Category: My Life & Times

My story and I’m sticking to it!

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Drummers are Funny, But Are They Smart?

Let’s just go ahead and skip directly to the conclusion. Drummers have always been serious, creative, industrious, funny, and—yes—smart. If this is somehow news to you, please keep reading. If you, or someone you love is a drummer, share this post.

For as long as I can remember, musicians have enjoyed a merry “war of wits” by poking fun at each other with jokes made at the expense of others. No instrument, voice, or conductor is spared from these jovial jabs. Viola and singer jokes perhaps dominate the list, but it’s all in jest—right? —or is it? 

Historically, drummers and percussionists (fancy name for a drummer) have always enjoyed a good laugh. We were never afraid to laugh at ourselves or poke fun at others.  Unfortunately, people sometimes misinterpret humor as a lack of intelligence, seriousness, or ability. When it comes to drummer jokes one gets the feeling that there is a bit of an edge to these baleful barbs. 

Perhaps I’m being oversensitive, but something happened along the way and percussionists began to quietly take offense at these jokes, particularly mean-spirited ones. 

I mean, there is no real reason that a “drummer without a girlfriend would necessarily be homeless,” or that “you would know the riser is level when the drool comes out of both sides of the drummer’s mouth.” Well, that’s just plain mean (but still kinda funny).

But can a drummer be both smart and funny? 

My long-time mentor Dick Schory (of Percussion Pops Orchestra fame) would tell me that he and his colleagues Bobby Christian, Thomas L. Davis, Tom Brown, and others “were very serious about what we were doing; we just didn’t take ourselves too seriously.” They weren’t afraid to be funny—even silly by modern standards. They could lean into the humor because the musicianship and artistry would speak for itself. It was a given, but it may also have worked against modern percussionists.

Photo shoot from the album Music for Bang, Barooom, and Harp by Dick Schory and the Percussion Pops Orchestra. Schory under a ponderous pile of percussion.

You might think “the percussionist doth protest too much,” but I for one have experienced real discrimination because I was assumed to be just a “dumb drummer.” I’ve known extremely qualified people who have been denied promotions to certain types of positions simply because of such implicit biases. 

This type of discrimination has caused people in certain academic positions to forget that they are still drummers at heart. They know deep down they love hitting stuff to make music but wouldn’t dare bring it up at a dinner party at the president’s house. They feel compelled to renounce their heritage—a history that is steeped in the traditions of Vaudeville, Spike Jones, The Percussion Pops Orchestra, PDQ Bach, the Blue Men Group, and many others. What did they all have in common? They possessed a keen sense of comedy, they were accomplished musicians, and they were quite serious about their work.  

After I entered the ranks of higher education in 1985 and then as I continued my education as a doctoral student in Percussion Performance in the 1990s, I began to figure out why percussionists were slowly losing their sense of humor. It was time to get “serious.”

As a DMA candidate I was responsible to know everything about the art, craft, history, and lore of percussion but also, everything about classical music writ large including the music of Bach, Beethoven, and The Boys, how many pedals there are on a harp, and other musical minutiae. 

It is reasonable to expect that an educated musician would know about music broadly speaking but if you were a violinist much of music history is YOUR history. Was everyone expected to also know the history and development of the marimba, steel pan, or drumset? Probably not.

It occurred to me that percussionists seemed to be held to a different standard, but I was OK with that because I had already developed an intellectual curiosity about music, art, history, languages, culture, and much more. This curiosity fueled my desire to learn for the rest of my life. It also informed my teaching, performing, and mentoring to this day. 

It took longer to nearly kill my sense of humor; it was a close call.

It took longer to nearly kill my sense of humor, but it was a close call. Having fun with my colleague Jean Francois Charles on clarinets on a Dick Schory classic, Baby Bossa Nova.

Along the way I began to notice that many percussionists share the same passion for erudition as me and it became clear that—hey! — drummers are smart! 

