First I was a guitar player. I was in a band. We were semiprofessionals, meaning that we made a couple of records, and we had publicity photographs, and a MySpace profile, and we got paid sometimes. Then I became a father. Sometimes now I am both a musician and a father. Sometimes now I am a father with a guitar and spilled casseroles and crayon scribbles.Being a guitar player is something like being a father. It works like this: I pick up my guitar or my son and play. If I tickle it just so, it smiles and laughs. I can play the same riff over and over again and it never gets old. If I play something new the guitar doesn’t seem to mind but sometimes my son minds. He likes the same thing to be played over and over and over again. In both cases when I play with them they are to a degree extensions of myself. In both cases I remember how to play with them even if I have not played with them for a while.My son likes music. Maybe all kids do. When he is wild or pouty or whiny I can pick up my guitar and catch his ear. He starts dancing without moving his feet. His face lights up with the purest smile anyone ever saw and he lets whatever it is he is hearing move through him. I think maybe all music is spiritual for kids. Maybe it reminds them of what they are closer to than we are. Maybe it’s just sound waves triggering their neurons like tinypleasant electric shocks. Or maybe it’s the presence of something structured and harmonious emanating from outside of themselves that piques their interest and excites them. Whatever the case, my guitar playing makes him happy for as long as just about anything else, except his mom.Being a father sometimes makes being a guitar player hard, though. Sometimes I am sitting comfortably and minding my own business and strumming my guitar when my son perks up and dances a little and marches over and starts to slap the fretboard with complete joy. Sometimes he palms the strings, muting them. Sometimes he plucks at an open string, creating chordal dissonance. It amuses him to make music in his own way, just like his daddy does.Another thing I have noticed about playing the guitar while being a dad is that before I was a dad I could pick up my guitar on a whim, dozens of times a day if I wanted to, casually, with plenty of time to play poorly, but now that I am a dad I can only pick it up once or twice a day, and I play it as well as I can. So as a dad I play less and it means more.Also being a father and a guitar player means that I don’t have time any more to fret over incomplete songs, or writer’s block, or my missing band. I don’t have as much time to spend on me. Maybe that’s a great thing. Maybe I had to quit being only a musician in order to truly be the musician I hope to be. Sometimes I dream about forming a family band with me on guitar, my son on drums, and my wife on bass. She says she would only play the tambourine, which is her way of saying no to being in the band. But still I dream about the family band. I imagine that we begin to practice regularly, and eventually we hit our stride, but then our son hits his teens, and there’s that day when playing in a band with his mom and dad is suddenly the most uncool thing ever, and he and his friends form their own band, and things are bittersweet for a while, until his mom and I start a duo with guitar and tambourine.Once, back when I was just beginning to be a musician and a dad instead of just a musician, my friend Ben and I were playing through some songs a few days before a performance. At one point during our rehearsal, my son, who was pretty new to being a son then, kept perfect time while banging the stick on the floor and grinning jubilantly. I’m not kidding. It didn’t last for more than a few beats, and probably it was complete accident, but it was absolutely perfect. Maybe the best thing about being a dad is that perfect time is always possible.