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Like Driving Without Headlights on Back Roads on a Moonlit Night: Paul Iserman Elwood (1958-2025)

“The moon is full, and there is not a cloud in the sky. No stars are visible because of the deep white glow of the moonlight on the snow, which triples the ambient light and makes it possible to drive without headlights on these back roads. . ..” —Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine “The Dim and Dirty Road”1

Composer, banjo player, folksy philosopher, and my dear friend Paul Iserman Elwood died February 2, 2025, after a year-long battle with glioblastoma, an incurable form of brain cancer. He had survived other attacks to his body over the years, but it was the assault on his creative and deeply contemplative brain that would be his undoing.

Paul loved to improvise and spent much of his life in that pursuit. As a composer (described as improvising in slow motion) and an improviser (composing in real time) it is not surprising that he found a musical metaphor in Thompson’s words.

Paul rehearsing for a Strange Angels concert in Taos, New Mexico (2012).

I met Paul in 1984, not long after arriving in Kansas for Grad School at Wichita State University. He was the craziest, goofiest, banjo-playing-avant-garde composer I had ever encountered (if you don’t count Edwin London in the 1970s who I don’t believe played the banjo). We were kindred spirits—equal parts musical misfits, ducks out of water, and chronic sufferers of imposter syndrome. We were both 26 years old—born in 1958—and searching for our place in the musical world. We became instant friends.

I came to Wichita State as a marching band Teaching Assistant thanks to my work as a drum instructor for the Sky Ryders Drum and Bugle Corps of Hutchinson, Kansas, just over 50 miles from Wichita, so my reputation somewhat preceded me. Percussionists at WSU, however, were unimpressed. Walking into the percussion studio for the first time, I was greeted by a message scrawled on a chalk board in large letters reading, “who is this Daniel Moore guy anyway?” My first thought was “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” which seemed appropriate except for the fact that I WAS in Kansas, but you get the idea.

What I found at WSU was an incredibly creative place thanks to inspired musical mentors like professors J.C. Combs and Walter Mays, as well as a group of talented classmates many of whom would become shining stars in the musical firmament and have remained my friends to this day. There was so much creative energy at WSU that if you had a new composition, you could walk from one end of the music building to the other and before reaching the back door you could assemble a group of outstanding musicians ready to play your new piece—whatever it was.

Paul took advantage of this moment in time and as luck (and I mean that sincerely) would have it, Paul scooped me up in his net to play his newest composition Snow Falls Ceaselessly (1984) for flute, cello, keyboards, and percussion with dancers, a hand signer and audience players. It was like nothing I had ever been involved with in my life, and I loved it. Saying “yes” when Paul walked by on that Fall day changed my life.

As an undergrad, Paul studied composition with Walter Mays (1941-2022), a Pulitzer Prize nominated composer and prominent teacher who was a significant influence on his development as a composer. Then he was propelled further into the avant-garde after a week of interaction with legendary composer/philosopher John Cage. In an interview Paul said that “He [Cage] gave lectures, he did rehearsals. Monday morning, I was in the first piece that he rehearsed, it was for three conch shell players with shells filled with water that we moved around and every now and then a bubble would surface and could be picked up by a mic. That was the piece, it was called ‘Inlets.’” 2

As I got to know Paul, I learned that he had a multifarious life; one as an avant-garde composer, another as a performing percussionist, another as a music teacher of children, and still another as an excellent banjo player and Bluegrass musician. Paul had already won the title of Kansas State Bluegrass Banjo Champion before heading off to Texas to study composition with influential composer Donald Erb at SMU. But it was this dichotomy that troubled him for many years as he navigated the choppy (read: snobby) waters of a musical elite that valued conformity over creativity and the diversity of ideas.

Paul always saw himself as an outsider. In a 1985 interview he said, “I can’t seem to fit into any group at all.” Speaking of his alternative-acoustic-trio the Sons of Rayon he went on to say that “we consider ourselves nerds… we’re outcasts from the bluegrass crowd and outcasts from new wave. We’re not hip.” The interviewer, however, took issue with that characterization saying that “some might disagree. Their appearances draw a regular crowd, and they have a mailing list of about 200 people. …their music is the revenge of the nerds.”3 But they were hip; they just didn’t know it. More about the revenge of the nerds in a minute.

 It would be years before Paul would come to terms with his life as both a serious composer and oddball musician. Perhaps it was finding confidence in himself with the help of the love of his life Régine Esposito. I like to think so.

Paul and Régine, Wichita (2007)

It was a joy to be able to witness his evolution from disenchanted outsider to confident artist. I wrote a letter of reference for Paul for the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award every year from 2007 to 2023 and every year he was turned down. It was like one of the rhythms of my life; every December the phone would ring; it would be Paul wanting to catch up and asking me to write another Guggenheim letter. In 2023, he laughed and told me that, if nothing else, he hoped someday to hold the record for being turned down the most times. He never felt sorry for himself, even when he was sick. I think that is a far superior accomplishment.

Here is what I wrote in my 2023 letter of support for his last Guggenheim application:

“I have observed with great interest as Paul grew into his now mature musical voice as a composer. In many ways he is an outsider in contemporary music as a result of his refusal to be defined by current trends or the inherent conflicts between the life artistic and the career academic. Today I celebrate the resultant maturation of his singular compositional style and applaud his resolve to stay the course of his diverse artistic vision.”4

In 1984, it was perfectly preordained that Paul and I would meet when he returned to his hometown to teach music at Castle in the Air preschool and co-found the Wichita New Music Ensemble which (by the way) gave me my first non-school affiliated performance of one of my compositions. We were destined to meet and form a friendship that would last until his passing.

At WSU, our percussion teacher and mentor J.C. Combs was an imaginative impresario who despised much of the music written for percussion ensembles and he was open to new ideas for composition. In a recent interview J.C. said “I just wanted to do more creative things. I had been at WSU for about ten years, and I was bored with a lot of percussion music, so the projects sort of happened naturally as a way to keep myself and my students (and the audiences) interested in what we were doing. I also found that it was a great way to bring people in the community into the creative process.”5

Combs and Mays had already collaborated on a major work that featured an “extended percussion ensemble” and included jack hammers, bowed Styrofoam, four drumsets (with no cymbals) and Heavyweight Championship Wrestlers. Yes, you read that correctly—wrestlers. *

The Wichita State University Percussion Ensemble with guest drummers, Danny Gottlieb and Ed Soph at the 1983 Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Knoxville, TN. Left to Right; Ed Soph, Mike Harris, Bruce Chaffin, Jeff Gleason, Jim Lavin, J.C.Combs, Mat Britain, and Danny Gottlieb. Just out of sight Carole Daubert, Dan Moore, and others. (photo courtesy Percussive Arts Society)
Advertisement for the Premiere of War Games in 1982 (Courtesy of J.C. Combs)

So, the stage was set at Wichita for Paul to step in with his own brand of outlandish works for percussion ensemble that J.C. and his students took on with (occasionally guarded) enthusiasm. Dr. Combs once said that “creative things aren’t always without risk”6 and he, of all people, would know about risk. In a 1984 article for the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, arts columnist Don Grainger wrote that “it was the same J.C. Combs who starred in a locally produced motion picture about the decline and degradation of a music professor fatally addicted to pinball machines. The opus ended with an impressive bang when the student assigned to arrange a small explosion to indicate the end of the film overloaded the charge by a factor of (at least) three.”7

Paul’s music was certainly full of risks and I for one was ready to take them on. During my two-year tenure at WSU the percussion ensemble performed Under the Evening Moon for string quartet and percussion ensemble featuring folk musician, clogger/banjo player, Beverly Cotton; and Edgard Varese in the Gobi Desert for percussion ensemble and Velcro Tap Dancer Kelly Werts. Between 1983 and 1984 Edgard Varese in the Gobi Desert was performed at SMU under the direction of Deborah Mashburn, at WSU under J.C. Combs, and at Ithaca College under Gordon Stout. It was his first major composition, and a fascinating work that has been performed many times throughout the country.

In an extraordinary burst of creative energy over an 18-month period, Paul wrote many new works for the WSU Percussion Ensemble, The Wichita New Music Ensemble, and for percussion degree recitals for his friends and classmates. During that time, Paul composed the afore mentioned Snow Falls Ceaselessly, Under the Evening Moon, and Edgard Varese in the Gobi Desert, as wells as Birds of Appetite for string quartet, Upon Waking in the Rear Arbor for brass quintet and solo percussion (for Gary Gibson and conducted by yours truly) Verbum Salutis for flute, bass clarinet, cello, percussion, and hand signer (for my Master’s Recital) and Roy Rogers Meets the Zydeco Kid, a radio drama starring Jack Pie Johnson (for percussion soloist Bruce Chaffin and three narrators). I am particularly fond of this piece as “Jack Pie Johnson Boy Composer” was Paul’s nickname and alter ego. The middle name “P.I.E.” of course stood for Paul Iserman Elwood.

Final Graduate Percussion Recital in 1985 featuring a new work by Paul Elwood.

I thought Paul was the coolest cat I had ever met, and I glommed on to him as quickly as I could. Even back then, I imagined myself becoming the prime interpreter of his work. He wasn’t sure he needed (or wanted) one at the time, but I was interested in—and fought for—the position none-the-less. I also fell in love with his self-described “Nerd-grass band” the Sons of Rayon.

In their promotional material The Sons of Rayon claimed to hold “the dubious honor of having re-invented the string band, with an eye toward the needs of a twentieth century audience. The three sons (one of which is a woman) experiment persistently with non-traditional ways of combining the traditional sounds of their acoustic instruments. With three-part vocals recalling the ‘high and lonesome sound’ of old-time singing, their modern original arrangements retain a classic balance of old and new.”  They go on to say that “the group also reflects the more recent innovations of the psychedelic Sixties on through to New Wave of the Eighties. …Add to that, flavors from India, Africa, Ireland, and Mexico, and you have a truly eclectic ensemble.”8 In my opinion, this doesn’t even begin to describe the Sons. I was besotted every time I heard them perform.

The Sons of Rayon; Kelly Werts, Karen Boggs, and Paul Elwood circa 1984.

I have a cassette tape of the band that I’ve cherished for my entire adult life. One of my favorite Sons tunes was UFOs over New Zealand. The melody and lyrics stuck with me for more than 30-years until Paul finally agreed to let me do a cover of it with him singing. The concept of the song is perplexing; it muses about cowboys in outer space, Unidentified Flying Objects over New Zealand, and spaceships known to African Zulus. It was a Nerd-grass lover’s dream and would be the closest I would ever come to being one of the Sons of Rayon.

Sons of Rayon—No Velcro cassette tape, 1986, including UFOs Over New Zealand.

Paul and I worked on an arrangement of UFOs in 2007 as a proof-of-concept test for what would become our 2013 album Does Anybody Really Know What Time it is? (innova 864). That record was created by a musical collective under the sobriquet “Misfit Toys.” The band featured Paul on banjo and vocals, Matthew Wilson on drums and vocals, the late clarinet master, Robert Parades, on clarinet and vocals, some amazing guest performers, and me on everything else. 

Unfortunately, the track didn’t make the cut as we pivoted the project to a collection of reimagined tunes from the 1970s. It wasn’t until 2017 that we revisited UFOs for a performance of Paul’s Strange Angels project in Iowa City. The track then went back into digital purgatory on a hard drive until I pulled it out again after his passing. The sound of his unique voice was solid, mature, and optimistic; his pitch is crystal clear and unaided by autotune. It gets me every time.

The Measure of Friendship

In remembering Paul over the last few weeks, I thought about the measure of a friendship. One measure might be someone who will compose a new centerpiece for every important moment of your career. Paul wrote music for so many events in my life including my Master’s recital (Verbum Salutis), a DMA recital (Prelude to the Blue and Perfumed Abyss), and many other important performances. He never wanted a dime for his commissions from me. He would say “just get me six performances” with which I dutifully obliged. I’ve performed his works at four universities, at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, on new music concerts, and in venues from Kansas to Montana, Kentucky to Colorado, and North Carolina to New Mexico, not to mention more than a few performances at the University of Iowa.

Having a friend who will respond with an instant “yes, and” every time you utter the phrase, “here’s a crazy idea” is a blessing. Paul and I said “yes and” to each other for over forty years. Even in the last months of his life we continued talking about the “next” project. Paul was friends with a relative of one of the Brothers Gibb (you may know them as the BeeGees) who liked our Misfit Toys project and was interested in doing a “Misfit Toys plays the BeeGees” album with us. We talked about it again in the summer before he died. He still had plans to return to the University of Northern Colorado to teach his students and I suggested we start sharing demos for the BeeGees project while he was convalescing. He said he would try but was starting to “get kind of foggy.” I told him to do his best and that I loved him. It was the last time we spoke. 

Paul was a great friend, and he visited us in every place Liesa and I lived since the day we met in Wichita. He would come, play the banjo, cook egg rolls, and even sleep on the floor amongst boxes in a bedroom not yet unpacked from a move to Lexington, KY. He travelled to Bozeman, MT with his lifelong friend Kelly Werts to perform his most famous work Edgard Varese in the Gobi Desert with me for the second of several times in my career. And he came to Iowa frequently to play music, make recordings, and plot our overthrow of the musical elite. 