Here are some examples:

Drumming at the Edge of Magic, Mickey Hart

My first exposure to a drummer/scholar was reading Mickey Hart’s books Drumming at the Edge of Magic, Planet Drum, Spirit of Sound, and Songcatchers. Hart was one of the drummers for the grandfathers of the Jam Band movement, the Grateful Dead. He was a rock star who wanted to learn about the history of percussion, the stories, the legends, and the myths. He pursued this knowledge passionately, like a Bonafide Music Scholar. He collected stories and posted them on an enormous timeline of 3” by 5” cards nicknamed “the Anaconda” that encircled the walls inside his barn/studio on his Novato, California ranch. The Anaconda turned into the four books mentioned above.

My friend and duo partner of many years, Mat Britain, and I were inspired to collect quotes about percussion, music, and life as a result of reading Hart’s books. We still collect and share quotes and stories like baseball cards.

Gary Burton quote, oil on canvas by Alexis Alduenda.

Drummers such as David Garibaldi, Steve Smith, and others dug deep into the vocabulary of drummers of the past to develop their own unique voice. Their work was intellectual, thorough, and inspired, and as a result of their efforts, they developed a completely new lexicon of drumming simply by looking back, doing the research and analysis.

In the contemporary percussion world, there is Steven Schick who I met in 2000. He was an alumnus of the University of Iowa where I had recently become the second percussion professor in the history of the school and the successor of his teacher Thomas L. Davis. 

Simply put, Schick was an enigma! A polyglot who was the most eloquent and intelligent thinker I had ever met, but like me, he was a drummer, a strange traveler in a hostile land. 

But few musicians of any stripe have attained the level of influence on the musical world than that of Steven Schick. He set himself apart early on as the creator of an entire genre of musical performance—one of his own design. Dumb drummer—I think not.

The Percussionist’s Art, Steven Schick

He shared his artistic philosophy in his seminal book The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams, which has become a standard text for composers, percussionists, and lovers of new music. In his review of the book, composer Steve Reich wrote: “Just Imagine, as Steven Schick points out, you (the percussionist) and your friend (the cellist) are walking along. She with her extremely expensive and tradition-hallowed cello, and you’re on the way to the junkyard to pick out the most clangorous brake drum you can find and from there to garden supplies to find really nice-sounding flowerpots.” 

There’s that self-deprecating humor again, but don’t let it fool you!

Throughout my professional career, I’ve enjoyed many great opportunities to share ideas, meals, and (more than a few) drinks with some of the most brilliant minds in percussion. I’ve argued well into the wee-small-hours with percussion scholars such as Bob Becker (whose amazing book, Rudimental Arithmetic, I helped to edit), on topics from the arcane corners of rudimental drumming to the fringes of contemporary music. 

These were stimulating, Illuminating, and edifying conversations that helped to shape my thinking about percussion as a noun (the art of), a verb (to percuss), an adjective (percussive) or an adverb (to strike percussively). These conversations clearly transcended anything remotely relating to “how many drummers it might take to screw in a light bulb.” *

I’m not saying that these conversations were devoid of humor. Far from it because percussionists can move easily from the sublime to the ridiculous, but we are just more guarded these days about who we allow to hear it.

The younger generation also holds great potential. One example among many is Professor Michael Compitello of Arizona State University. His writing is incredibly thoughtful and thought provoking. We’ve struck up a friendship based on our shared love of all things percussive (adjective: relating to or produced by percussion). His upcoming book will be a deep dive into several important topics, and I look forward to reading and responding more to the early drafts of his work. I wonder if he knows any drummer jokes…?

In the early 2000s, I discovered that by becoming one of the few tenured professors of percussion at a Research-One (R1) Institution who also held a completed doctorate in music that I would begin to be called upon to serve as an outside reviewer of other percussion faculty.

In twenty-plus years I have completed evaluations of over forty percussion professors at major universities across the country. What have I learned? Quite a lot actually. I often find that most percussion professors are overworked, misunderstood, and (to quote Shakespeare for a third time) “altogether misprized.” 

This is because otherwise musically educated people don’t seem to know what goes into making music on percussion instruments. For this reason, I call what we do as percussionists “Attempting the Absurd.” Imagine making beautiful and compelling music on a pile of wooden or metal slats with yarn covered balls on sticks. That about sums it up for me. Read more about that here:

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

It is amazing how often a musician will begin a conversation with me by saying “I don’t know anything about percussion.” My response is almost always the same; “you know about music, right? You should judge us on the same criteria as you would any musician.”

