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Hello Friends, Thank you for visiting. My name is Cathy Mason and I helped to create Girls Need Guitars. Here believe it or not, is the short version of the LONG story of how Girls Need Guitars happened. :)
I am one of 8 kids and I grew up during the 70’s when a kid in an alcoholic home didn’t talk about it.I loved my parents,they were very, very loving people and they had great hearts.They did the best they could but they really struggled with alcoholism and all the shame and insanity that goes with it. It is really a disease that is misunderstood.
Most of my childhood was a struggle, poverty and constant running. It was always about a new job, a new town, a new start. I went to 10 schools before the 7th Grade and I lived in close to 30 homes, I used to have my friend's parents drop me off after basketball practice in front of houses I didn't even live in because I was so ashamed of how we were living. My parents didn't realize that wherever we went, we took ourselves with us. My sisters and brothers were my best friends growing up. In spite of all the insanity and chaos, we actually had great fun sometimes.
One of my favorite memories is when I was 7, my sister Cindy was 6, Suzie 5 and Tommy was 4. We lived in the Bay Area of Calf across from a hotel that appeared to be a hippie commune. My mother was a waitress working late nights at the time and my dad would be passed out. We would sneak out to the front yard and put on concerts for the hippies across the street. I played a broom guitar, Cindy played a Frisbee tambourine. Tommy and Suzie played the drum mail boxes. Our set list consisted of the Doobie Brothers,Three Dog Night,Elvis,Donny and Marie, The Jackson Five and Sonny and Cher songs and of course a little of Elvis.. I still remember those songs and my broom parts. :)
Depression was a constant in my life as kid but especially as a teenager. I was asked to leave school my junior year in high school because of all the unexcused absences. I was heartbroken. Most of my friends at school didn’t even realize I had been expelled. I was still sneaking back to school for my music, drama, and art classes. I loved choir and the music kept me sane.The rest of my days that year were spent wandering around the city with other homeless and lost kids.
A local family let me move in with them, they became my guardians that last year and I was allowed back in school so that I could graduate with my class. I made up two years of high school my senior year. I am very grateful to that family, that was an amazing gift.Thank you also to my one true friend, Kari, I am grateful you are back in my life.
I moved to Southern California shortly after high school and began living the way I grew up. I was moving fast from town to town, job to job, relationship to relationship and I was miserable. Again, not realizing that wherever I went I was taking myself with me. It wasn't that I had any really unique problems, it was the crazy solutions that I kept coming up with that were the real problems.
By the time I was 23, I was severely depressed and ready to give up. I ended up living in Santa Barbara, which is a miserable place to live when you are depressed because it is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world to live.
Through a series of coincidences that I now know to be miracles and a very brief moment of clarity, that I wish would come back:), I was introduced to a whole new way of living, demonstrated by some amazing, loving, and very generous people.
I got a job as a cab driver and started to learn about life on a recovering path. Some of my very best friends and teachers were people like Homeless Dave, Serenity Stan, Big Al, and Tall Scott. :)Many, many others have help me also, Sammi, my eskimo. Tricia my first teacher.Evans, Davin, Vicki, Martha and on and on and on!I truely started healing when I began volunteering to work with at-risk youth.
As an adult, my passion is spending my time volunteering for programs that work with at-risk youth. I contribute as a way of trying to pay back all the people that have supported me.
In 2005 I was volunteering at Sea Mar Visions, the only residential alcohol and drug treatment facility for teenage girls in all of Washington State.
An incredibly talented girl came to the program and inspired all the girls to want to learn to play the guitar. She had an amazing story, homeless and a heroin addict at 16, living under a Freeway overpass in Seattle. Somehow she managed to keep 7 guitars stashed all over the city, at different people's homes so whatever area she happened to drift to she would have a guitar. What a life.The staff was struggling to teach 12 girls with one guitar.
At the same time my family was devastated with the deaths of my Grandmother, my Mother and my Brother. I went back to a really dark place, numb, and full of grief. I thought about my life and the things I really wanted to do. Learning to play guitar and to sing again were a few of those things. I started taking guitar lessons!I also went to my very first house concert and another coincidence(not:), the woman performing was also a volunteer at Sea Mar Visions and she was one of the teachers teaching the girls to play on the one guitar.That was Amber Darland and she is in this year's Girls Need Guitars show! I began thinking about how I could get those girls more guitars and originally I was going to have a small house concert to do it, but I really wanted to get them at least 12 guitars so I thought about producing a professional show.
My guitar teacher really inspired me to create a show,she is an amazing performer as well as a great teacher.As a result of all these coincidences and the generosity of some amazing, and talented performers, I created Girls Need Guitars, a benefit concert to provide guitars and rhythm instruments for the girls at Sea Mar Visions.
The community support was incredible and the first performance was awesome. Thank you to the first performers, Alice Stuart, Laura Love, Jen Todd, Linda Allen, Linda Waterfall, Sher Vadinska, and Tricia Sikes. We provided 17 guitars, 7 drums, a piano, and a banjo! What an amazing journey this has been! I have gotten to meet and work with musicians I grew up listening to!!Thank you to Ferron for being on this planet and sharing your amazing music1 What a gift to this world you are Ferron!
Thank you also to all the men in my life that believed Girls Need Guitars:)
Thank you to Shawn H. for your support with the budgets and proposals and for making me look like a rock star! :)to Todd Ellsworth for the original website and press and to Matt Gange for all the original art layout and graphic designs.
That summer I turned 40 and my friends and family gave me my very first Birthday party! They all surprised me with the Blue Electric guitar that I have been dreaming about since I was 5 years old!Now, if I only had the time to practise! Thank you Nan and Tricia and everyone else. I will never forget that moment!
Girls Need Guitars has now evolved into a program providing guitars and guitar lessons to any interested at-risk teenage girl in the Whatcom County area.If you live in the area and want to participate or know a teenage girl between 10 and 18 that would like to play the guitar,send me an email here or at my website, www.girlsneedguitars.net Thank you for attending the shows, donating instruments and believing that Music Heals
Hope to see you at the next Girls Need Guitars show!
.."http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmdpcmxzbmVlZGd1a
XRhcnMubmV0"check out the website
Click here to go to www.GirlsNeedGuitars.net
Peace,
Cathy