We once had a fun evening in our little town when having dinner in a darkened restaurant, Paul was mistaken for the actor Billy Bob Thornton. He relished the idea of being mistaken for a celebrity and played the part with gusto all evening. Paul was unfazed saying that this sort of thing happened to him all the time during his “Billy Bob doppelganger days.”

He simply added these fantastic happenings to our many shared experiences and filed them away as another facet of his fascinating life as an itinerate musician/composer. 

But Paul had many other friends and musical collaborators just like me, and I was always jealous! Not really jealous. . .but yeah, kinda jealous. He had dozens of collaborations with musicians from around the world, and he wrote pieces for them as well. His musical DNA can be found in the repertoire of many musicians and ensembles throughout the world, and I expect his music will continue to live on, that is, if we have anything to say about it.

It is apropos that one of the last bands he performed with was called Multifarious, a jazz trio with friends Sue McKenzie playing saxophones and Susan Mayo on cello, to put a final exclamation point on his truly multifarious musical life.

Riffing on Hunter S. Thompson in a blog post from 2016, Paul wrote that “Improvising is sometimes like driving without headlights on backroads on a moonlit night”9 which translated means that “improvising is exciting but not always without risk!” One thing we’ve learned is that creative things aren’t without risk, but Paul wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Paul Iserman Elwood, composer and musician of Wichita, Kansas, September 21, 1958 — February 2, 2025, Marseille, France. Rest in Peace my friend.

Paul circa 1985.

One more thing before we go:

Musa Yelcin writing for the idea sharing website Medium (a home for human stories and ideas) writes that the African Zulus “are a mysterious society that stands out not only for their warrior identity but also for their deep connection with space.” They call themselves “Children of the Sky” and believe that their origin is in the stars. The post goes on to say that “The modern scientific world is also interested in the Zulu tribe’s extraordinary astronomical knowledge. It’s no coincidence that NASA has studied Zulu astronomy, and some archaeologists believe the tribe possessed ancient technological knowledge.” There are many tribal stories of “visitors coming with metal birds” and cave drawings resembling spaceships frequently encountered in Zulu legends that have caught the attention of “ancient astronaut” theorists. “Tribe members see the sky as the ‘home of ancestors’ and perform special rituals during every full moon,” and they consider meteor showers to be sacred.10  Just thought you might like to know where those crazy lyrics for UFOs Over New Zealand sprang from.

Oh, and another thing:

Composer, conductor, and teacher Edwin London might as well have been talking about Paul when in an interview with Bruce Duffie he said “I have always assumed, both in my own work and my own career and with others, that each of us has an individual voice within, and that if the world were a more hospitable place, everyone would have an opportunity to define their own voice, or to at least hear it, so that everyone would understand each other.  As it is, many people get shut out of the process, and the artist is usually a one-minded-type individual who comes to the fore in a cultural situation as a progenitor of art.  Maybe that is what art is for—that somehow, those who are obsessive enough or obsessed enough to continue working, to break through the barriers of inhibition in terms of their own work and their offerings, get a playing. Maybe it’s as simple as all that. Maybe they are metabolically suited to being artists and others aren’t.”11

Amen!

Citations:

1Thompson, Hunter S. Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s, Summit Books, 1988, ISBN 978-0-671-66147-2

2Beaudoin, Jedd. Composer Paul Elwood Maintains Sense Of Mystery With ‘Strange Angels’, Interview for KMUW 89.1 FM, Wichita, Kansas, March 15, 2017

3Earle, Joe. Celebrating a Synthetic Heritage, The Wichita Eagle-Beacon, Wednesday, November 20, 1985

4Moore, Daniel P. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: Confidential Report on Candidate for Fellowship Paul Elwood, author’s personal papers, December 11, 2023

5Moore, Daniel P. Conversation with JC and Karen Combs, Wichita, Kansas, November 13, 2021

6Moore, Daniel P. J.C. Combs and the Wisdom of Words and Wrestlers, blog post June 6, 2021

J.C. Combs and the Wisdom of Words and Wrestlers

7Grainger, Don. J.C. Combs Has Done It Again: Percussion Professor Stretches Limits with Pop(corn) Music, The Wichita Eagle-Beacon, Lively Arts, Sunday, April 15, 1984

8Contributor. Sons of Rayon Promotional Material circa 1984, from the author’s collection

9Elwood, Paul I. The Dim and Dirty Road, Sound Choices: Paul Elwood, blog post, January 1, 2016

10Yalcin, Musa. The Children of the Stars: The Mysterious Space Connections of the Zulu Tribe, Blog post, The Medium:

11Duffie, Bruce. Composer/Conductor Edwin London: A Conversation with Bruce Duffie, bruceduffie.com, 1989

Other Sources:

Paul Elwood.com

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Moments of Clarity and the Discipline of Ritual: Thoughts on Creativity Part I

Groundhog Day has come and gone, and I was tempted to write another blog post about one of my all-time favorite Bill Murray films, Groundhog Day, directed by Harold Ramos. But instead, I decided to begin a series of posts devoted to creativity. Why? Mostly because nobody read my last two posts about Groundhog Day and because the idea came to me in a moment of clarity.

Moments of clarity have many names. They can be “light bulb” moments for a great idea; a “breakthrough” when you finally solve a tricky problem; a “flash of inspiration” that reveals a new composition in its entirety and all at once. It could be an “epiphany” that changes the direction of your life or an “awakening” that leads to a deeper spiritual understanding. It could be as simple as an “Ah ha” moment when a concept that wasn’t understandable just a few seconds ago suddenly becomes clear. 

Moments of absolute clarity are rare and exhilarating experiences, yet they can unfortunately, be interspersed amongst hours, days, or even years of complete and total cluelessness.

They are rare yes but somehow happening all the time. Huh? Trust me dear reader but remember “only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

“Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche

When these elusive moments deign to present themselves, you better be ready, be willing, and be able to act on them before they move on to the next recipient. That’s right, you are almost never the only beneficiary of a moment of creative inspiration. 

A composer friend of mine once told me that he thought I must be spying on his idea notebook, because I kept beating him to the punch publishing pieces for which he had a similar idea. I told him not to worry because this has happened to me many times throughout my career.

I’ve had plenty of cool ideas but at the time lacked the ability, connections, time, or understanding of how bring them to life. Then, out of the blue, someone comes out with MY great idea! They received the same moment of clarity as me. The difference is they acted on it, and I couldn’t (or didn’t). Snooze you lose.

The great drummer Billy Cobham agreed that “there are musical gifts, but it might be the gift of an idea.” That about sums it up for me (to quote Groundhog Day).

One problem for me is that precious moments of clarity always seem to come when I am either trying to sleep, or on a fifteen-hour flight, or too busy to do anything about it. I fail to act on these spasms of lucidity for many different reasons including lack of time, energy, money, resources, or motivation. Previous commitments, exhaustion, simple laziness, or some combination of the above are why many of my (arguably) great ideas went unrealized.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining because I have often been blessed with being in the right place at the right time when inspiration strikes. It is great to be on the receiving end of a good idea; it is absolute torture to be unable to bring that idea to fruition.

As a musician, composer, and educator I am interested in these moments of clarity and by extension—discipline and ritual. Although these characteristics may seem at odds, I assure you that discipline and ritual are among the most important tools for recognizing and acting on moments of clarity. 

Many believe that moments of creative inspiration come from external sources such as the Muses for example. The Muses were Greek goddesses who were said to inspire the arts, music, and poetry. There are many romantic accounts of artists and their muses. F. Scott Fitzgerald was famously inspired by Zelda; Shakespeare’s ubiquitous Rosalind appears in at least three of his plays; and George Harrison and Eric Clapton fought over Patti Boyd for years resulting in some pretty darn good music.

unknown artist; Copy of a Panel from the ‘Sarcophagus of the Muses’*; Senate House, University of London; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/copy-of-a-panel-from-the-sarcophagus-of-the-muses-248642

Some, on the other hand, don’t put much stock in the role of muses in their work. Writer Helen Hanson advises that “inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.”

Somerset Maugham had more faith in his own discipline and routine than in external influences. “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” He prepared for inspiration by starting work each morning at the same time. If inspiration struck, he would be ready to receive it. But there is also an implication that Maugham believed he could “will” inspiration into existence simply by showing up to work on time. I think he was right.

Perhaps the biggest danger and the most grievous offense then is to have a moment of clarity on which you fail to act. Michelangelo said, “the greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”—Michelangelo

But what do you do in case an idea presents itself? Simple; prepare in advance.

Preparing to be creative, or to learn, or to practice, or to…

Ritual

Dancer, choreographer, writer, creative spirit, octogenarian, and my current hero Twyla Tharp opens her book The Creative Habit by saying “I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 am, put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron Gym at 91st street and first avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.”

Twyla Tharp
Photo: Wall Street Journal

Of course, a ritual for a painter, writer, composer, or musician might be different but the important thing is to find YOUR ritual; the one that puts you in the proper frame of mind to receive a moment of clarity. You must have your receptors cycled on and waiting for such a moment to appear.

Tharp goes on to say; “It’s vital to establish some rituals—automatic but decisive patterns of behavior—at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.”

A ritual can be as simple and mundane as making your bed each morning or having a pencil in your pocket.

Be Prepared

Twyla Tharp tells us that in his essay “Why Write” Paul Auster relates the story of meeting his childhood idol, baseball player Willie Mays and trying to get an autograph. After mustering the courage to break through the crowd for the autograph Mays asked; “Do you have a pencil?” He didn’t, and no one else did either, to which Mays replied, “no pencil, no autograph kid.” To this day Auster, a professional writer, ALWAYS carries a pencil. The moral of the story is that you must be prepared to do the work. You should ALWAYS have everything you need to do your best work ready and waiting. (paraphrased from The Creative Habit).

When creating something, you become a receptor of ideas. When I set out to compose or arrange a piece of music, I have a process to prepare myself to receive inspiration. When working on a new composition I regularly schedule time to “discover” new things by means of purposeful “messing around.” From there the ideas begin to dart around my brain playing a game of musical hide and seek. This goes on for an indeterminate gestational period until finally everything comes together fully (or near fully) formed — and (as mentioned above) typically in the middle of the night. But there are no guaranties.

There is an old story about a struggling comedian who keeps dreaming every night that he is telling the funniest joke ever written to an enraptured audience. The stuff that Nate Bargatze can only imagine. The problem is that when he awakes in the morning, he can’t remember the hilarious punchline that could make his career. 

He complains to his comedian friends who advise him to put a recorder near his bed so that he can wake up and capture the joke without getting out of bed. The next morning, he notices that the recorder has been activated during the night and was excited to hear this game changing joke, but when playing back the recording, he only hears the incoherent mumbling of someone talking in their sleep. Clarity is a fickle friend but apparently not without a sense of humor.

But if you are in the right place at the right time, with your receptors on and, uhm, “recepting”, then all that remains is to transition those ideas from the metaphysical to the physical world in the appropriate format such as a recording, a computer file, or on an old-fashioned piece of paper or canvas.

So, what causes these fleeting moments, and better yet, how do we capture them when they happen? Learning to tune your receptors to the possibility of incoming messages is key. This can happen simply by making room in your mind and time in your day for them to break through. One thing is certain, moments of clarity come on their own schedule and although you probably can’t really force them to happen, you can at least let them know that you are ready whenever they are. (contradiction noted)

The only advice I can offer from my own experience is that when you get stuck, it can help to distract yourself by doing something that takes your mind off the problem. Get away from your project or assignment. Go to a concert, watch a great movie, read a book, go to a baseball game, or do a puzzle. Interact with any type of activity that is outside your area of interest or endeavor and watch people who are at the top of their game. The next time you begin your ritual of preparing your receptors, the door might open up just enough for your moment of clarity to walk through.

Keep in mind what 19th Century poet and writer Guillaume Apollinaire advised, that “now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” 

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”—Guillaume Apollinaire

Stay tuned for Thoughts On Creativity Part II which will be finished the next time I get a moment of clarity—but who knows when that might be…

Recommended reading:

Contributor. Patti Boyd Rock Muse, Ultimate Classic Rock (UCR)
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/patti-boyd-rock-muse

Tharp, Twyla. The Creative Habit
http://www.amazon.com/The-Creative-Habit-Learn-Life/dp/0743235274

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The Long Way Home: My Return to Vinyl 

Back in the day LP record albums ruled the musical world and most every musician aspired to release their music on this prestigious format. If you got on vinyl, then you could feel like you had arrived as a legitimate musician. A lot has happened in the music industry during my lifetime, and it makes me wonder if history really does repeat itself. Read on if you want to hear my side of the story… 

I began my journey into music recording in 1972 when my neighbor and best friend was gifted a 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. I was learning to play drums and Mark (who was a couple of years older) played 12-string guitar and sang. We had endless fun creating artsy-jazzish-moody-nerd-rock inspired recordings in his living room then forcing our friends and family to listen to the result. Come to think about it, that hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years. Even back then we aspired to be recording artists and maybe one day put out an LP.

“I was learning to play drums and Mark (who was a couple of years older) played 12-string guitar and sang.” Mark E. Kunz recording session Summer 1977.

By high school I was composing and arranging music for my friends to record in elaborate sessions in the high school band hall trying to emulate the sound of Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, Chase, Don Ellis, and other horn bands of the 1970s. This time the recording equipment was an 8-track reel-to-reel recorder owned and operated by my high school jazz band director, Gary Jordan, who was a big influence on my musical tastes. 

