The Arts: Creative Pursuits

Making music

LEWISTON – Richard Secord’s 75-year-old fingers wrapped around the neck of his guitar with ease, fluidly changing chords as he strummed song after song.

Without a moment’s pause, he recalled the lyrics to 30 songs, traditional country tunes by Hank Williams, Roy Acuff and Johnny Cash.

At first the renditions were slow. The aging singer’s voice warbled.

Then, Secord quickened the pace with a rockabilly rhythm and began to sing out:

“I hear the train a-comin’. It’s rollin’ round the bend. And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when.”

As he began the Johnny Cash tune, Secord leaned forward. His eyes widened and the lines in his face seemed to fade.

“I feel his thoughts,” he later explained. “I know what he was thinking when he wrote the song.”

For a time, Secord had given up on music.

After decades of making country records and filling dance halls, his hearing suffered. His voice would slip out of key. He’d grow frustrated over his own performances.

“I quit several times,” he said.

Making music used to be easier.

Secord was only a boy when his mother bought him a guitar. At 12 years old, he taught himself to play.

“I was a kid; I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. But he learned, and quickly became a performer.

By the time he was 19, he had begun making recordings with local musicians under the name “Dick C. Chord.” He worked as a DJ. He promoted concerts at area fairs through the Billy Burr Funorama. And he owned his own dance hall on Morrison’s Hill in Cumberland.

He held other jobs, too: driving buses and taxi cabs or racing horses in the harness racing circuit.

But his nights were for performing. He learned to get the people dancing and to create a catalog of hits, memorized and ready to play.

“I know it all up here,” he said, tapping the side of his head.

Secord is still playing for audiences.

He’s a regular at the Lisbon Teen Center’s all-ages open-mike nights, often filmed for public access cable TV.

The work keeps him going. The playing keeps him strong.

And he credits God. Each time he quit, God made him return to music, he said.

“He wakes me up early in the morning,” Secord said. He thinks about his songs and prays.

“I’m still on my knees,” he said.