Songs for Dillon

By: Laura Graff | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: August 19, 2010

In the end, the only thing that mattered was that Dillon Slone was a musician.

He started playing when he was 8, just locked himself into his room with a guitar and came out after he'd mastered it. He'd spend hours practicing in the room where he grew up in Troutman, or at a friend's house, or, for a time, in a friend's grandmother's garage.

He wasn't good in school -- "he got into a little bit of the wrong crowd," his mother, Tammy Warrick, said -- and, by the time he hit middle school, he was enrolled at Barium Springs Children's Home, which offers alternative education for troubled teenagers.

Music, though, was his salvation.

Dillon's grandfather Slone was a preacher, and played gospel music on "whatever instrument was around," said Dillon's father, Donald Slone. Donald, too, played the guitar a bit, and Dillon's big brother, Alex, played.

"Playing the guitar was like breathing to Dillon," Donald said.

Dillon started quietly, his friends say, watching and observing. But when he got comfortable, he was by all accounts, "wide open."

"Like a slow summer storm, that's how Dillon was," Donald said. "He came in like a cool breeze and then, boom!"

Dillon spent weekends sometimes with a friend, Bob Horney, who was six years older than Dillon but who loved music just as much. They'd play together, writing songs and planning for the day when Dillon turned 18 and could join Bob and his band onstage. They thought he had to be that old to play in a bar. But no law limits how old musicians must be; it's up to owners of individual venues.

Dillon wrote one song, "Better Day," a guitar-driven anthem that starts slow, builds into a crescendo and then slows down again. He never wrote lyrics for it.

Last fall, Dillon started saying he had trouble hearing. His mom thought at first it was the loud music he played. But when the right side of his face went numb and his nasal passages clogged, his parents took him to the hospital. Doctors eventually found a tumor pressing on his brain.

That was November. On June 27, Dillion died. He was 17.

His mother had two chambers at a mausoleum, a gift from Dillon's grandmother. He's buried there. But his family struggled to afford his funeral, and his medical bills.

Bob Horney, who is half of a two-man band called WoodHead, wanted to help. The only thing he could think to do was throw a tribute show.

"I didn't want to wait around for someone else to do it," Bob Horney said.

Bob started sending messages to Dillon's friends, and to all the musicians he knew. The owner of Moxie's Bar in Mocksville called him and said they could use the bar. Next Sunday, a group of musicians, with styles ranging from heavy metal to soft acoustic, will throw the Dillon Slone Tribute Show there.

Bob wrote lyrics to Dillon's song "Better Day," and plans to perform it.

Last week, Dillon's dad watched as Bob and other musicians stood onstage inside Moxie's and walked through their songs for the show.

Donald noted that Dillon would have turned 18 on Nov. 12 -- he died less than five months before that birthday.

"And then we'd have seen him up there," Donald said. "He'd have set fire to that stage."