At 76, Musician Johnny Holm Still Shows Up When It Matters Most

There are some stories that make you stop scrolling.

This was one of them for me.

JOHNNY HOLM -  A LIVING LEGEND

I love the stories Boyd Huppert tells, and his latest one about Minnesota music legend Johnny Holm hit me a little differently. Maybe that's because I understand what it means to be an older musician who still loves performing. (Hey! I'm not THAT old...just...getting older).

There is something about musicians that I don't think ever really goes away.

You can get older. Your body can change. You might not bounce back from a long night of performing quite as quickly as you used to. But give a musician a stage, a microphone and an audience, and somehow that part of you wakes right back up.

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JOHNNY HOLM IS STILL KILLING IT

Johnny Holm is 76 years old and still doing exactly that.

He has been performing for decades and still plays around 120 shows a year. His audiences range from people who remember him from his early days to young people who weren't even born when some of those early songs were recorded!

But this story is about something much more personal.

'PAM'S CAFE'

It starts with a song called "Pam's Café."

The song was written for Johnny by Elliott Blaufuss, a former member of Johnny's band. It is about a real place Johnny knew well while traveling to and from his many gigs.

'Pam's Café' was the kind of place you remember because it became part of your routine. Johnny would stop there during his travels, and over the years, Pam and the people who worked there got to know him.

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MEET PAM

Pam Carlsrud, the former owner of the café, eventually became a resident at Good Samaritan Senior Living in Battle Lake.

Johnny's song about her café was also being enjoyed by residents there.

And suddenly, the two parts of that story were in the same place.

Pam suffered a brain injury last fall and can no longer speak, but according to her family, she is still aware of what is happening around her.

The staff knew how meaningful the song was to Pam and her family, so they wondered if there was any way to get Johnny Holm to come to Good Samaritan Senior Living and sing it for her.

Johnny could have easily said he was too busy...but he didn't.

Johnny went to Battle Lake with his guitarist, Ryan Miller, and sang "Pam's Café" for Pam, and then they stuck around and sang and played for the other residents!

We sometimes think of songs as entertainment, but musicians know they can be so much more than that.

MUSIC MAKES CONNECTION

A song can hold a memory. It can remind you of a person.
It can take you back to a particular place or a particular time in your life. Sometimes you don't even realize how much meaning a song carries until you hear it years later.

And I love that Johnny is still out there making those connections. That he is still standing on stages in front of thousands of people. That he is still entertaining young and older crowds alike. He is still doing what he has done for most of his life.

But on this particular day, he wasn't playing for thousands. As someone who is also getting older and still loves performing, that part really stayed with me.

I hope I never get to the point where I don't want to get on a stage anymore, because there is something pretty amazing about being able to make someone smile simply by doing something you love.