Me, Jeff Gay (piano), and Randy Crawford (vocals) working on one of my arrangements. Summer 1977.

My interest in composing and recording music continued to grow throughout my college years and into—so called—adulthood. One thing is sure; you will never forget the first time you mic’ed up a drum kit and heard the sounds of a recording session that you wrote, produced, and recorded with your friends coming from a nice pair of speakers.

“You will never forget the first time you mic’ed up a drum kit and heard the sounds of a recording session that you wrote, produced, and recorded with your friends coming from a nice pair of speakers.” Kenny Goodson working out a bass line and my fully mic’ed drums, Summer 1977.

In grad school, I met another kindred spirit who was an aspiring steel pan player and was also interested in making recordings, Mat Britain. We made our first recording together in 1985 (on cassette tape) and we have continued to enjoy producing our best efforts on recordings for nearly forty years as the Britain Moore Duo. For us as twenty-somethings, recording studio time was expensive and stressful, so our budget always went to the studios. We certainly couldn’t afford to make an LP back then, so cassette tapes were the primary means of sharing our music. 

In 1989 we finally bit the bullet and released a 4-song 12” Extended Play (EP) record. It was a major accomplishment for us to record the album (in two different studios), find a mastering engineer (whose lab looked like something from an episode of Star Trek) to create an expensive master and test pressing, and send the album for a costly duplication. It was quite a process and investment for a couple of broke musicians trying to make their way in the musical world, particularly considering how much we spent on tour outfits.

“In grad school, I met another kindred spirit who was an aspiring steel pan player and was also interested in making recordings, Mat Britain.” The Britain Moore Duo circa. 1993

The EP (Extended Play) format allowed for longer but fewer tracks on each side of the record and seemed to be the best choice for the music we were trying to create at the time. There was no artwork other than the center labels. All we could afford was a simple black jacket and some stick-on labels that we added ourselves over the plastic wrap. When the record was opened, the fancy label was discarded along with the wrapper leaving only a black record jacket. Think Spinal Tap here: “It’s like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.” —Nigel Tufnel

We were so proud of ourselves for this achievement but then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, came the advent of the Compact Disc (CD) era. Now everyone was releasing CDs, and records were suddenly passé. We often joke that the Britain Moore Duo was possibly the last group to make a record! A distinction to be sure albeit a dubious one. We had finally made it to the big leagues, but the big leagues became the minors practically overnight.

We were assured that with CDs there would be no more scratches, pops, or skips, no wavering pitch, and the sound would be fully “digital” (not that old fashioned analog). DDD* was the wave of the future and to top it off, CD store employees would blithely toss a disc across the room, retrieve it, and pop it into the player to show how it could withstand the rough treatment that a delicate LP could never take. Many people responded with a resounding “sold! Take my money!” Everyone that is except die-hard analog fans who prophesied that digital was a cold and ultimately inferior product compared to LPs and would die a certain death in the marketplace of ideas. We weren’t so sure. Others warned us that digital was the “the future of music recording, and we better get on board or be left behind.” What to do next? Some research.

*“As digital audio continued to creep into the music production process, the Society of Professional Audio Recording Services (SPARS) developed a three-letter code to inform consumers. SPARS codes printed on records classified the recording, mixing, and mastering stages with an A for analog or a D for digital. Under this system, “AAD” denoted a digital remaster of an analog album, “ADD” indicated an album recorded on tape but mixed and mastered digitally, and “DDD” specified an all-digital production.” —Vintage King

The first CD and player I purchased was from a boutique record store in Bozeman, Montana. Flim and the BB’s recording Tricycle was the first jazz album to be recorded, mastered, and delivered entirely in the digital domain. The recording chain, after the first few feet of microphone cable from the musicians’ instruments, remained in the digital domain until it was decoded by the consumer’s CD player. According to Wikipedia, “the [Flim and the BBs) disc displayed the full dynamic range available in CDs, becoming a popular test disc.” I thought it sounded pretty good and started to think that maybe CD would be the next logical step.

in 1990, I went to Japan (where they always seem to be ahead of the technology zeitgeist) and bought one of the first-generation portable Sony CD players, the Discman. It was cool but not practical. It would jump and skip if you so much as looked at it. Even a record player could withstand the bumps and grinds of disco music and weed parties of the 1970s. 

Cassette tapes continued to be popular into the 1990s because they were cheaper, easier to deal with, and more reliable than either LPs or CDs, which is why nearly every automobile in the country at that time came equipped with an AM- FM-radio Cassette player, even if the audio quality was, well, suspect! 

Making and sharing mixtapes became a cultural phenomenon—a romantic art—that became an unfortunate casualty of the digital age. Writing for Forbes online, Michele Catalano opines that “the art—and make no mistake about it, it is an art—of making a mixtape is one lost on a generation that only has to drag and drop to complete a mix. There’s no love or passion involved in moving digital songs from one folder to another. Those ‘mixes’ are just playlists held prisoner inside a device. There’s no blood, sweat and tears involved in making them.”

After much discussion, the BMD made the leap to CD in 1993 when we released Cricket City on both CD and (of course) cassette (just to be safe). This release also launched my record label and publishing company Cricket City Music & Media which is now a certified ASCAP music publisher. At the time we thought $15 for a CD; are you kidding? Nobody is going to pay that kind of money when you could get a vinyl album for around eight dollars. According to the Inflation Calculator, $8 in 1990 would be around twenty bucks today and $15 would be worth more than $36 now. Regardless, everyone started buying CDs as records and cassettes began a steady decline.

LPs hung on until Napster delt a serious blow to their popularity, in addition to convincing an entire generation of young people that all recorded music ought to be available to them for free! Soon after, iTunes (arguably the bigger culprit) and other music streaming services doomed the LP (and possibly other formats) to the dust bin of history once and for all (well, not quite as it turns out). 

One problem with LPs was that you could only put about 20 minutes of music on each side of an album and people longed for more. Truth be told however, these limitations forced musicians to make important and difficult decisions about the songs they would release.

The CD seemed unlimited with its 74 minutes of recording time. You could now put more and more music on one disc. This was a boon to classical music since you could fit most symphonies onto one disc without having to stop in the middle to turn the record over. Jazz musicians, who were constitutionally incapable of bringing in a tune in under six minutes, also embraced the compact disc for the same reason. But it did become a problem for some musicians because many felt obligated to include everything they recorded on the CD, even if it wasn’t that good. You wanted to fill that space, so some musicians struggled to get enough high-quality material, and it showed.

The Britain Moore Duo never once worried about running out of space on a CD. In fact, we too were more concerned that we weren’t filling the full 74 minutes when we probably should’ve been more interested in releasing our best tracks. From the beginning we were always trying to give the paying customer as much value for the dollar as possible. It was the same during the days of cassette tapes. We would rearrange the tracks on a cassette so there wouldn’t be more dead space at the end of side B than on the end of Side A. If you got a cassette that was out of balance, you felt cheated, and we didn’t want to shortchange our listeners.

Fast forward to 2024 and I’m nearing completion of a new solo recording—my first since 2004—and I begin to notice that more people are releasing and listening to records. Some just like having the large record jackets to hang as artwork on their dorm walls but many other college-age students own (and listen to) records—often raiding their dad’s record collection at home. So out of optimism, or perhaps vanity, I decided to release my new recording on CD AND LP. 

A reassuring yet also possibly disturbing sign of the times was a notice posted in the Music Library at the University of Iowa School of Music. Sigh!

But in considering an LP release, I found myself for the first time since 1989 having to make the same hard decisions that musicians of the pre-CD era had to make. I simply had too much material. And without going to the expense of a double LP (which is still a costly proposition) I needed to fit into the twenty-minutes-per-side LP format. This necessary editing process made the album better because I had to shorten tunes and cut others all together to fit on an LP. The result was—in my opinion—a tighter and more cohesive set of tunes that might have otherwise become tedious. Test mixes returned comments from people I trust that every track seemed too long, so I chiseled away at them until all that remained was the finished work of art. The influential American painter Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) would say this reduction is required “to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

The Long Way Home is a love letter to the people who have inspired and guided me on this wonderful musical journey I’ve been on since the heady days of those first recording sessions in Mark’s living room and the high school band hall.

If you long for the days of what my friend and colleague Damani Phillips describes as “concentrated ritual listening” that to me defines the LP experience, you might want to pick up a copy of The Long Way Home and immerse yourself in something that can only be experienced with a long-play vinyl record, a glass of wine, and a quiet room (perhaps with some nice headphones). YouTube star Mary Spender describes this as the sensation of “sight, sound, and touch” that are the hallmarks of engaging with vinyl record albums. I highly recommend her YouTube video on the subject.

At this point I have produced more CDs than in any other medium which makes sense for my demographic as a musician whose peak era of production was between 1980 and 2020. I am hopeful, however that I can extend my viability for at least a few more years (wink wink kissy face)! Between 2016 and 2024 I primarily produced recordings for my students including three solo recordings for DMA students and a recording of the Iowa Steel Band with steel pan legend Andy Narell. I even managed to release a 30th Anniversary re-mastered version of the Cricket City Album. But I’ve got more gas in the tank and (thankfully) no shortage of ideas for future projects including a new Britain Moore Duo album and a steel band recording with steel pan virtuoso Victor Provost just to name two. 2025 should be another busy year in the recording studio! And I am thankful.

For now, I hope you will join me for a shared experience of my long journey home to vinyl as you listen to The Long Way Home on LP or CD if you prefer, or—at the uttermost end of need—on Spotify. I won’t judge.

The Long Way Home is available for purchase on LP, CD, and Digital formats here:
Danmoore.hearnow.com

One more thing, before we go:

As a musician, I’ve journeyed on trains, planes, boats, and busses, around the world and back again, but my preferred mode of transportation is driving. I spend a lot of time behind the wheel heading to the next gig. It gives me plenty of time to think, and plan, and sometimes even to compose when the mood is right. But for me, the longest part of any journey is the one to return home, and that’s what The Long Way Home is about. 

This recording is also about friendship and family because the music would not exist without these elements. This album is dedicated to the memory of Dave Samuels (1948-2019) a great teacher, mentor, and friend; to the memory of Chick Corea (1941-2021), a kindred spirit of marimba players; in honor of the renowned vibraphonist Gary Burton’s retirement from performing; and like everything I do, this is for Liesa.

Thanks to Mat Britain, Orlando Cotto, Christopher Jensen, Jean-François Charles, Scott McConnell, Wesley Morgan, and Peter Naughton for lending their estimable talents to this project. Thanks to David Skorton for always listening and for letting me record his tune. Special thanks to James Edel for the ears, advice, cooking tips, and tech support. Thanks to Mike Tallman of Add Noise Studios for his thoughtful album design, and very special thanks to Dick Schory, one of my greatest mentors who celebrated his 93rd birthday just a few days after the album was released.

Citations:

Clip. “How much more black could this be?” This is Spinal Tap, 1984

Contributor. “The Early History of Digital Recording” Vintage King.com

Catalano, Michele. “The Lost Art of the Mixtape” Forbes online, 2012

Spender, Mary. Vinyl — The Future of Music? YouTube video, 2024

About Hans Hofmann

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East Texas Recollectus: James F. Keene and the Impulse of Will, Part II

If you read my post James F. Keene and the Impulse of Will you would know the influence that renowned band conductor James F. Keene had on my life and career. If you didn’t read that post before arriving here, I suggest you start there. It took nearly a year of my life before I could write about the impact of his loss or even talk to anyone about it.

It is unfortunate that it is only after the loss of a beloved mentor that one can begin to fully understand the effect that person had on the lives of others. I knew a lot about Jim Keene—perhaps more than most—but like so many things, I didn’t know enough.

A few weeks after that first post, I received an email that began:

“Dr. Moore: It was by chance that yesterday afternoon I read, and was profoundly moved by, your May 2023 tribute to our precious friend, whom you referred to throughout as ‘Mr. Keene.’”

“Clearly you knew him as Mr. Keene, probably also as Prof. Keene, Jim, and possibly at times as JFK. It is a circle of undergraduate friends on behalf of whom I presumptuously send you this message, and I invite you to take a moment to enjoy learning of yet another name by which your mentor was affectionately, and respectfully, known—Harv.”

Harv? I had heard many nicknames for Mr. Keene—mostly perpetrated by my erstwhile classmates—but Harv was not among them. The email gave a few more details but seemed somehow suspicious to me so I asked Mrs. Keene if she knew the author of the email, David C. Devendorf. Alice responded quickly that David was one of Mr. Keene’s cherished college classmates. OK, now I’m really interested. 

David continued; “Any adolescent male worth his salt growing up in southeastern Michigan in the 1950s and early 1960s was, to some degree, a fan of the Detroit Tigers, and their All-Star shortstop/right fielder, Harvey Kuenn (importantly, pronounced ‘keene’). Late in 1960 Harvey was traded by the Tigers to the Cleveland Indians for Rocky Colavito; a trade which the Indians’ General Manager famously defended to the media as a trade of hamburger in exchange for steak.”

“Any adolescent male worth his salt growing up in southeastern Michigan in the 1950s and early 1960s was, to some degree, a fan of the Detroit Tigers.” Sounds about right; Jim Keene circa. 1960. (photo Courtesy of Alice Keene)

I learned from David that Jim Keene “grew up on the west side of Detroit working modestly throughout his adolescence as a caddie at Western Golf and Country Club, where eventually he was rewarded with a coveted Evans Scholar Caddie Scholarship to the University of Michigan.” 

According to David, “it was thus a forgone conclusion that when, as a freshman in August of 1966, your mentor set foot in the Evans Scholar House on the Michigan campus he immediately became known to his fellow Evans Scholar brethren as ‘Harv’. Although nicknames were an Evans Scholar tradition, we all gradually outgrew that juvenile convention—except for Harv. It was his view that he was ‘steak’; and he preferred to retain his nickname, while the rest of us ‘hamburgers’ could choose to shed ours. It was for that reason that your ‘Mr. Keene’ was, for more than 50 years, known as ‘Harv’ to all of us fellow former caddies.” 

As a youngster, Keene was also a musician who, no doubt, hoped one day to become a high school band director with a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Michigan.

James Keene modeling his Junior High Band Uniform in May 1962. (photo courtesy of Alice Keene)

For most of my adult life I knew two things about Mr. Keene: he loved the game of golf and that he—through considerable effort—made certain that I was financially supported throughout my undergraduate degree. I was about to learn why he spent his entire career making sure that motivated students were supported regardless of their socioeconomic background because he was given that same opportunity through the Evans Caddie Scholarship. He was always trying to pay it forward.

If you don’t know, The Evans Scholarship is a full housing and tuition college scholarship awarded to golf caddies with limited financial means. In 2023, more than one-thousand Evans Scholars were enrolled in 24 leading universities nationwide including the University of Iowa where I have been teaching since 1996. I had never heard of it and had no clue, but here it was on my own campus with a new Evans Scholar House scheduled to open in 2025. Evans Scholars are selected because of a strong caddie record, excellent grades, outstanding character, and demonstrated financial need. 

David challenged me to “Imagine 50 underfunded caddies as undergraduates sharing an undersized house on the Michigan campus. That may provide you with a better understanding of the source of the character that our Harv was, and the strength of character that he possessed. Harv was my Evans Scholar ‘Big Brother’ when I was a freshman, and eventually he and I were roommates in what we affectionately (and accurately) called the ‘caddie shack.’”

The mental image of Mr. Keene as a frightened college freshman stepping into the Evans house for the first time wondering if he would ever be able to see his education completed is powerful to me. I now know that he must’ve felt the same way in 1966 that I did in 1976 upon my arrival at East Texas State University—underfunded and scared. It is difficult to imagine him in that state but now it all makes sense.

There were several other people copied on the message that I received. When I asked about them, David told me laughingly that they were the ones who “knew where the bodies were buried.” He told me that my description of Mr. Keene resonated with their group of friends and former classmates especially in Keene’s question to me wondering if “my mother had any children who lived.” He said that “was classic Harv, and it caused me to weep when I read it. That admonition to you continues to ring in my ears this morning.” Mine too; mine too.

The email went on to say that Harv (er, Mr. Keene) was fond of referring to his classmates “sardonically as his group of ‘doctors, lawyers, and captains of industry.’ We are confident that you will understand that as well.” Indeed, I did but suspected there was more to the story. 

I’ve learned over the years that many of Keene’s students, closest friends, and colleagues were subjected to the same satiric and acerbic wit. In one example I can recall adjudicating at the University of Illinois Marching Band Competition and hearing a story told by a well-respected Texas Band Director who said that he first met Keene when he brought him in to work with his high school band. 

During the clinic Mr. Keene was his usual self with high expectations for this excellent High School Band. He also had some sharp criticism for the director. At the end of the session, Keene was animated and happy and suggested that they go for a celebratory dinner. The director, on the other hand, was “a wreck” after his band was “shredded by Mr. Keene,” and nearly declined the invitation because he felt he “needed to go and somehow fix his clarinet section.” We laughed about it that night with Keene sitting only a few tables away—all of us still good friends with the terrible Mr. Keene.

Keene and the marching band staff of Louisiana Tech University enjoying a laugh in the tower during a rehearsal sometime in 1971 or 72. It was his first job out of grad school and yes, that would be a can of Old Milwaukee Beer in front of one of the directors. Not something that you could do today, but this is one of Alice’s favorite photos of Jim because of “that smile.” (photo courtesy of Alice Keene)

It is important to understand that everything Mr. Keene did or said came from a place of love even if it wasn’t apparent to the recipient of his ire at the time of its delivery. I recognized that many years ago and I’m glad that I had the time (and took the opportunity) to thank him for all of it.

Alice wrote that “Jim was committed to experiencing and appreciating history and the best of whatever subject he was into. Cooking, golf, or travel wasn’t about doing it to brag. He was eager to learn about something and personally experience it. Many times, we would say to each other that our lives were full of wonderful experiences—more than we could have possibly dreamed of. We worked hard but also were so blessed. Our second marriage was a miracle too. What a life I had with him and now the memories.” 

Amen!

Jim and Alice enjoying a laugh together on the way to Drums Along the Rockies drum & bugle corps show in Denver, Colorado, summer of 1977. The halcyon days of ET. (photo courtesy of Alice Keene)
Keene in action at home in his Kitchen, December 2015 (photo by the author)

Finally, David recalled that “after graduation we Evans alums became occupied with our professions, families, and communities, but worked at staying in touch as best we could. As we approached retirement age, a group of us began annual on-campus weekend reunions of golf, Wolverine football, Harv’s beloved Michigan marching band, and general camaraderie. 

Doctors, Lawyers, and Captains of Industry at a Michigan home game. From left to right the “caddies”: Bob Behar, Harv, Dave Devendorf, Mike Leahy, Larry DeGroat, and Dan Schewe, cheering on the Wolverines, September 28, 2019 (photo courtesy of Alice Keene)

When the annual reunions were temporarily interrupted by COVID, Harv suggested that we try an occasional one hour Zoom meeting.” That was more than four years ago. The Zoom meetings soon began taking place weekly, and we rarely miss a scheduled meeting. Harv’s sudden death shocked all of us; and suffice to say that it has left a hole in our collective hearts. However, we have soldiered on with our weekly meetings without him. I send you this message because, based on your touching tribute, I suspect that you can understand how, and why, we miss him so dearly.”

You said it brother (to the brother(s) I never knew I had).

Fast forward to today. A bunch of East Texas band kids from the 1970s and 80s who were willed into becoming a legendary college band by Jim Keene, took their own turn at paying forward the debt they owed him by creating an endowed scholarship and naming the Band Hall in his honor at the newly rechristened East Texas A&M University (the place where he was quite possibly the happiest). Now a few more music students in East Texas will be able to pursue their musical goals thanks to Mr. Keene—a person they will never meet. That’s what I call paying it forward. Note: the caddies also pitched in on the scholarship.

Why would I say that the East Texas Band was legendary? Well, in just a few short years Mr. Keene turned the little-known East Texas State University Music Department into a hotbed of band performance that thrust the school into the spotlight of Texas Band programs. He became the catalyst that allowed the quiet excellence of the ET faculty to shine through the pine curtain of East Texas. Then, a memorable performance at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention turned heads and launched the department as a destination for some of Texas’s most successful band directors, educators, and performers. Later that spring the ETSU Trombone Choir, under the direction of Dr. Neill Humfeld would be featured at the National Trombone Workshop in Nashville, Tennessee. ET was on fire in 1979!

TMEA Program autographed by Mark Hindsley (Director of Bands at the University of Illinois) during his visit to ET the following year.

Additional proof of the band’s legendary status was kept secret for more than 40 years. In 1980 the ET Band received an invitation to perform at the prestigious College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) Convention which would’ve advanced the school’s reputation even further. 

Unfortunately, at the time the invitation was received, Mr. Keene had accepted a position as Director of Bands at the University of Arizona. This, of course, meant that without the director who led the band at the time of the application, the invitation was withdrawn. 

Keene told me he was leaving ET as we sat together on the bottom of a bunkbed at the Lone Star Steel Band Camp where we were teaching together in June of that year. I remember he put his hand on my shoulder as I cried when he told me he was leaving ET. It was my first lesson in the cruel subtleties of the collegiate job market that I would come to navigate myself in just a few short years. 

Later that summer Keene and I dropped a pregnant Alice off at the Dallas Fort Worth airport and he and I drove their two cars in caravan from Texas to Arizona. After arriving in Tucson, we then trekked across the desert to LA to see the Odyssey Classic Drum Corps Show while Alice unpacked boxes in their new home. It was a two-six pack trip that was fun, galvanizing, and the best—worst—summer of my young life. We were going to miss him dearly at Old ET and I knew it.

No one—not even his closest friends—knew of the invitation to perform at CBDNA until the letter was discovered among Keene’s papers at the University of Illinois. To my knowledge he never told anyone. What a tremendous honor it would’ve been for Keene to make a triumphant return with his ETSU Band to perform at CBDNA on the campus of his alma mater the University of Michigan.

In retrospect, Mr. Keene had likely been working toward this achievement throughout his tenure at ET. Over the years he had invited several influential Band Conductors to Commerce to work with our band including Mark Hindsley (who Keene would eventually succeed as director of bands at Illinois), Col. Arnold Gabriel (U.S. Air Force Band), composer Karel Husa, and the founder of CBDNA (and his college mentor), William D. Revelli. 

Revelli’s visit was a remarkable experience as we had heard so many stories about him. We knew we had prepared well for this concert, but the band was so on edge in preparation for the maestro’s visit that the air was thick with tension the day Revelli arrived in Commerce, TX. 

I remember sitting on stage as our band nervously warmed up when Mr. Keene and Maestro Revelli suddenly appeared at the back of the auditorium. Instantly the band fell silent; everyone stopped playing and the two walked in reverent silence to the front of the stage. Mr. Keene made a superfluous introduction of Revelli, but no one heard it or remembers it. We knew who he was—legend in his own time, blah, blah, blah—and we were ready to play. I don’t think we even warmed up or tuned which was always a 15 to 20-minute ritual of any Keene rehearsal. But we had no way of knowing what would happen next. 

I will never forget how Revelli stepped to the podium, called for us to play Festive Overture, raised his baton, and conducted the Shostakovich from beginning to end without a stop. When we had finished, he placed his baton on the music stand, turned to Keene and said “Jim, what is there to rehearse? It is perfect.” Again, we sat in stunned silence, not knowing what to think about what had just happened. Keene too was uncharacteristically speechless and simply suggested that he move on to the Persichetti. 

Legendary!

Of course, when it came to the Vincent Persichetti Symphony for Band Op. 96, Revelli had plenty to say. I remember quite clearly him taking the principal oboist to task over a phrasing he wanted to hear before turning his attention to a certain percussionist whom he attacked (with a vengeance that Mr. Keene could only dream of), and whose name shall remain anonymous. The legends about Revelli were all true and we watched them unfold in real time.

The concert the following evening was no less inspiring and I’m sure that a good word was put in to then president of CBDNA, Frank Battisti of the New England Conservatory, upon Revelli’s return home.

All smiles and autographs post concert: William D. Revelli and an anonymous percussionist.

In case you are a musician who knew Mr. Keene, or were ever in one of his bands, you might want to know why he was particularly hard on clarinetists. After all, sax was his primary instrument, right? The photo below might help shed some light on that question. Note the clarinetist sitting on the outside of the last row to the left of the renowned Michigan Symphony Band. I’ll give you a minute…

University of Michigan Symphonic Band, Jim Keene first chair 3rd clarinet,

But how could a person who was such a stern taskmaster as Jim Keene have so many friends to count at the end of his life? Perhaps because, as his friend and college classmate David Devendorf would say, now you have “a better understanding of the source of the character that our Harv was, and the strength of character that he possessed.”

Perhaps Charles Spurgeon said it best: “A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.”

Tonight, the name James F. Keene is indelibly carved on my heart, and “I suspicion”—as Keene would say—on that of many others as well.

Student and mentor, same as it ever was, 2015 (photo courtesy of Liesa Moore)

A Parting Shot:

Keene always referred to his college classmates at Michigan as “Doctors, Lawyers and Captains of Industry.” His college roommate David Devendorf recalled that “we all arrived on the U of M campus only a year before our legendary football coach, Bo Schembechler. When Bo was hired, many characterized the culture of Bo’s predecessor (Bump Elliott) as a ‘country club.’ Bo knew that he would need to deal with the attrition that would occur when he carried out his own plan to convert the ‘country club’ atmosphere into a ‘boot camp.’”

It bears noting that the first person to walk into Coach Schembechler’s office upon his arrival at Michigan was none other than Michigan Director of Bands William D. Revelli which sparked a friendship between the two as they both shared a common work ethic and approach to running their respective organizations.

Bo managed the task of reforming the team in part by challenging them with a sign that he hung in the locker room that read: “THOSE WHO STAY WILL BE CHAMPIONS.” David recalled that “a week or so into spring practice a small group of seniors had seen and experienced enough of the program Bo was building. On their way out of the locker room door for the last time, they hung their own sign adjacent to Bo’s. The departing seniors’ sign read: ‘AND THOSE WHO LEAVE WILL BECOME DOCTORS, LAWYERS AND CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY.’” 

“Like the rest of us caddies, our Harv loved the players who stayed and became champions (UM 24-OSU 12 in 1969, Bo’s first game against Woody). …but Harv also admired those departing seniors who had the courage to vote with their feet, and to do so with style. Our Harv mentioned those guys, over the years, fondly and frequently.”

