Music informs everything I do, so it’s extremely difficult to pick just one way music and beer go together for me. The theme to this month’s session is “Beer & Music: A Message in a Bottle.”

So I’ll play sommelier for a moment, and think of a beer I’ve enjoyed recently…a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin Biere de Mars procured through trade (sucker!). I’ve been obsessing over J.P. beers for about a year now, and this bottle knocked me out. It has the acidity of an Italian wine, the aroma of a roll in the hay under an apple tree, and the fleeting flavor of a spicy apple brown betty. The attack builds with every sip, subtle and droning with bass notes of bready, bretty goodness.

Jolly Pumpkin Ales come from Dexter, Michigan. Since it’s common practice to pair local drink with local fare, I thunk about the cornucopia of music that hails from Rock City. Ah! Here’s something you may not know about me…

I was fed a steady diet of The Who and all manner of classic rock from my pop’s record collection during my formative years. I was probably the only kid in town who had to tell her parents to turn down the music. Though I developed a taste for quirky or arty rock, the straight stuff offended my moody teen sensibilities. Except for one man, the Motor City Madman. I am a closet Ted Nugent fan. I even own his cookbook Kill It and Grill It (and I have and I do).

One of my favorite rock songs of all time is Stranglehold. Looking at that picture, listening to that song, drinking this amazing beer. Fuck yeah.

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When you’re a bartender, music is a huge part of your job. It helps get you through. And when you’re through, it helps get you home. My first job was as a bartender and grill cook in a town whose only other place of business was the post office. When I look back, those were the best customers I ever waited on, but at the time, when I was young and going to school, it was a hard slog. It’s tough to open that door at 10:00 a.m. to a line of guys getting off their shift at the caterpillar plant, ready to decompress. Some of them would be there when you left at 5:00. Some of them would stay all night.

By the end of one of my night shifts, I was physically and mentally exhausted. It was a long country road home–straight and dark as pitch. Two songs and one beer served as my own decompression and got me home sane every Saturday night.

The sweet, pungent Belgian-in-heat stink of one slightly warm Maredsous 10 and the sweet plaintive sounds of T.Rex’s Life’s A Gas and David Bowie’s Life On Mars?.

To this day–just last week in fact–these songs never fail to sooth me. They’re quite similar in my mind, both contemplative with equal parts wonder and angst. These are songs to ponder your life by, to ask without the burden of answering. Life On Mars? was released the year I was born. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but if I had a theme song it would be this. I never drink and drive anymore, but these songs still induce a Pavlovian response to my old sentimental tripel favorite.

To view all the musical selections around the web for this Session #9 go see the roundup on the Lost Abbey Blog.