The majority of those I have reviewed are producing robust levels of creative and scholarly work—recordings, videos, books, commissions, blogs, lectures, or podcasts. For the most part, they speak and write eloquently about their work as musicians who play percussion, and they teach everything from percussion studio to marching band, new music ensembles, jazz courses, world music, history of rock ‘n roll, and much more. 

It is encouraging, however, that many of the drummers/percussionists I know still enjoy a good joke and have not lost their sense of humor entirely—yet. I hope that never happens but as Bob Dylan would say, “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”

So, if you hear us make a self-deprecating drummer joke, don’t be confused. There is method behind the madness; a rich history mixed with quite a bit of intellectual rigor, discipline, creativity, wit, humility, and—yes—humor.

My experience is that many of the smartest people I know are some combination of writers, thinkers, humorists, scholars, poets, artists, comedians, and, as it happens, drummers. 

The conclusion? Well, you know it already. Drummers are funny and smart, and the world is better for it.

One more thing before we go. The fact is that being funny takes wit, intelligence, creativity, and timing. There is an ancient show-biz truism that says, “dying is easy, comedy is hard,” but that discussion will have to wait for another day.

*In case you were wondering, “it takes ten drummers to screw in a light bulb; one to do the job and nine more to say that Steve Gadd could do it better.”

The above cartoon was created by my good friend Steve Smeltzer, whose work has appeared in publications such as Sweetwater Music Calendars, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Health Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, and Better Homes and Gardens. He is the author of a book titled Fort Wayne in a Nutshell: A Cartoon Retrospective. Steve is also a darn good drummer and teacher!

Citations:

Hart, Mickey. Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion, 1 January 1990, Harper San Francisco, ISBN 978-0062503749

Hart, Mickey. Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm, 1 January 1999, Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0062503978

Hart, Mickey. Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music, 1 October 1999, Grateful Dead Books, ISBN 1888358238

Hart, Mickey. Kostyal, KM. Songcatchers: In Search of the World’s Music, 1 June 2003, National Geographic, ASIN B0002UVA5W

Schick, Steven. The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams, 15 May 2006, University of Rochester Press, ISBN 978-1580462143

Becker, Bob. Rudimental Arithmetic (A Drummer’s Study of Pattern and Rhythm), 17 September 2008, Keyboard Percussion Publications, ISBN 0982112661

Smeltzer, Steven. Fort Wayne in a Nutshell: A Cartoon Retrospective, 6 July 2024, ISBN 979-8332358968

Rudimental Arithmetic is now available.

Smeltzer, Steven. Cartoon “Yeah, that’s good, but Gadd could do it better.” © 2025

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East Texas Recollectus: Continuity and Perspicacity, DeeAnn Gorham (1946-2022)

On March 10, 2022, the angels in heaven double-checked the tuning of their harps and reviewed their music fundamentals because Ms. DeeAnn Gorham was coming home.

DeeAnn Logan Gorham (1946 – 2022) was a talented musician, an accomplished singer and pianist, who crash landed at East Texas State University in 1975 and continued to stir things up for the next 38 years

DeeAnn was “genuinely joyful, brilliant, intensely disciplined, keenly observant, serious, playful, and deeply loyal.”

Ms. Gorham was a diva; sophisticated, funny, and over the top but extremely no nonsense in her pursuit of being a respected university music professor. In her memorial service at Kavanaugh Methodist Church where she served as Music Director for many years, it was said that “DeeAnn was not only a musical virtuoso; she was also kindness incarnate; patient and loyal.” I and many others can attest to that fact that she was “genuinely joyful, brilliant, intensely disciplined, keenly observant, serious, playful, and deeply loyal.”

In college I was marginally funny and allegedly talented, but I was absolutely none of the other things that Ms. Gorham embodied. She was erudite, travelled, and most of all passionate about music. She, among many of my college professors inspired me to work harder and reach higher than I thought possible, or convenient.

One particular inspiration came in the unlikely form of Class Piano.

A harsh realization for many music majors is that in college one must take, and ultimately pass, piano class. I was a self-taught pianist who could play a pretty mean Smoke on the Water or the Theme from Shaft but otherwise I had no idea what I was doing when it came to real piano technique, sightreading, or music theory.