After a bit of online research, it appears the actual quote was scrawled on the bottom of the original sign with a black marker that read …”and those who leave will be doctors, lawyers, bishops, generals, captains of industry, and heads of state.” But I think you get the picture. 

A new printed sign soon replaced the graffitied one in the Michigan locker room.

(Photo Courtesy of the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library)
Promotional add for the Michigan Marching Band the year before Jim and Alice Keene moved to Commerce, TX (photo courtesy of Alice Keene)

Citations:

Those Who Stay: The Saving of Michigan Football (Episode Six)
U-M Bentley Historical Library

Thanks to David C. Devendorf for his “Keene” insight. (lightly edited)

Thanks to Bruce Richardson for his work in researching Mr. Keene’s papers from the archives of the University of Illinois Champaign—Urbana

Photos courtesy of Alice Keene, Dan & Liesa Moore, and the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library

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Give Me Pen and Ink and I Will Write My Mind: 10 Tips For Aspiring Writers (Myself Included)

“Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad!”

Although these words were written about the melancholy Prince Hamlet, William Shakespeare might also have been speaking to writers of academic papers, educational articles, journals, and blogs. Not to say that it is madness to do such work, but to give us insight into the art of good writing.

The aim of this post is to share a few tips that I have picked up on my journey toward becoming a better writer. That quest (while far from complete) included a spark for writing that ignited in grade school, went dormant for many years, and was rekindled in my thirties. Since then, I have written articles for Percussive Notes (publication of the Percussive Arts Society) and other periodicals. In the 1990s I was a staff writer for Jazz Player Magazine and Sticks and Mallets Magazine (both now sadly defunct).

To illustrate certain points, I have used examples from one of my first published articles “The War of the Rudiments” from Percussive Notes (PN, June 1994). The article was targeted to performers and teachers of percussion instruments and has since been re-printed in Bandworld magazine and has also been cited in other scholarly research. 

The article also benefitted greatly from the editorial process. And since I keep everything that I have ever written, I still have the original draft of the article that was submitted to Percussive Notes to use for comparison. 

Tip #1: Invite Your Readers In. Lure your readers into the article with a short and intriguing opening paragraph and—when possible and appropriate—a clever title.

Unfortunately, the two-paragraph opening of the article I originally submitted, did not follow Tip #1:

“Every so often percussion teachers set out on a mission to reassess their pedagogical techniques. The usual intent of this rethinking is to help percussionists develop necessary skills that will enable them to compete effectively in the current job market. Several years ago, percussion instructors seemed to have three main concerns about their students: 1) that they did not read music well enough 2) that they could not play keyboard instruments and 3) they spent entirely too much time playing drum rudiments in an effort to earn that N.A.R.D. button.” 
“With that the first shots of the percussive civil war had been fired, the camps were divided; the battle lines drawn. On one side the percussionists denounced rudimental drumming as an antiquated method of rote learning and on the other side the drummers continued their relentless pursuit of the perfect three minute roll.”

This opening was too long and didn’t invite the reader into the article or encourage them to continue reading. In the final published version, my third paragraph was moved to the top by Percussive Notes Senior Editor Rick Mattingly, and this became the opening:

“RUDIMENTAL DRUMMING in general and drum rudiments in particular are often at the center of heated debate regarding their relevance to a contemporary percussion program. Should they be given only cursory mention due to their historical significance? Should they be a part of every percussionist’s technical development? Should they be dismissed as a useless, antiquated teaching tool never to be used? All tough questions—none of which are about to be addressed in this article (I’m not that crazy). What will be addressed are the many positive aspects of rudimental drumming, and the importance and use of the fundamental philosophy of rudimental drumming known as the ‘rudimental idea.’”

This is a much more inviting opening that also confirms the lighthearted tone of the article and tells the reader exactly what will, and will not, be discussed. If readers want to know how the plot will thicken, they must continue reading. Some readers may require further encouragement in which case Tip #2 might be helpful.

Tip # 2: Keep it Short and Sweet and Looking Neat. Breaking up the prose into bite sized chunks gives the reader a sense of accomplishment every time they reach the end of a paragraph. This encourages them to read another, and another, and another until they find themselves happy and proud at the end of the article. While the visual aspect of an article for a publication is under the purview of the editor and designer, it might be helpful to keep this in mind during the writing process, particularly if you are writing a blog or a paper for a class without the assistance of an editorial team. 

Next is perhaps the most challenging aspect of keeping things short and sweet and it is not for the faint of heart. Read on if you dare.

Tip #3: Kill Your Darlings. As a writer you must never be afraid, as William Faulkner wrote, to “kill your darlings.”

To kill your darlings means to cut out any superfluous words, phrases, paragraphs, or even chapters that don’t serve the purpose of your writing. Pride of authorship is one of the most difficult writing maladies to overcome. Writers can become so attached to a passage they’ve worked hard to compose—an imaginative phrase or a clever wordplay—that they can’t bring themselves to hit the delete key if it doesn’t directly benefit the writing.

Here is an example of one of my darlings from the first draft: 

“What is the Rudimental Idea? In 31 words or less the rudimental idea is the concept of isolating specific patterns or techniques and perfecting them through numerous, exact repetitions, building both stamina, control, and dexterity.”
Final Version: “The rudimental idea is the concept of isolating specific patterns or techniques and perfecting them through numerous, exact repetitions, building stamina, control, and dexterity.” 

Although counting the words in the sentence and invoking a line from an old TV gameshow made me chuckle, it did nothing to advance the story. Kill it!

Here is another darling from the first draft:

Original: “Should they be dismissed as a useless, antiquated teaching tool never to be used? All tough questions. All burning questions. All profound questions which are not about to be addressed in this article (I'm not that crazy).”
Editor version: “All tough questions—none of which are about to be addressed in this article (I’m not that crazy).”

Brevity is indeed the “soul of wit.” Thanks again, Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Mattingly.

Tip #4: I have nothing to say and I am saying it. Composer and musical philosopher, John Cage famously began his Lecture on Nothing with the words “I have nothing to say and I am saying it.” Perhaps the biggest flaw I find in some academic or educational writing is that it doesn’t seem to have anything particularly compelling or original to say. When writing an article, think about what you are trying to prove, disprove, research, promote, expound upon, or sell, then keep the writing focused on that goal. 

Of course, there is writing that can exist simply for the purpose of entertainment. A funny observation or story about an interesting experience is enjoyable to read and there doesn’t always have to be a be a moral, parable, or object lesson to give the story a purpose, (e.g. Some People Have No Imagination). On the other hand, writers such as Dave Barry (Dave Barry is Not Making this Stuff Up) or Steve Martin (Pure Drivel) are good examples of humorous writing that often makes a larger point. 

Remember: only John Cage could get away with having nothing to say and saying it anyway, but in the end, you are still just telling a story, and everybody loves a good story.


Tip #5: Tell Me a Story. Writing to inform or educate is a challenge but the best writers of academic prose are able to turn seemingly dry subject matter into novelesque page-turners on par with a James Michener thriller. 

For example, in his introduction to The Work of Music Theory: Selected Essays, Thomas Christensen begins “It may not be intuitive for some of us to think of [music] theory in this way. After all, ‘theory’ is a big word in academia, one that we often associate with grand answers to difficult problems, whether or not we bring any positivistic and pseudo-scientific baggage in tow. But a good deal of what we call music theory is anything but that. It can also be focused on small, parochial questions; it can have modest pedagogical aims; it can be empirical or speculative, written in a private, quirky dialect that eludes easy translation. Indeed, so unruly is the historical record of music theory that it is even questionable whether the discipline is held together by anything other than the name.” 

This paragraph makes me want to read on to find out “what happens next.” The tone of Professor Christensen’s writing is scholarly yet colorful and compelling to read, and you also get the feeling that the words he uses are also those he uses every day. When you write, you should always sound like you (or at least a more dressed up version of you). This can help avoid the dangers described in Tip #6.

Tip #6: Avoid “tediousness” and “outward flourishes.” Perhaps the most obvious example of this is what I call Thesaurus-itus. Yes, that petrifying pestilence that plagues impassioned poets in the midnight hour as they frenziedly quest for mellifluous locutions to inject into the vacuous blank spaces of their otherwise insipid prose. In other words, sometimes aspiring writers resort to the Thesaurus at the last minute before a deadline to help them sound smarter. 

Like Shakespeare, I am a fan of alliteration (e.g. “that petrifying pestilence that plagues impassioned poets” from the paragraph above). It can be a powerful tool when used properly but it can also be an unfortunate side effect of Thesaurus-itus. The brain likes patterns, so writers can find themselves choosing a series of alliterations (repetition of consonant sounds typically) or assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) when using a synonym generator or thesaurus.

The thesaurus exists to help writers find the proper word that enables them to more precisely express an idea and to spur the writer’s brain to think critically about what they are trying to say. Some say that “words have meanings” while others hold that “words don’t have meaning; meanings have words.” (Firth, 1997) 

“Words don’t have meaning; meanings have words.”

John Firth

Finding the right word—the one that makes your meaning clear to a reader—may require drilling down several layers into the Thesaurus to find the best choice. The result is more often than not a complete rewrite of the sentence in question which is usually the best option.

Speaking of words and their meanings, Tip #7 can be helpful when putting those words together into ideas.

Tip #7: Consider carefully what you write. “I’ll call for pen and ink, and write my mind” wrote Shakespeare for the Earl of Suffolk who was unable to express his love for Margaret because he “dare not speak” his mind. In many instances however, writing your mind will just get you into trouble. From dissertations to emails, it might be a better approach to think carefully about something before committing it to prose.

Be careful of sweeping statements or hyperbole filled pronouncements that could be easily argued against or disproved with a simple Google search. Declaring something as the “greatest,” “first,” “fastest” “most important” or “only one of its kind” is often difficult to prove and quickly diminishes your credibility as a writer.

Similarly, statements that are unintentionally hurtful or insulting can be counterproductive to the point you are trying to make. In “The War of the Rudiments” I wrote, “On one side the percussionists denounced rudimental drumming as an antiquated method of rote learning and on the other side the drummers continued their relentless pursuit of the perfect three minute roll.” In hindsight I should have removed that sentence because it gave the impression that I was taking sides against rudimental drummers which was not the case at all. It was meant to be ironic, but I think it missed the mark.

As mentioned earlier, inside jokes or unexplained arcane humor can also cause your writing to fall short of its intended goal. It can be good to challenge readers to meditate on your writing, to have to think a little bit to understand what you are saying, but it must be presented properly and there must be a payoff (a reveal) at some point. I wish I had included an explanation of the significance of the “N. A. R. D. button” (mentioned in Tip #1). Even back in 1994 there were likely many percussionists reading the article who did not know what N.A.R.D was and what that statement meant. *

*The National Association of Rudimental Drummers was an organization dedicated to the promotion of Rudimental Drumming that existed from 1933 to 1977 with the support and assistance of the Ludwig Drum Company and the Ludwig family. Once you had performed your rudiments and a solo for a current N.A.R.D. member you received a patch (button) that would identify you as a member (I thought you would want to know). 

But if you make a bold pronouncement you better have someone to back you up.

Tip #8: Wait for Backup. Any good Cop Show will teach you to always wait for backup or bad things could happen! The same applies for writing. You may have a great idea but unless you are the ultimate authority on a given subject, you will need some backup. 

The point of “The War of the Rudiments” was to advance my concept of the “Rudimental Idea,” a notion put into action for me by an early percussion pedagogue, Haskell W. Harr:

PAS Hall of Fame Member Haskell W. Harr (1884-1986)
“In a 1979 article for Percussive Notes (Vol. 18 #1 Fall) Haskell Harr wrote that ‘A drum rudiment is a fundamental rhythmic pattern which when practiced diligently, will aid in developing a basic technique for the drum. The drum rudiments are the scales and arpeggios of the other instruments.’ He went on to describe the rudiments as being ‘misunderstood’ and that the purpose of the rudiments, ‘...is to provide a basic system for developing dexterity with the hands for the control of the drumsticks.’”

Mr. Harr laid the groundwork for my premise and is backing me up. All I had to do was put my own concept into words.


The next question might be, how do I get started?

Tip #9: Always Make an Outline (or don’t). Some will advise that making an outline before starting to write is the best way to begin a new project. I am a fan of outlining for longer works such as books or dissertations or for the late-night term paper due tomorrow. Organizing your ideas into an outline does make filling in the blanks easier since all you need to do is respond to each point of the outline and then before you know it, your work is done.

On the other hand, it is also good to simply start writing and see where it leads you. I always say that, for me, editing is easier than writing, so just go ahead and get your ideas down whenever they begin to flow, then you can go back later and tinker with them all you want. Writing takes practice, so anytime an idea pops into your head, write it down because it may come in handy at another time. If not, it will still be good practice.

The final tip is possibly the most important for anyone who as Shakespeare would say, “labors in the mind”, but it is also the most difficult to follow.

“Hard-handed men that work in Athens here, Which never labored in their minds till now…”

— William Shakespeare
(Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Tip #10: Get a Tougher skin! Writing is often a solitary pursuit but it can benefit greatly from the input of others. Teachers, friends, colleagues, and editors can provide helpful critiques of your work, inspire new ideas and directions for research, and even encourage you to finish a project. 

