Listen to the song inspiring this post:
McCoy and I have had a strong friendship and have been singing together for 60 years. Witnesses to each other’s lives since we were eighteen years old. As Paul McCartney’s song says, a Long and Winding Road.
To commemorate and celebrate various bits of life in the coming year, we’ll be looking back some, forward some, and finding different ways to share a lifetime of songs and stories we’re continuing to create and curate. A way of honoring so many acts of friendship, everyday life, and actual feelings we've had throughout this long journey.
Like a lot of baby boomers, McCoy and I grew up living more or less compartmentalized lives. We defined ourselves by things we did more than who we were.
Growing up in a culture that often measures success in terms of money, power, or fame—in other words what we are able to acquire and how many people know about it—I would say both of us were living some version of the American Dream.
Then, like a lot of folks, there were problems when some of those dreams came true, and we were left wondering why we didn’t feel more satisfied with these achievements and our broader life. Left wondering why we were still filled with so many doubts, especially about ourselves.
There are times in our lives I call “moments of truth.” McCoy had one such moment the Monday after Thanksgiving in 1995. He was on the verge of losing everything he loved.
It became a moment that would let our relationship, which had been good up until then, become something even more, a deeply authentic friendship.
We met for an early dinner that day. McCoy was more honest, more open, more real, and more vulnerable than I had ever seen him be before. When he had finished talking, I told him I was there for him then and for the long haul.
McCoy and I have continued to get together for dinner the Monday after Thanksgiving for the last thirty years to talk about the year behind us and the one ahead, as well as to celebrate that moment, the moment of truth, the origin of our even deeper friendship.
McCoy went home that night and began the process of regaining the trust of those he loved, the process of becoming the person that those who loved him knew he could be. His wife, Connie, is the real hero in that slow and arduous journey.
McCoy began practicing a newfound faith where he could begin to believe he was truly loved—even the broken and seemingly un-loveable parts. Maybe especially those. A mental and physical feeling of love was being rebuilt bit by bit with those who cared the most.
For the next year and a half, McCoy and I talked every day. Lots of times, we didn’t have much to say. Connecting that way each day was a form of being there for each other, witnesses to each other’s lives.
A few years later, McCoy talked and shared a few songs about his Moment of Truth. You can hear these songs and hear his story in this video called In His Own Words.
My dad died 18 months after McCoy’s moment of truth. In so many ways, his death, for me, was one of my moments of truth.
Until my dad’s memorial, our family had a deeply held secret. A secret I first learned about when I was twenty-two years old. The secret was that my dad had been in a mental institution when I was born and his older brother had died in one years earlier. A long held family secret shrouded in silence, shame, and stigma.
After he died and before the memorial, my mother gave their minister a small book of my father’s writings. She told him that he might read from any of those writings at the memorial.
To everyone’s shock and surprise, the minister read what my dad wrote about being in the mental institution!
I came to see the revealing of that tightly held secret as my dad’s last gift. I felt finally free to explore all the doubts and fears that had so often defined me. The people closest to me—the deep friendships—helping me overcome doubts and fears to make small, often awkward steps toward understanding and sharing my whole story.
When that gift was given at the memorial, my wife sat on one side of me. McCoy—now part of the family section—sat on the other. Both witnesses to the moment. These significant symbols of friendship and family, both so important.
In so many ways, McCoy and I spent the first thirty years of our lives as witnesses from the “outside in.”
Thirty years where we were being defined by what we did. Sometimes a blind process. For the next thirty years, it was more from the “inside out.” Who we were was defining what we did.
We also got lucky when it came to sharing our musical journey. In 2004, John Paine, a founding member of The Brothers Four, retired. McCoy was a natural choice to take his place. Our behaviors in friendship gained another aspect. A chance to cross the country and some of the world singing songs together.
It took both McCoy and me time to learn to love ourselves. We were lucky to have people who didn’t give up on us while we were learning. Lucky to have families and friends who we love—and who love us. Lucky to have such amazing life partners. To have music be such a big part of our lives.
How lucky I feel to have had the healthy friendship and musical partnership of 60 years with Mike McCoy.
2025 will be quite a year for McCoy and me. We will be finding ways to celebrate and commemorate 60 years of friendship. Thirty of those years from the outside in, thirty from the inside out. More than twenty of those years traveling the world as two of The Brothers Four.
The stories we tell, I think, are relatable for many—and we would love for you to be part of the journey. There are different ways to come along.
You might enjoy the Podcast Series Dear Partner Letters.
The Between Friends and Between Old Friends albums are available here at the Online Store.
You can sign up to be part of the Lifetime of Stories and Songs SONG CIRCLE. To receive a free weekly download of one of McCoy’s and my recordings and a bit of a story that goes with it in your inbox, contact me at contact@markpearsonmusic.com.
Here’s an example, a studio recording of the song that inspired this post, My Witness, from the Between Old Friends album:
