John.

One night, in a Duluth dive bar, John stood at the back with a beer he never touched. A kid opened the first song and out of the speakers came, whole and huge, a guitar that had left his bench: the voice he's never given, sounding in someone else's hands across the whole room. He said nothing; he stood still, watching from the back. A backpack is for the one who moves and takes his music somewhere else, like that kid who climbed onstage with something that made a sound.

I created it facing forward and on a plain background: on a backpack, a portrait like this looks good and stands up to the daily grind. In his story, John fixes the cheap guitar, or lets them pay later, for the one starting out who can't afford a decent instrument; he leaves them something that sounds and sends them off to play. Carrying this bald eagle on your back means carrying that habit of his: that no one should go without a voice that sounds out loud. There's more of him in his biography, and more pieces in the rest of the collection.