I am the lone musician in my family.
I got lucky when I found my wife. She's a much more accomplished musician than am I and has toured and played venues I could only ever dream about. Even though she's out of the game (aside from playing for her own pleasure and sometimes recording with me) she is still very supporting and encouraging, both for me and my daughters.
Also, my dad was a big classical music fan and jazz-head who plays trombone. (STILL, in fact, blowing 'bone in two jazz bands at the age of 80 and while afflicted with COPD.)
I am so thankful he turned me onto so much music (and literature as well, him being an English prefoessor.) He really got me interested in 20th century classical stuff like Mahler and Bartok and even John Cage when I was very young, and he hipped me to Monk, Miles, Mingus, Coltrane, Coleman, Dolphy, Albert Ayler, Sam Rivers and a lot of pretty damn challenging jazz cats. I was pretty deeply interested in and invested in this kind of stuff by the time I was 10.
I still gravitated towards rock and roll and punk and metal and such, but even there, he was very supportive. He drove me to my first band rehearsals and so on, and always praised me when he'd hear me practicing.