But to be able to take advantage of the advice of others, it will become necessary to learn how to take, and use, criticism. Accepting criticism is difficult but necessary, killing your darlings is excruciating yet crucial, and suffering rejection is both humiliating and edifying. They are all part of the writing process. Remember, if you don’t want to fall down, don’t go skiing, and if you don’t want to take criticism, don’t start writing.

Written work can be criticized or rejected for any number of reasons, but the trick is to keep trying and—returning once again to Hamlet—learning to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” In a 1991 interview, singer and song writer Paul Simon spoke about the dangers of writing songs about love when he said, “If you miss and they laugh at you or criticize you, get a tougher skin.”

Get tougher and work harder but, most of all, keep writing.

“You fail only if you stop writing.”

— Ray Bradbury

Writing, re-writing, criticism, editing, and more re-writing, are all part of the process. Like anything worth doing, effective writing takes practice and patience. I hope you find these tips helpful in your own journey toward good writing.

Citations:

Christensen, Thomas. The Work of Music Theory: Selected Essays, 2014. Ashgate Routledge

Firth, John R. Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. 1957. Oxford: OUP

Harr, Haskell. “Drum Rudiments.” Percussive Notes, Vol. 18, #1 Fall 1979, p. 71.

Moore, Dan. “The War of the Rudiments.” Percussive Notes, Vol. 32, #3 June 1994, pp. 29-33 (edited by Rick Mattingly, Senior Editor of Percussive Notes)

War of the Rudiments ArticleDownload

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Authenticity, Synergy, and Empathy in Teaching, and What’s Taylor Swift Got To Do With It?

As another year of teaching goes into the record books, I find myself reflecting—perhaps too much—on all the things that went wrong and not enough on the myriad things that went right. I always ask myself every year how it happened that I came to this beautiful place as a teacher. I am blessed with wonderful students who are talented, hardworking, industrious, creative, and (for the most part) disciplined. The words that spring to mind at the end of this particularly rewarding (and yes at times frustrating) school year are authenticity, synergy, empathy, and Taylor Swift. You may ask what these nouns have to do with teaching, or each other for that matter? I’m glad you asked…

Authenticity
I found it fascinating that at the close of 2023, the word authentic ascended to the honor of Word of the Year. Merriam-Webster writes: “A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023, driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.” But what does authentic mean for students and teachers, and why are we suddenly so interested?

For as long as I can remember we have been warned by advertisers to “beware of imitations” and “don’t accept substitutes.” We were told that P. T. Barnum once said, “there’s a sucker born every minute,” and nobody wants to be a sucker, so caveat emptor (buyer beware: if your Latin is rusty) became the mantra of the wise consumer. Then we learned that Barnum’s famous quote turned out to be of suspicious origin with many sources noting that the phrase has never been successfully attributed to him. It seems you can’t trust anybody these days.

In a famous television commercial from back in the day, the great actor Ricardo Montalban looked into the camera and told us that in his 1974 Chrysler Lebaron “I request nothing beyond the thickly cushioned luxury of seats available even in soft, Corinthian leather.” We didn’t know what Corinthian Leather was, but if you were going to pay extra for leather seats, then they darn well better be Corinthian. Years later, perhaps in a moment of his own authenticity, Montalban confessed to David Letterman what we likely already knew—Corinthian Leather was just a marketing ploy and not a real thing.

Of course, we want authenticity which is why we always demand “genuine” imitation leather or “real” faux fur. We wanted Naugahyde upholstery harvested from the skin of animals known as Naugas—mysterious creatures who shed their skin without causing harm to themselves. Animal rights groups went nuts until they found out that the mythical Naugas were just a marketing scheme for a synthetic material developed in Naugatuck, CT. You can look up that story for yourself. 

Will Rogers warned us that “advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.” You mean advertising isn’t authentic—say it ain’t so, Joe!

Merriam-Webster goes on to say that “Authentic has a number of meanings including ‘not false or imitation,’ a synonym of real and actual; and also ‘true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.’ Although clearly a desirable quality, authentic is hard to define and a subject for debate—two reasons it sends many people to the dictionary.”

In the name of authenticity, Elon Musk famously encouraged CEOs and politicians to run their own social media accounts—to speak in a more authentic voice on social media—however the jury may still be out on the success of that idea. Taylor Swift made news talking about her own desire to find her “authentic voice” as she encouraged others to find their “authentic self.” 

So is it possible that Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is an object lesson in the power of authenticity? It is described as “a 3-hour journey of discovery for both singer and audience,” and as it turns out, there are lessons to be learned that can inform any organization, business, or musical enterprise.

In a Forbes magazine article, Caterina Bulgarella poses the question: “What happens during an Eras event that makes it so engaging? There is realness, empathy, kindness, listening, a narrative (or journey-like) space big enough for all to partake and feel whole with oneself and others. Take this recipe and break it into three precepts – avoid alienation, increase authentic living, and balance external pressure – and you have a roadmap for creating an Eras-like workplace culture.”

But being authentic isn’t always appropriate and for good reason. Very few of us are able to reveal our true selves in our workplace, in our school, in our ensembles, or as part of a team—at least not without consequence. On the other hand, a little of it can go a long way toward building success, especially when synergy is added to the mix.

Synergy
In my teaching studio we speak often about the idea that we are employee owned and owner occupied. To me this means that success is generated from within. We create our own space for ideation that can come from any member of the studio. As the director of the program, much of the vision, direction, repertoire, and attitude of the studio comes from me, but first I must sell those ideas to my fellow employee owners. Everyone (or most everyone) must believe that the plans we make will advance the educational experience of all members—avoiding alienation and creating synergy. This is a lesson I learned from one of my greatest teachers, Dr. J.C. Combs.

I once told him what a profound experience it was to be a graduate assistant to him during a period of immense creative activity that resulted in many cool, one-of-a-kind musical projects, and how his positive and creative energy led us to so many amazing and memorable musical experiences.

JC Combs and the Wisdom of Words and Wrestlers

But he turned it around on me. To J.C., it was the energy he felt from his students that motivated him. When he got an idea, he was emboldened to pursue it because his students always “took the ball and ran with it.” They not only embraced his (often outrageous) schemes, but they also added their own ideas along the way. They became part of the creative process. It was this positive energy loop that was responsible for many of the remarkable projects accomplished by J.C. and his students. Add synergy to authenticity and you begin paving the way to creativity.

But increasing authenticity can be a tricky thing. In our studio, everyone is free to be themselves—as serious, goofy, quiet, quirky, or loud as they like—but there must also be guardrails. I often hear professors boasting about the “family” environment of their studio yet there is a flaw in this analogy. In a filial setting, many terrible words can be passed between siblings or between a parent and a child without lasting damage (in most cases), but in a professional setting one must take care about what you say to, or about, a colleague. Sometimes being too authentic can be hurtful to others making it impossible to recover a functioning work/school relationship, so there must also be empathy.

Empathy
Speaking about empathy, Bulgarella quotes Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying, “empathy is not a soft skill… it’s the hardest skill we learn—to relate to the world, to relate to people that matter the most to us.” Bulgarella goes on to say that “authenticity is a learning process that unfolds through empathy and listening, but also one that rests on openness and inclusion. Accepting and owning our own uniqueness is part of accepting and celebrating that of others.”

Balancing external pressure is perhaps the most difficult sea to navigate. A fault that many teachers have is believing that theirs is the only class a student should care about or prepare for. Understanding that students are often pulled in many different directions for a variety of reasons including graduation requirements, responsibilities at home, and countless other internal and external pressures is important to keep in mind when dealing with stressed out humans. Empathy is a key component to enable synergy and authenticity.

Perhaps the most important outcome of combining authenticity, synergy, and empathy is that, when mixed properly, it leaves the owner occupants excited to see what will come next in our musical journey together. As for me, I can’t wait for the next semester! Even if I am still not a Swiftie.

A Parting Shot
Here is just one example of what is possible when authenticity comes together with synergy and empathy to open the door to creativity. 

Challenge: Can we take a classic percussion ensemble composition written for eleven players and perform it with just four people?

Answer:


Citations:

Contributor, Word of the Year 2023, Merriam Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year

Quote Investigator, There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute, PT Barnum

Bulgarella, Caterina, Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace, Forbes online, 2023

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The (not so) Long Winter

Photo by Barry Reeger/AP

Well, It’s Groundhog Day again… and that of course means another post about one of my favorite films, Groundhog Day. The film, starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, and Chris Elliott, was released in 1993 and has continued to gain popularity. According to IMDB it is one of the best films of that year, topping Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park in popularity and earning a BAFTA Film award, among other accolades. Many consider it to be one of the best movies of all time. It is certainly an influential one. 

Murray plays Phil Connors, a self-absorbed Pittsburg Weatherman who is insulted by having to cover the Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, PA, and their resident groundhog weatherman, Punxsutawney Phil who shares his name and occupation as a prognosticator of weather. Phil gets caught in a time loop that causes him to relive the same day, February 2nd, over and over.

I first wrote about Groundhog Day in 2022. In that post I compared Phil’s plight to our collective situation due to COVID. I wrote that during the pandemic “I challenged myself to work more on my writing, and I was proud that I was able to create a new blog post every month for more than a year. But life and work can interfere with the best laid plans of mice and men, and I began to notice that while I completed a full list of tasks every day, I wasn’t making progress in other areas that were important to me.”

I went on to say: “Now, two years later it is clear that pandemic fatigue is still affecting me—along with everyone else. It seems there is more learning and adapting to do, but I’m OK with that.” Of course, being OK with something doesn’t mean being happy about it. 

It’s hard to say where we are in 2024. I’ve been a “glass half full” kind of guy most of my life yet I’ll admit that the last several years have been a challenge. But when you stop to think about the fact that this life isn’t supposed to be easy—that you are expected to have trials and tribulations—it seems we are on the right track of doing what we were created to do. Is it easy to become depressed, is it possible to succumb to inertia? Heck yeah!

At the beginning of the film, Phil has the wrong idea about winter. He gives his angry assessment of his situation saying: “You want a prediction about the weather? You’re asking the wrong Phil. I’m going to give you a prediction about this winter. It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey and it’s going to last you for the rest of your lives!”

Sometimes you just need to stop for a moment and take stock of your life. Do a puzzle, go to the mall, shovel some snow, or go to your boyfriend’s football game. When you do these things either voluntarily or via mandate, you might begin to see things a bit more clearly in retrospect.

When I look back over past accomplishments, I am reminded that some of the most creative and productive periods of my life took place during difficult times: floods, tornados, pandemics, derechos (didn’t even know what that was before coming to Iowa), and snow disasters all accompanied periods of doubt and depression but also (coincidentally) bursts of creativity. It may take months or years for ideas hatched during difficult times to come together, but the fact is that eventually the best ideas make their way from imagination to reality. Like Phil, you may have to survive a long winter (or two).

Many fans of Groundhog Day believe that it was only after Phil began to feel genuine compassion and concern for others, more than himself, that he could be freed from his (likely) self-imposed entrapment on February 2nd. Maybe that’s true for the pandemic or any other type of setback. I don’t know, but it couldn’t hurt to give that approach a try. 

In the third act, Phil finally gets a new outlook on winter as he completes his final report from Punxsutawney: “When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.”

Today is Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil (the real one) uncharacteristically has predicted an early Spring, something he has done only 21 times since 1887. It’s the fourth time since 2014 Phil has rendered this prediction. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reminds us that “on average, Phil has gotten it right 30% of the time over the past 10 years,” so there is that.

Shadow or no shadow, Phil probably just thought that there’s nothing wrong with giving folks a little hope during these uncertain times. I am OK with that.

Happy Groundhog Day and Happy Winter!

“Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don’t know, Phil. Maybe it’s not a curse. Just depends on how you look at it.” Rita

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More Sunflowers, Robert Johnson, and the Monkees

Art as Transaction

In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of repetition (meaning: practice) in the creation of art. I talked about Vincent Van Gogh and his love of painting sunflowers. One of his most famous paintings is a still life titled Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers of which he created as many as twelve different versions (a large portion of the world today only knows about the one that appears on posters, tote bags, and coffee mugs). Van Gogh painted sunflowers over and over again to gain mastery of color. He wrote to a friend that they were “painted with the three chrome yellows, yellow ochre and Veronese green and nothing else.”

Practice is certainly important but that is not the end of the story. Great art also requires passion, desire, originality, and commitment. Some people might see the Life Artistic as a lazy get-rich-quick scheme, or as Mark Knopfler ironically put it, “money for nothing and your chicks for free.” But once you look deeper you begin to understand that creating art is a lifelong pursuit with no guarantees of success. Thankfully, this fact does little to discourage talented artists from the chase. 

Musicians such as the renowned cellist Pablo Casals or drummer Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones lived their entire lives with the goal of making steady improvement over time. Why? Because they were compelled to do so. It was the journey more than the outcome that motivated them to pick up the cello or the drumsticks every day and put in work.

Guitarist Eddie Van Halen once said that “a lot of people want to be successful so they can go out and party and have fun. But for me, making music IS the fun part.” To Charlie Watts, “success meant being good enough that you would get to play every night.” These musicians clearly made a lot of money playing music yet their passion doesn’t seem to be motivated entirely by financial gain. 