Unwittingly, Ms. Gorham became my class piano teacher. I suspect I was among her first students in piano class, which I had put off as long as possible. There was no more avoiding the inevitable. But taking her class turned out to be one of the most propitious curricular detours I had taken, because she was just what I needed at that point in my college career.

Among other precepts DeeAnn believed in the power of drill and discipline in the pursuit of musical excellence. I’ll give you an example.

“A proper diva would never arrive to a class on time.”

To begin, one must understand that a proper diva would never arrive to a class on time. She would rather glide into the piano lab promptly at eight-o-two every morning, her head erect as if balancing an invisible tiara on her head. She appeared with a load of books and papers in her arms, and an expectation that her pupils be seated and waiting. By the time she crossed the threshold, each student in the class was expected to have a page of note-book paper with lines numbered one to ten and their name and the day’s date printed legibly at the top. 

As she casually organized herself—arranging books and papers on the desk and piano, she would call out different types of chords. Our task was to “spell” each chord (meaning the three or four individual notes that make up a particular chord) and scribble them down before she could say the next one.

“D-major” she would say with an upward lilt. “F-minor” she cooed somberly. “G-flat diminished seven” she purred in a subtle Mid-Atlantic accent. Each one delivered with a one or two second pause in between. It was the most stressful part of my day. Once she had given ten chords, we passed our sheets to the front of the class (curiously, she never checked the role because she now had a record of every person in attendance that day). 

When we struggled, she would become frustrated and admonish us by blithely repeating “DeeFsharpA” in a rhythmic and lilting tone. “D-major is just DeeFsharpA” she’d say. “See, I can say it easily, DeeFsharpA” this time adding an operatic flourish of her hand. “It’s just DeeFsharpA.” And thus with a melodramatic sigh, class would begin. “Now, on to melodic minor scales in two-octaves please—ready and…”

This showed us that if we had to stop and give labored thought to the spelling of simple chords that the musical world would quickly move on with or without us. It was powerful. I still use this concept with my students today. It is a fundamental skill that many teachers overlook. Quickly knowing the parts of a chord is key to understanding tonal harmony and something every improvising musician must be able to do just to enter the playing field—much less the band stand. 

“… before I was three, I knew that the major chord on flattened supertonic was D flat, F and A flat; in the key of C, of course.” Danny Kaye knew the importance of good chord spelling in the pursuit of love. With Virginia Mayo in the film “A Song is Born.” Only musicians will get this…

I can point to many significant turning points in my life and career, but encountering Ms. Gorham was certainly one of the most influential to my teaching. There were of course many other pivotal moments of which I am completely unaware, but this is one that stands out clearly in my memory.

When I began to make a name for myself, many of my professors and classmates at ET were surprised, but not DeeAnn. She continued to cheer me on. With every visit I made to ET, she was always there to support me and tell me she was proud of what I had accomplished as a musician. I am so fortunate to have been given the opportunity to tell her how much I appreciated her efforts on my behalf on several occasions before she passed.

DeeAnn’s influence on East Texas State University is also clear as evidenced by their flying of the University flag at half-staff after her death and naming the Green Room in the new Music Building in her honor along with colleagues William Gorham and Charles Nelson. These are small but meaningful tokens of esteem from a school to which she had given so much.

Her ET colleague Gene Lockhart remembered DeeAnn as being “very patient but with great expectations; not just in piano or in theory or voice, but in everything she did.” Carolyn Lockhart recalled that “DeeAnn and I had a lot in common as we both taught children’s choirs in our churches, and we were both very strict. DeeAnn didn’t believe in having screaming kids running around; she expected them to behave and take their singing seriously and this made her program even stronger and larger than many other church-based children’s choirs.”

Her syllabus for voice lessons provides a glimpse into her philosophy for the disciplined study of music. “It is truly impossible to maintain and continue learning, growth, and singing more beautifully without continuity and perspicacity.” I’m sure most of her students (if they were smart) turned to the dictionary upon reading this line in the syllabus to find the following definitions. “Perspicacity: The ability to understand things quickly and make accurate judgments” and “continuity: uninterrupted connection, succession, or union.”

