I got a call late on Tuesday; a relatively young man in our church (who I did not know well) sadly died from a heart attack in his sleep over the weekend. Only 41, and only married for 6 months, so it was a great tragedy on many fronts.
I did not even know it, but he was an avid guitar player, so his wife wanted the music played during the funeral to all be played on guitar. I got a call Tuesday afternoon asking if I would play a couple of songs, very specifically on electric guitar. She requested versions of the hymn "It Is Well" and the Eric Clapton song "Tears in Heaven". I was really nervous about it, particularly as while I had heard the Clapton song a couple of times (mostly in supermarkets, I think,) I had never really paid enough attention to it to have thought about the chord progression, and of course, since I would be playing unaccompanied, I had to slip in enough of the melody to make it recognizable while still playing through the (odd) chords (particularly on the third line of each verse.)
Anyway, it worked out OK, and while I wasn't really happy with my clumsy interpretation of the widow's requests, no one else seemed to notice how club-handed I was. The family was happy with it, and in that situation, I would of course play whatever was requested that I could pull off on the fly. I was really honored to be asked to do it, even if the doing it was terrifying (when do I practice? when do I get this gear to the funeral home? when do I get an opportunity to tune? where should I set my levels if the family is already receiving friends in the same room the service will be held in?)
Now that it's over, I can foresee that someone else might ask me to play in a similar situation in the future, and might even more frighteningly not have specific songs in mind (i dunno, just play what you always play at funerals.) So my question for you to ponder is this; what songs would lend themselves to be played at a funeral by a solo guitarist of just barely above-average ability? There's a really nice Bruce Cockburn song called Closer to the Light that I probably could work up, but the problem is that no one but me and maybe 75 Canadians know the song. So, suggest songs that satisfy all the following requirements; a) appropriate to be played at a funeral, b) well-known enough to be recognized by at least some of the attendants, c) possible for a single guitarist to fake up a passable arrangement.
Sorry for the serious nature of the request; feel free to have fun with it if the thought of it makes you feel that maybe I should just shop for a coffin.
