So I’m standing in the shower and I notice this big black and blue mark on my left leg.

Last week was my week to catch up, to address all the health issues I’d let slide. I finally got my shoulder checked out, the one I injured in a freak accident almost two years ago. I went to the dentist and got a crown on that cracked molar. I even went to get my ears tested.

And now this.

Normally I’d do nothing. But that’s the old me, the pre-therapy me, the one who grew up in a house where it was illegal to be sick. Now I can call the doctor. Do I need to call the doctor? Didn’t even George Bush get lyme disease?

And I’m checking the Internet furiously before I go to physical therapy for said shoulder injury and I can’t quite find an exact analog, no picture of exactly what I’ve got. And when the PT thought it was just a bruise, that the two red dots at the center were made by contact, my anxiety subsided. We need to discuss these things with people.

And then I had to go to the dry cleaner. I was getting some pants shortened. You’d figure one visit was enough. But incompetence knows no bounds. I had to go BACK! Thank god the tailor himself showed up, because this Cathy Ladman lookalike was CLUELESS!

And from there to Discount Tire. After the Bridgestones on my car wore out in a little over ten thousand miles, I’m now religious about rotation. But the clerk was nowhere to be seen. A tech wrote me up. But when they called me and I returned, it was like my car didn’t exist. There was no paperwork…

And when I finally get home, they’re painting my garage door.

It was one of those days. Oh, I’m not looking for sympathy. You know the drill. You wake up with a plan in mind, and bullshit appears from seemingly nowhere. It affects your mood.

And writing is all about mood. Capturing how you feel. And if you feel downtrodden, beaten, even ultimately relieved, you just can’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.

So I decided to read the e-mail. There’s always endless e-mail. And this guy sent me this MP3. Which is why I’m writing to you now. You see the music changed my mood, set me free. Suddenly, I’m hanging on to a balloon, hovering above the Earth, or maybe driving an American car without air conditioning across Texas. But it’s not hot, it’s temperate. It’s perfect.

This is not the first time I started this. The false start began with Joe Cocker.

I didn’t buy the first Joe Cocker album. Sure, it contained a good cover of "With A Little Help From My Friends", but anybody can get lucky once. Still, there was this song off his second record, that I’d never heard before. The kind you have to hear again and again and again. It was entitled "Delta Lady". And it was written by one Leon Russell. I went out and bought Leon Russell’s debut solo album. I had to hear the WRITER play his song.

Oh, Joe Cocker’s initially released "Delta Lady" is a tour-de-force, a ripper with no defects. But Leon’s was completely different, even though it was identical. It had a different feel. It was ROLLICKING! This wasn’t made for the radio. This was made for the club! When you’d become inebriated, when you were ready to cut loose. There was a party on this record, with all kinds of players and vocalists. It sounded like Leon and the backup singers had had sex just the night before.

It was this same magic that made "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" so good. It was overdone, yet loose and perfect. Mad Oklahomans flourishing onstage. This was no "We Are The World", all twenty plus musicians on stage were on the same page. As they say, it was a wondrous noise.

I became a Leon Russell fan. Not only of the original "A Song For You" and "Roll Away The Stone" on the debut, but "Stranger In A Strange Land", the opening cut of his second record, and "If The Shoe Fits", which I heard over the P.A. at Watkins Glen, just after the concert had been declared free.

Can you get us in free
My girlfriend and me
We like the songs but we hate to pay

I cracked up.

And the reason I got into Leon Russell was the credits. You see I was a fan. Of music. Like you.

That’s how we discovered J.J. Cale, via the credits. There was a network of people, an endless puzzle, that we were doing our best to put together. Hell, Tom Petty had to be good, he was on SHELTER! Leon’s LABEL!

There’s an excitement in making this connection. You feel like an explorer, even if you’ve never left your chair. Then again, this is why we used to go to the record store…TO COLLECT INFORMATION! Look at the album covers, read the credits. Check out albums we wanted to buy, if we ever assembled enough cash.

But I don’t mourn the death of the record store. The soul evaporated long ago. Sometime between Nirvana and ‘N Sync. I no longer felt part of it. Didn’t want to be part of it. It was phony. Whatever was happening in tech was more important than music.

It wasn’t about networked songwriters and players, you could see the fingerprints of the executives all over the albums. In the type of people who got to make records (good-looking!), in what they sounded like, in what the players wanted…MONEY! Music was a business more than a culture.

But now it’s all imploded. It’s like we’re living in a post-nuclear world. Everybody’s in shock, the old institutions no longer count, we’re rebuilding.

You know things have changed when even Justin Timberlake, who owes his success to MTV, is railing that the channel doesn’t play enough videos.

Radio is the same as it’s been for the last two decades. Phony line-readers unlike anybody we know in real life playing music we don’t want to listen to between the endless commercials.

And the store… The store is GONE!

It’s positively wild west. Everybody who played by the old rules is complaining. But those who didn’t fit in in the old game are flourishing. It’s all about the music now, once again.

It’s not about endorsements. Not about corporations. Because most of the acts worth listening to aren’t being approached to sell out. They’re not even sure what they’d say if contacted, it’s so incomprehensible. They’re journeymen, eking out a living, getting by on drugs, alcohol, laughs and playing. It’s the playing that makes it all worthwhile.

And that they can do. Unlike all the posers of the last decade, the musicians of today have got chops. They don’t rely on studio trickery, their music is honest, directly from their heart to yours.

So, I hear Pat Green’s "Wrapped" on XM, and after listening to it for hours straight, after writing about it, I’m inundated with Texans telling me about the guy who WROTE IT!

I figured Pat had. But it turns out Walt Wilkins wrote "Wrapped. And he’s got a version. And one of these people e-mailed it to me.

It’s as different from Pat Green’s cover as Leon Russell’s version of "Delta Lady" is from Joe Cocker’s. It’s very much the same song, but it’s got a different FEEL!

Pat Green is a star. He’s close to Buffettland. Where everybody’s high on margaritas, celebrating! No one’s got a care in the world, they’re blowing the roof off the joint. Walt Wilkins is an unheralded journeyman. And his version of his composition sounds like it. You can hear him THINKING as he sings. The track is quiet, the vocal is nuanced, akin to that of Lyle Lovett. Instead of a party, it’s a bunch of friends, crossing the countryside on horseback, fearful that they might not get to the destination.

You’re not famous. No one’s paying attention to you. Oh, you can have a MySpace page, a blog, but unless you look like Tila Tequila, no one cares. You’re as lonely and friend-less as ever. Who’s writing music for you?

Certainly not the rappers. They’re portraying a fabulous lifestyle you’re never going to experience. The popsters are painting in rainbows. And the rockers? If they’re not gazing at their shoes, there’s such soulless bluster, you’re laughing. Where is the music for you?

That’s what the music used to be, for us. That’s why it blew up. Because we identified. No one thought James Taylor was going to become ubiquitous, but the public made him so, because of the honesty in his music, the simplicity. He wasn’t singing in 70 mm, but 16. That’s the appeal of YouTube, it’s not slick. Walt Wilkins’ take on "Wrapped" is not slick.

But not without polish.

This is something you can love. This is something that can change your mood.

These guys from Texas didn’t just start yesterday. They’ve got years invested. They’re not dreaming of stardom so much as just living their lives. And it’s so appealing. Because it’s three-dimensional, there’s someone home!

So, listening to Walt Wilkins’ "Wrapped" my mood changed. All the bullshit of today fell away. Because in the track I hear another human being. Someone else trying to get by.

And I’m reminded of who I used to be. That person addicted to music, wanting to know everything about it. Following the clues.

I’m ready to follow the clues again.