Is it as simple as spelling chords in piano class every day until one becomes fluent in the building blocks of music? You better believe it.

She followed with a few more of her favorite musical quotes, but the one that seems most prescient today is from Robert Shaw who said “…in a world of political, economic and personal disintegration, music is not a luxury but a necessity… not simply because it is ‘therapeutic’ but because it is the persistent focus of man’s intelligence, aspirations, and good-will.”

And finally, a warning. “I, of course, assume that you are here, seeking a degree, because you want to sing, you want to learn. Attending university is a gift, and therefore, you would always practice more than is sufficient for your own personal, vocal, musical, and spiritual growth; however, just in case you need external assistance: please do not make the faulty assumption that I do not know when you have avoided practicing.”

Of course she knew! She always knew. 

“Continuity and perspicacity.” DeeAnn Gorham, a musical life well lived.

I believe her obituary said it best. “DeeAnn was an accompanist in life and music, breathing with the performer, anticipating need, and remaining fiercely focused on the exact support required. She adeptly and happily provided that support to the musician, the birds, the flowers, family, and friends. She was so fully present, as she made certain every movement was in support of the other person. And joyfully did so.”

Thank you DeeAnn for teaching us the lessons of continuity and perspicacity.

Oh, and another thing. 

The Mid-Atlantic or Trans-Atlantic accent was often used by actors and announcers in classic Hollywood film and theatre productions of the early 20th Century for its perceived sophistication and clarity. It was taught in elite Northeastern private schools to create a “standard World English” for the educated elite.

“Erudite, travelled, and most of all passionate about music.”

Adam Rathe, Deputy Features Director for Town and Country Magazine writes that “throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood, stars including Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, and Orson Welles employed what’s known as a ‘Mid-Atlantic accent,’ a sort of American-British hybrid of speaking that relies on tricks like dropping ‘R’ sounds and softening vowels, in order to convey wealth and sophistication on the silver screen.” 

The implication is that the term “Mid-Atlantic” means that it was born somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean between The US and the UK where it is said that “Nobody lives.”

“Why, what ev-uh do you mean Daaling?”

Note: There may be more to say about finding yourself upwardly mobile by simply changing the sound of your voice in a future blog…

Citations:

1Rathe, Adam. What Is the Mid-Atlantic Accent: Why Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant Sound like (Fake) Millionaires, Town and Country Magazine, Published 3 May 2020

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a32292809/mid-atlantic-accent-golden-age-of-hollywood

2Widler, Billy. A Song is Born, film starring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, others, Samuel Goldwyn Studios, 19 October 1948

3Gorham, DeeAnn. Voice lessons Syllabus, East Texas A&M University, date unknown

4Definitions from Merriam Webster Online

5Lockhart, Gene & Carolyn. Telephone conversation with the author, 3 October 2025

6Contributor. DeeAnn Gorham Obituary, eExtra News, Paris, TX, 24 March 2022

7George, Larry, Rev. Dr. DeeAnn Gorham Memorial, Kavanaugh Methodist Church, Greenville, TX, 2 April 2022

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How Bad Do You Want It? Not Bad Enough!

With the start of a new school year a few days away, I begin to get excited about the prospects of the coming semester. In the academy, summer brings the opportunity to hit the reset button and by summer’s end, we should feel refreshed and ready to take on the challenges of another busy school year (You’ll notice I didn’t say rested).

As students return to the hallowed halls, I know that some are looking for a chance to redefine themselves, to develop new habits or break old ones or perhaps set some new goals. Maybe they hope to distance themselves from an unfortunate interaction (that most have already forgotten) or perhaps burnish their reputation as a dedicated student. Still others simply plan to take a few steps back in preparation for making some well-timed leaps forward. 

All things are possible in the Fall. For me, Fall is a heady time that repeats every year and helps create the distinctive rhythm of my life. This rhythmic cycle is a tectonic movement that once felt slow and nearly imperceptible but now seems to gain speed with my every trip around the sun. Or as Jimmy Buffett puts it:

Every day’s a revolution
Pull it together and it comes undone
Just one more candle and a trip around the sun
—Jimmy Buffett, Trip Around the Sun

In the metaphorical framework known as the “Four Seasons of Life,” Autumn is usually characterized as the second half of the life cycle but, In the Academy, Fall represents new beginnings. For many this could be a new year, new school, new job, new friends, new responsibilities, or new opportunities. So many things begin anew as golden summer turns to the orange and burnt umber of autumn, warm days, cool nights, and football under the lights. 

