Road in front of Hancock Chapel Church where I was about to be married.  That was February 10, 1996.

Todd was 30 in 1997.  I was 29.  We lost him on August 26th of that year.  We had so much fun.  The last time I talked to him I was using a telephone that hung on the wall and had a long chord on it.  He died suddenly due to illness the next day.  His last words to me were,  “Later on, Brother!”  Later on indeed.

I sit and wonder some times what things would be like between us now.  I doubt it would be much different.  He was a kind soul.  As tall as he was, he was that gentle and caring for others.  I think of him often.  I write songs and sing them cos I had to after he died to help me make sense of things and stuff.  I thank him and Carrie, she told me to find a guitar a month and a half after Todd died.  That has translated into a gift I can give others and enjoy a great deal myself.

Next week I will be holding forth on music and songwriting with some junior English students and they will hear the song “Don’t Miss the Last Dance”.  I wrote it for Corner King.  He deserves to be part of the speaks.  He was there.  He still is.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

This post will be brief.  Why?  We live in the country.  If I am going to do what I am doing here, I must rely on costly, lousy, satellite internet service.

Twenty minutes ago I had to clean off the satellite dish for this thing because there was too much snow on it.  And it is coming down now!

The picture I was going to share is not loading!

Here it is…

So be it.

Speaking the Rights…(while I can).

Danny Johnson

Today my good friend Steve Hanger and I were in the Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium in Seymour to watch the Regional Semi-Finals.  We came home after they were over.  As I type this New Albany, winner of the second game, and Center Grove, winner of the first game, are playing for the championship.  New Albany is leading in the first quarter.

There were over 8000 people in the gym to watch the games this morning and early afternoon.  It was quite a sight.

I was glad to be able to witness this.  Only in Indiana will you find such crowds for high school basketball. Folks were standing all over the place…in the corners on the floor, around the perimeter up top, it was crazy.  I ran into my radio hero Robert Becker.  He was there to make notes for Monday’s Speaking of Sports report.  Becker told me he hope his sidekick Jim Plump was in the house to help him out on Monday morning.

A young man by the name of Romeo Langford playing for the New Albany Bulldogs is on of those you hope to see come along some day.  He is the real thing.  He is the best high school player I have ever seen.

Langford at the foul line.

When I pulled into Depauw to let Steve out at his house, I told him one of these days we’re going to be watching an NBA game remind each other of the day we went to Seymour to watch that his team play.

If New Albany makes in to Indy, I will be interested to see how many show up at the big barn.  Seymour has the 3rd largest gym in the land.  Bottom line, we in Southern Indiana have not seen the likes of this since Damon Bailey led Bedford North Lawrence to the championship his senior year and they played in front of over 40,000 in the Hoosier Dome. That was over the top.

I hope Romeo Langford plays his college ball at Indiana University.  Word is he is down the IU, Vandy, and Kansas as potential landing spots.  But..if he only wants to play one or two years, I hope he goes to Kansas.

It sure was fun today I can tell you.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Working in the recording studio with Rod Wurtele  in the Card shirt and Millard Dunn in the back.  We were working on a song.  Dr. Dunn was my teacher when I first read The Life You Save May Be Your Own.

For whatever reason I was thinking today of the Flannery O’Connor story The Life You Save May Be Your Own.

For the past two weeks I have been charged with overseeing the ISTEP testing of students in grades 9-11 that needed to take the tests.  It is an arduous process and one that is a bit archaic in the days we are living in.  What happened to the learning styles mantra we were given in the 1990s?  Politics.  My mentor and boss of many years ago, Jim Stewart, once said, “Education is the most resilient thing going.  No matter how politicians screw it up, kids still want to learn and that is the best thing going.”

When it comes to ISTEP we give all the kids a cookie cutter of a test that lasts a few minutes and it is supposed to measure what they have learned in a school year that lasts 180 days.  Gee…that makes sense.  We are not talking the SAT or the ACT here.  Those are traditionally taken after most of the high school student’s body of work is complete.

I know that the school house is a bastion of old world ideology and sturdy social and moral fiber unlike much of the world outside its doors.  I suppose it has always been that way.  But today, when it is not uncommon to hear a folk or two fly foul mouth invective speaks around in a department store.  You look around and no one seems too phased by it.  Is that the norm these days?  It isn’t where I work.  I hope it does not get worse.  That would be tragic.  But, I suppose the President talks foul and that gives all a license to also?

A young man was in some trouble today.  I sat down and talked to him about how the English language is situation specific.  I usually only shared this with the English classes I used to teach, but today it was time to discuss again.  Listen closely.

For whatever reason,  the potty-mouths in the store and in the Oval Office never got this.  The English language is a functional, living tool.  It comes out of the breath we offer it therefore it lives.  We need to understand we need to use it to our advantage.  If we are in a job interview we are not going to talk like we are at a Saturday Night card game.  When I go to speak to a 2nd grade classroom, I don’t talk to the kids like they are in the 11th grade.  We must understand our audience and we must address them properly.

I was not taught to talk nasty talk.  That was acquired.  You won’t hear it out of me.  I will, however, when in the presence of a very few friends I can count on one hand, throw around some colorful language that will not go anywhere outside the room.  This is usually in the midst of a euchre game or on the golf course with no one else in earshot.  This is a case of situation specific rules of language.

The only word I ever used in a classroom that could be considered offensive is the word “hell”.  It is in the punchline of a joke I told just yesterday to a colleague.  I told it to 8th and 11th graders in 1999 in a school building that was built in 1897.  I am not sure I would repeat it today.  In 2018 the world outside the bastion that is the school house is eager to criticize the school and put blame on it.

I have witnessed parents that cussed and beat their kids six ways from Sunday, but if the school starts to impart a punishment there is something wrong.  Those are scary parents indeed.

It’s not easy.  It never was.  It may have been easier thirty-five years ago.  I don’t remember such a run on the assistant principal’s office like we have now and you better believe I paid attention.  I was sent a couple times myself.   We didn’t have cell phones then either.  Had someone said the words cyber-bullying or social media…we would have asked “Huh?”  We had pick up trucks in the student parking lot with gun racks in pick-up trucks with actual rifles in them. No one thought a thing of it.  An active shooter drill?  For what?  It was a simpler time.  We talked to each other more back then.  We hadn’t texted yet.

All that said, I like my new phone.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

As my dear wife, Carrie, and I were in the checkout line of the local Hypermart, she looked at me and asked, “Do you know what you are going to write about tonight?”

I turned my head sideways and said, “Nope.”

Then I looked at her and said, “I think I just found out.”

I came home and did some other creating instead.

Speaking the cookie rights…

Danny Johnson