Perhaps one of the most popular stories about achieving musical proficiency is that of Robert Johnson who, as legend held, sold his soul to the devil in return for becoming a great blues player. Guitarist and self-proclaimed musical minister Rory Block says “I never understood the idea that blues was the music of the devil. I think anything that has incredibly deep emotion and resonates with people in a life-changing way is of a spiritual nature.” 

Those who knew him would say that Johnson was not a particularly good blues musician when he first started playing in public. What seems to be missing from the story is the fact that Johnson took two or three years off from performing to study with other musicians and to practice. He returned as a much-improved musician which led one of his former teachers, Son House, to make the off-hand remark that “he must have sold his soul to the devil to be able to do that.” And with that a legend was born, or at least a pretty good movie. But in reality, there was no deal with the devil, no mystery, just good old-fashioned purposeful practice (steady improvement over time). 

“What seems to be missing from the story is the fact that Johnson took two or three years off from performing to study with other musicians and to practice.”

In my opinion, far too often people see music making as transactional. It is the idea that if I practice and get good, fame and fortune must surely follow as long as I play the music that has already been proven successful by someone else. This type of transaction is commonly focused on achieving financial gain or a career objective, rather than on a genuine desire to create originative works of art that stand on their own merit. Dick Schory, the creator of the Percussion Pops Orchestra of the 1960s puts it like this. “The entertainment business is a business of copycats. If something is successful, then everyone thinks that they can be successful, too, by copying it.”

To me, real music making is a lifelong pursuit. It is more marathon than sprint, more failure than success, and more outcome than income. Having the passion to create is just as important as putting in the hours of repetition necessary to build technique. Writer and director, Nicholas Meyer, says that “you can’t teach talent, but you can teach technique.” Sometimes however, lightning will strike when technique combines with desire, is fueled by talent, and graced with a little bit of luck, but there is certainly no implicit guarantee of a successful transaction. Renowned drummer Billy Cobham once said, “there are gifts but it may be the gift on an idea.”

“…real music making is a lifelong pursuit. It is more marathon than sprint, more failure than success, and more outcome than income.”

There is perhaps no better example of this phenomenon than in the story of the Monkees. Theirs is a classic tale of transactional music making yet with a somehow satisfying twist.

The Monkees: Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork

If you don’t know about the Monkees, you are either under age 50 or not interested in American pop culture from the 1960s. An oversimplified summary of their story is to say that the Monkees were a manufactured product created for a comedy television show based loosely on The Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night. They were to be the American answer to the Fab Four. Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork, and Micky Dolenz were chosen from over 400 applicants through purely acting auditions and unconventional job interviews. There was only a passing concern about their ability to play an instrument or sing.

Once assembled, the Monkees had a rather inauspicious start to their collective (music) career. Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork had previous experience as working musicians; Nesmith and Jones had already made a few recordings prior to the Monkees and Davy had done song and dance work as well as some musical theater, most famously in the play Oliver. Micky Dolenz was a child-actor who fronted his own rock band called “Micky and the One-Nighters.” He possessed a classic rock and roll voice but had little to no experience as a drummer—his assigned instrument for the show.

Responsibility for the music came to record producer Don Kirshner who worked with a group of legendary studio musicians known as The Wrecking Crew. That group included seasoned studio musicians such as Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Tommy Tedesco, Julius Wechter, Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, and others. For the first Monkees single, Last Train to Clarksville, Kirshner turned to the song writing team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. 

The Wrecking Crew recorded the instrumental tracks while only one member of the Monkees actually appeared on Last Train to Clarksville—Micky Dolenz—who sang lead. It was their first single and it became a hit almost as soon as it was released in 1968 just a short time after the show began airing. The music team quickly followed up with another hit, I’m a Believer, also sung by Dolenz, and everything seemed to be going to plan.

There is much debate as to what drove the success of the Monkees. Was it the music that got people to watch the show or was it the show that sent people to the record store? Either way, it was working, but there was trouble in paradise. The individual Monkees were unhappy that they weren’t allowed to contribute more to the creation of their music. Kirshner fought their involvement because he felt they had a good thing going with the studio musicians, and he didn’t want to change the formula. 

But in the minds of Mike, Peter, Davy, and Micky, they felt uncomfortable being successful “recording artists” without playing on their own records. In the film The Wrecking Crew Dolenz explained: “I think there was a lot of resentment in the recording industry that we’d come out of nowhere, left field, and sort of just shot right to the top without having to kind of go through the ropes.” They felt humiliated that they were a band with hit records yet didn’t actually help create or even play the music. 

This conflict and other issues related to the television production continued to grow and eventually led to the cancellation of the show after the second season. When their feature film, Head, became a box office flop, it looked as though the Monkees were finished. One scene in Head perfectly epitomized their frustration with their reputation as a band that didn’t create or play any of their own hit music.

Frank Zappa, an unlikely champion for the group, befriended the Monkees and appeared on both their television show and in the film. Zappa enjoyed their irreverence if not their musical ability. In the film, Head, Davy Jones performs a polished Hollywood style song and dance production number written by Harry Nilsson and choreographed by Tony Basil. Davy wears a classic tuxedo and tails that switches dizzyingly between all black and all white throughout the montage.

After finishing the possibly photosensitive seizure inducing number, Davy and a group of somnolent teenagers emerge from a sound stage onto a studio back lot alongside a large bull being led by Zappa (metaphors abound). Jones asks “what did you think?” to which Zappa replies “the song was pretty white.” Jones says with a smile, “so am I, what can I tell ya?” 

Zappa’s delivery is more droll than ironic at this point and he continues, “You’ve been working on your dancing, though it doesn’t leave much time for your music. You should keep working on your music. You should spend more time on it because the youth of America depends on you to show the way.” Davy responds with a cheerful and optimistic “Yeah?” as if he’d just been given a compliment. Then Zappa’s voice shifts to sarcasm as he responds, “Yeah.” He leads the bull away with only the doleful sound of the bell around the bull’s neck. Davy then breaks the fourth wall looking into the camera with a bemused expression. 

But the Monkees were determined to prove that they could indeed play and sing by releasing their own albums and touring in various incarnations for many years. Dolenz said in interviews that “it’s like Leonard Nimoy really becoming a Vulcan, we became this band.” Although Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and Michael Nesmith have now passed away, Dolenz continues performing and touring in tribute to his bandmates.

Here’s the twist: the Monkees continued to develop their craft both collectively and as individuals for the rest of their lives. They continued practicing and working at their art in pursuit of excellence. Before his passing, Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz doggedly continued to hone their skills as musicians, song writers, and recording artists. Their last project together is called Dolenz Sings Nesmith, on which Dolenz and company created new arrangements for songs penned by Nesmith. It is an enjoyable album that shows how far Dolenz has come as a musician and record producer and how good Nesmith really was as a songwriter. 

Neither gave up their pursuit of music, or the desire to make daily progress. They just kept painting sunflowers. And so should you….

Citations:

Sunflowers, Fastballs, and Rock ‘n Roll

Contributors, “Sunflowers,” Vangoghmuseum.ni. https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0031V1962

“Nothing but Sunflowers in a yellow earthenware pot. Painted with the three chrome yellows, yellow ochre and Veronese green and nothing else,” Vincent van Gogh to Arnold Koning, on or about 22 January 1889.

The Devil Didn’t Make Him Do It: Debunking the Robert Johnson Myth

Moore, Daniel Preston, The Impact of Richard L. “Dick” Schory on the Development of the Contemporary Percussion Ensemble, Dissertation, UMI, 2000 

Hey, Hey We’re the Monkees, TV Movie documentary, Alan Boyd, director, Chuck Harter, writer, 1997

The Wrecking Crew!, Documentary, Denny Tedesco, director, 2008

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185418/

A Parting Shot:

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote the upbeat and happy sounding Last Train To Clarksville as a protest to the Vietnam War. There is a certain lyrical dissonance as the driving guitar riff is contrasted with lyrics about being drafted and shipped off to war. The train is taking the protagonist somewhere to a military base and he knows that he may die in the war. “I don’t know if I’m ever coming home” is a poignant line set against the upbeat backdrop of the song. In keeping with the spirit of the obvious comparison of the Monkees to the Beatles, Hart wrote the prominent Oh No-No-No, Oh No-No-No” lyrics as a response to the Beatles famous “Yeah Yeah Yeah.”

Here’s a cultural collision. An American percussion group performing an avant-garde influenced version of Last Train To Clarksville, in Argentina! I think the Monkees would’ve loved it.

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In Defense of Travel and the Comfort of Strangers

This summer I found myself in the Suvarnabhum Airport in Thailand, at the beginning of a 24-hour travel day back home from an amazing Percussion Festival in Bangkok. As I waited to check in, a story from the New Yorker by Agnes Callard popped up on my Facebook feed. As I was currently in the middle of a long journey, it caught my attention. In her article The Case Against Travel, Callard opined that travel “turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best.”

“Kind of cheeky” I thought, but after years as a traveling musician, I could sort of see her point. I have witnessed many instances where people exhibit the worst kind of entitled arrogant, and obnoxious behavior anytime there is even the slightest hiccup in their travel plans. I once overhead someone say, “I like to travel; I just don’t like all these foreigners.” [head tilt]

Shakespeare tells us that “the course of true love never did run smooth,” and the same may be said of travel. There are always delays missteps, and all manner of pitfalls for even the savviest sojourner. When that happens, many people will try to bully their way to a desired outcome—a technique that nearly always fails.

My approach to dealing with travel issues is to try and “kill them with kindness” to secure the outcome I want. Of course, there have been numerous occasions when even my syrupy-sweet charm hasn’t helped solve the problem. In that case you just “roll with the punches,” as a friend once advised me. Often though, I am the one who ends up with a hotel voucher or gets bumped up a class to the chagrin of the angry people in the line.

But I don’t think this is the case that Callard is making. She asks “what is the most uninformative statement that people are inclined to make? My nominee would be ‘I love to travel.’ This tells you very little about a person, because nearly everyone likes to travel; and yet people say it, because, for some reason, they pride themselves both on having travelled and on the fact that they look forward to doing so.”

To support her thesis, she enlists some heavy hitters who share her opinion including G.K. Chesterton, who wrote that “travel narrows the mind,” and Ralph Waldo Emerson who called travel “a fool’s paradise.” She even claims that philosophers Socrates and Kant rarely ventured from their respective hometowns of Athens and Königsberg. 

Socrates asked “how can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you?” I think most people would interpret that as meaning we can’t escape our problems through travel because they are always within us, or more simply put; “wherever you go; there YOU are.” Besides, who would even want to travel any great distance in an Ox cart or on the back of a donkey?

“Wherever you go, there you are.” Socrates (sort of)

Let me stop here to say that travel isn’t the same thing as a vacation. It is a journey, and as such it is a tiring, arduous, unglamorous, and possibly dangerous undertaking. In many cases there is an implied purpose for such a trip. For me it is self-edification, and to also share what I’ve learned in this life about music with other interested people. If I’m being honest; I rather hate to travel. I enjoy being there but whenever I think about another twelve to fifteen hours in a cramped airplane eating terrible food, and navigating complex itineraries alongside grumpy people, I ask myself, “why am I doing this again?”

But it is Mark Twain who inspires me to, once again, get on that plane, train, boat, bus, taxi, Tuk Tuk, Wiki Wiki, or Buick LeSabre-with-no-back-seatbelts (welcome to China!). Twain wrote that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Twain

I firmly believe this to be true. You can learn a great deal about yourself when you are given the opportunity to see how others live. However, the challenge is in resisting the urge to apply your own standard of living to everyone you meet in every place you visit. Taking a comparative attitude of living conditions and lifestyles, or perhaps what Twain meant by “charitable views of men and things,” might keep you from seeing that most people are happy with their lives and proud of their home and country, and this is always good to experience in person. 

Jack Kerouac I think said it best. “No matter how you travel, how ‘successful’ your tour, or foreshortened, you always earn something and learn to change your thoughts.” In some cases, taking the “charitable view” can also be a benefit when people in other parts of the world (or in your own backyard) are truly in need by any standard. Again, you can always “learn to change your thoughts.”

“No matter how you travel, how ‘successful’ your tour, or foreshortened, you always earn something and learn to change your thoughts.” Kerouac

But there is one common thread that I have experienced many times as a traveler: the aid and comfort of strangers. The experience that I remember most vividly was my first real trip outside the U.S. which took me to Japan in 1990. I was travelling to Kumamoto to perform with a college big band at the invitation of a friend and former student. We were going to play several gigs with a variety of local musicians, so I was traveling with all my own electronic mallet percussion instruments in a large rolling trap case (one that would not go anywhere near a plane today).

Performing with the Cosmic Mind Jazz Orchestra, Kumamoto, Japan (1990)

The trip took me first to Osaka where my connecting flight to Kumamoto was cancelled. At that point I was completely adrift with no plan for the night. I had wandered the airport for hours looking for a place to make a nest and sit and wait until my flight the next day. It was late and I was tired when I learned that I couldn’t stay in the airport overnight in Osaka. I needed to find a corner to stash my giant trap case and then exit the terminal until morning (imagine such a scenario today). 

I was standing near the temporary lockers, head down and lost in thought when I heard a voice ask, “tough day?” Looking up I see a Japanese gentleman also putting his things into a locker. “Yeah” I replied in a daze. He was the first person I had heard speaking English all day. He replied, “Yeah, me too. My flight got cancelled. What are you gonna do?” I said I didn’t know, so he told me that he was going to get a room in the airport hotel which was attached to the terminal, and he asked If I wanted to go there too. Trying to be cool, I said “sure, why not?” I was actually quite terrified. We went to the hotel together where I got a room that was so tiny that I had to leave the case behind the desk in the lobby because there was no floor space large enough for it in the room. 

Performing with my good friend Yuji Hashimoto in Kumamoto, December, 1990. Note the rolling trap case!

My new friend then asked if I wanted to get something to eat. Feeling bold I said of course, so we got a cab and ventured out into Osaka where we ate street food and got to know each other. He was a Japanese Ex patriot who owned a Japanese restaurant in Oakland, California and was coming home to see his dying mother. He hadn’t been in Japan for more than 20 years, so his Japanese was “a bit rusty.” One thing was sure, it was better than mine. 

We enjoyed a warm evening eating hot soup and noodles from a street vendor, walking around, and talking. As we returned to the hotel, he gave me his business card and said if I was ever in Oakland, I should give him a call. I regret never reaching out to him after we got back to the states because he was my Strange Angel that night in Osaka. 

It was this kind of comfort from a stranger that has given me hope for humanity on numerous occasions since. He was certainly my angel that night, but maybe I was his too. As we walked, he talked about his mother and how he regretted not coming home to see her more often now that it was maybe too late. Perhaps he could only say these things to a stranger. I don’t know.

Visiting the Kumamoto Castle in my ubiquitous “Here I am” pose. December 1990

Now, some thirty years later, as we made our way through thousands of fellow travelers in the bustling Bangkok airport, we spotted three young Korean students who had also attended the festival. What a nice surprise. We were excited to see them and said a big hello but we could quickly tell they were nervous and a bit scared. We learned that the passport of one of the students was expiring within the week, and the airline wouldn’t let him get on the plane, even if he was going back home to Korea (strange, but such is the world today).

We stopped and tried to comfort them while one of the other students made arrangements for them on a different airline. By the time I got checked in they had booked another flight for the next day and my friends who were dropping me off, took them back to the hotel in Bangkok. For a moment I thought about my friend in Japan from so long ago and smiled at the thought that the comfort of strangers still prevails.

So, I guess I’ll continue to rely on the words of Jack Kerouac: “the road must eventually lead to the whole world,” which for me means that I will continue to love to hate to travel, and try to be the best version of myself along the way until I have seen as much of the whole world as I can.

33-years later “here I am” in Bangkok, Thailand. Wherever you go, there you are!

Citations:
Callard, Agnes, The Case Against Travel: It turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. New Yorker Magazine Online, accessed July 24, 2023

Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), The Innocents Abroad, [1869—1st Edition], Project Gutenberg, The Innocents Abroad, Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #3176]

Listening:

Dan Moore Plays the Phantom with the Cosmic Mind Jazz Orchestra in Japan 1990

Hanuman by Jinnawat Mansap performed by Iowa Percussion
Very cool music from Thai composer Jinnawat Mansap beautifully arranged for percussion ensemble by Tanasit Siripanichwattana. One of the perks of travel is finding new music.

A Parting Shot:
In a night club in Argentina, a young woman approached me wearing army boots and wildly-dyed hair (long before such trends were popular) and asked if I was an American, to which I responded a cheerful “yes.” Her next words were shouted emphatically over the sensuous sounds of Tango music; “I f#*%ing hate George Bush!” I had so many questions but since there didn’t seem to be any curiosity in her remark, I simply responded, “OK, I’m going to join my friends now…”

Mark Twain’s suggestion about travel might’ve been a benefit to this person but then again maybe not.

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Attempting the Absurd; Achieving the Impossible; and Why Not?

If you are a percussionist, and you think about things way too much, as I apparently do, it might occur to you that the very idea of playing beautiful and compelling music on an amalgam of bits and bobs of wood and metal is something really quite absurd. If you aren’t a percussionist, or even a musician, you might feel the same way, therefore a little explanation might be of help to everyone involved.

Since the beginning of time, humans have desired to make and play musical instruments. Many consider the human voice to be the first musical instrument, yet there are differing opinions. In his book Drumming at the Edge of Magic, Grateful Dead drummer and writer, Mickey Hart gives his theory that “[i]n the beginning was noise. And noise begat rhythm. And rhythm begat everything else.” “Everything” in this scenario includes the rhythmic vibration of the vocal cords that produced speech and eventually singing. He goes on to say that “[t]his is a cosmology a drummer can live with. Strike a membrane with a stick, the ear fills with noise—unmelodic, inharmonic sound. Strike it a second time, a third, you’ve got rhythm.” 

The oldest handmade musical instrument in the world is said to be a 60,000 year old flute made by Neanderthals (who else, would make a flute before a drum?). The National Museum of Slovenia, where it is housed, describes the instrument as being “made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear and has four pierced holes. Musical experiments confirmed findings of archaeological research that the size and the position of the holes cannot be accidental—they were made with the intention of musical expression.” 

But how and why did humans come up with the idea of making music on inanimate objects in the first place? Maybe the people who invented musical instruments did so because they couldn’t sing? Or maybe not. For whatever reason, many of earth’s inhabitants are compelled to make music on instruments, and they search, tirelessly, to find or create the technique or the technology to make that happen. From Ctesibius of Alexandria’s creation of the organ in the third century BC, to Garage Band or Pro Tools today, musicians have looked to technology to help them make music. 

The existential need for music making often compels humans to find ways to make music even in the face of oppression or poverty as in the case of the people of Trinidad and Tobago who created two musical instrument genres; tamboo bamboo, a form of music making using bamboo stalks cut to different lengths to accompany singing; and the National Instrument of Trinidad, the steel pan.

Musicians search for any type of conveyance into the ears (and hearts) of those who might hear their sounds and enjoy them. They hope to free the inner voice that is compelled to find a way to connect with its audience.

Some conveyances, however, connect with their audiences better than others.

In the case of mallet percussion instruments, the notion that repeatedly striking a collection of tuned wooden planks, steel bars, or aluminum slats, with yarn-covered-balls-on-sticks, could create a pleasing musical sound seems ridiculous at best and futile at worst, yet as percussionists, we attempt to do it every day. 

From the humble beginnings of mallet percussion, which includes the xylophones of Africa, the European Strohfiedel, and the marimbas of Central America, mallet players have attempted to amuse, entertain, and move their listeners with these simple instruments. In the 1920s, the xylophone was a novelty instrument that was often referred to by its zen-like nickname, “the woodpile.” Its repertoire was drawn from every type of music that captured the imagination of the performers. Playing music on a pile of wood (the essence of the xylophone) seems outrageous when you think about it. 

Just playing a simple four-part chorale on a marimba is one of the most challenging things to perform, simply because the instrument was never meant to do such things. Attempting to produce the illusion-of-sustain by means of a tremolo (roll) can be a blister-inducing, frustrating, and exhausting experience for a marimba player. 

When you further consider that playing anything on a mallet instrument other than idiomatic music is a stretch to begin with, things get even more dicey. For instance, who among us has the requisite birthright to play Bach? Well, depending on who you ask; practically no one! But we percussionists like to play Bach, as well as many other types of classical and non-classical music, that were never intended for the marimba, such as jazz or popular music.

So, if these things are so difficult to do, why bother? It’s simple; we are driven to do so.

Some are more driven than others I suppose.

It is often said that an instrument finds you, not the other way around. It has been said that you can force a child to choose the piano but very few will be chosen “by” the piano in return. I came to percussion almost completely by accident having fully intended to become the next Herb Alpert (the charismatic trumpet player and band leader of the 1960s). But that is a story for another day. Once an instrument chooses you, it soon becomes your passion to play on it the music that speaks to you—it becomes a musical imperative.

I’m a big fan of instrumental musicians who take on different types of music and recast it in their own image. Musicians such as Bill Frisell, Jake Shimabukuro, Dick Schory and the Percussion Pops Orchestra, and the Ventures (arguably, the best-selling instrumental Rock band in music history) have all inspired me in different ways. 

The Ventures were a guitar based group of the 1960s (and beyond) who were famous for their numerous and varied recordings. When inducting them into the 2008 class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, presenter John Fogerty said “the Ventures have gone on to record over 250 albums. Now days some of us would be happy to sell 250 albums.”

The Ventures philosophy was that if you were going to do an instrumental cover of someone else’s tune, then you needed to find a way to make it sound like a completely new composition. In their words, it had to be “Venturized.” As much as 90% of the music they recorded were covers of other people’s music. But the covers were so creative, and in many instances so different from the original, that most people thought they were the band’s original compositions. Their biggest hits such as Walk, Don’t Run, Wipeout, Hawaii 5-0, and Pipeline were all covers!

Hawaiian ukulele artist Jake Shimabukuro plays a repertoire that ranges from classic Hawaiian folk songs to his original compositions, and covers of the music he grew up listening to. He famously performs a version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody on ukulele. Jake also cleverly reimagines music from Michael Jackson, George Harrison, and others, and you can hear in his performances how much he loves and respects this music. He says “my mother taught me three chords on the uke and I was “hooked.” He was chosen by the ukulele. Then, he set out to imbue the music he loved with his own vision. He does things with the ukulele that the ukulele was never meant to do. Right On!

The Britain Moore Duo (BMD), my steel pan and marimba duo of the last 35 years, also tends to work from covers of other people’s music—often against the advice and admonishment of our mentors. We call our covers “BMD Treatments.” One of our most popular covers is of the Gershwin classic Summertime. We used an Afro-Caribbean 12/8 groove and then curiously never played the melody of the tune until the final chorus, which always causes a few head tilts from the audience.

But loving a piece of music and being able to make it sound good on your own instrument can be a problem. How do you know if it will work? Sometimes a performer’s love for a piece of music blinds them to the reality that they are unable to capture the essence of it on their instrument. 

I am lucky to be in a position in my performing career that my repertoire has evolved to include only the music that speaks to me personally. Along the way I have developed a sort-of litmus test to determine if a piece of music I love can be translated to the instruments that have chosen me (those absurd mallet percussion instruments).

The Composer Test:

If a composer were to hear you performing their composition, would they think you were mocking it? Would Mozart be insulted by your performance or would he be inspired to run home and write a new piece for you and your instrument? Think about how you would feel about your version if the composer was sitting in the audience.

What about vaudeville, parody, and humor in music? There are lots of examples of arrangements that are meant to be funny takes or send-ups of otherwise serious music. In this case, you just have to play it flawlessly and then hope that the composer has a good sense of humor.

Inventory:

To begin, a quick inventory of the notes and essential elements will tell you if you have what you need to perform a piece of music that you love. Even if the answer is no, there are ways to make things work. In classical or contemporary music, it is possible to do some note reassignments or octave shifting as long as the general direction of a line is not interrupted by doing so. I personally don’t mind transposing entire pieces (although some of my colleagues take issue with that practice). 

The ukulele version of Jake Shimabukuro’s Bohemian Rhapsody has some pretty cool note reassignments but the inventory of notes and essential elements of the original are all there, lending themselves to the creation of an imaginative rendition of a ubiquitous song.

Listen, hear, and embrace:

It should go without saying that one should always listen to how your music sounds, however, we can get so caught up in the process of invention that we might be listening without really “hearing.” We continue to hold the original version of the music in our heads and not listen critically enough to our own interpretation. 

It can be a difficult admission to realize that we are simply unable to make a particular piece of music sound good—at least not yet. Perhaps a few more years of practice and a little more musical maturity will make the difference the next time around. This has happened to me on many occasions (also a story for another day). But if you try and fail, it’s OK, because as Herb Alpert would say, “the beauty of music making isn’t in attaining perfection because you can never get there. That’s the seductive part of it.”

It is important to embrace the true sound of your instrument which includes both the instrument’s advantages and disadvantages. But this can only be done with honest critical listening to how you and your instrument sound today, and by asking yourself if your arrangement is transcendent.

Does it transcend?

Audiences have different reactions to hearing music performed out of context. If I play a pop song on the marimba or vibes, some in the audience will recognize a familiar tune immediately. If I play a standard song like Moon River, someone might indicate their recognition with a knowing laugh or a soft “ahh.” Others will simply enjoy the arrangement and be attracted to the sound but will come up after the show and ask, “what was the name of that song you played?” Taken out of context and without the words, a good arrangement should transcend the original and become something both familiar and new, just as the Ventures tried to do. Simply put, does your version have its own intrinsic beauty that transcends the original? Does it need the lyrics in order to be meaningful? In many cases, the answer is no. Again Herb Alpert hits it out of the park, when he says “people don’t listen with their ears, they listen with their soul.”

So, I encourage you to continue to pursue the music that is in your head and in your heart regardless of how crazy it may seem because, as M. C. Escher wrote; “Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.”

Here is a playlist of  some of the covers that I’ve enjoyed creating:

Citations:

Drumming at the Edge of Magic: a Journey into the Spirit of Percussion
Mickey Hart with Jay Stevens and Fredric Lieberman, Harper Collins, 1990

National Museum of Slovenia
https://www.nms.si/en/collections/highlights/343-Neanderthal-flute

Classic History: The History of the Pipe Organ,
http://www.classichistory.net/archives/organ

Herb Alpert Is (documentary film)
https://www.herbalpertis.com