Fall is ripe with opportunity! In our allegorical model Autumn can also represent a time of reflection, change, and transition, and depending on where you are in your educational journey (or life cycle) it may also involve some introspection about what your life might look like after the boys of summer have gone.

But as the semester approaches, I also begin to wonder what my students expect from their college experience. I ask myself “what do they want and how bad do they want it?” I know this because for most of my life I have struggled with the same queries. Identifying the “what” was never the problem, but it was the fundamental question that every person who aspires to something more in this life must ask themselves; “how bad do you want it?” In many cases the answer is, as singer and songwriter Don Henley would say, “not bad enough.”

So you wanna be a big baseball player?

As a kid growing up in East Texas, I wanted to play baseball but, not bad enough. I wanted to play football but, again, not bad enough. I wanted to be an Architect but not bad enough to put in the work to get good grades.

Then I joined the band. There I wanted badly to play the trumpet but no matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t going to happen. So, in 1969 I landed in the drum section. How bad did I want that? Not at all…

But in the Fall of 1970, and because of a loving and masterful band teacher, I got to start over. And in doing so I began to feel the early pangs of desire to become a musician; a real drummer. I had never experienced wanting something so much that it gave me an ache in the pit of my stomach thinking about it. Whenever I failed to measure up to that teacher’s expectations, it physically hurt. In retrospect, and in my own experience as a teacher, I suspect that it hurt him as much as it hurt me. I’ve had that stomachache ever since and it hasn’t subsided. I hope it never does. 

I’ll admit that from time to time, I’ve felt alone in my journey but as I kept at it, I met more and more kindred spirits along the way. The first one was my childhood friend who had a four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder that lit the fire of my desire to write and record music. Then it was my fellow high school band geeks who wanted to put together a horn band to play the music of the popular group Chicago. 

My high school bandmate and future college roommate, Lynn Childers, and I stayed long hours after school in the band hall transcribing and arranging their music and arguing about if we got it right or not. On Saturday nights we cruised around our hometown blasting music out of the windows of his Ford Mustang just like all the other kids except we were listening to Frank Zappa, Bill Chase, Buddy Rich, Mike Oldfield, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and of course Chicago. We made music together because we wanted so badly to do it.

My grandmother knew all too well that wishes wouldn’t fulfill dreams. At home in Longview circa. 1950.

Whenever I got a new passion, something that I “really wanted” to do, my grandmother would say to me “wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which gets filled first.” Like so many East Texas syllogisms, it took me years to figure out what she meant.

Having survived the great depression as a young woman starting a family, my grandmother knew all too well that wishes wouldn’t fulfill dreams. She believed that the ability to achieve your goals only comes through action, dedication, and hard work.

I think she saw me struggling with the bellyaches of wanting to be a musician, but she worried that I didn’t have a strong enough work ethic to follow through on meeting that goal. By the time I figured out what she was trying to tell me, and I had begun to take her advice, she had passed away. 

“Wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which gets filled first.”
—Pattye Burgess Leverett

With Jimmy Yancey, the man who lit my fire. Back stage after a concert as guest soloist with the East Texas Symphonic Band, 2016.

Years later that same band director who lit my fire when I was 12 years old, told me that of all his students, I was the one that wanted to be a musician so much that I wouldn’t let adversity (meaning a lack of innate talent) or circumstances (coming from a poor family), prevent me from achieving my goal. He knew how badly I wanted it, even before I did. It was he who gave me the encouragement, the drive, and the push that my grandmother knew I needed. Thanks Grandma and Mr. Yancey.

A musician is all I can ever remember wanting to be. Longview Symphony rehearsal circa. 1975.

Since Junior High School, a musician is all I can remember wanting to be which is why I sometimes become frustrated with my students when they don’t appear to show the same drive and motivation that it took for me to get to where I am today. As a teacher, I have been surprised many times by how often students appeared to not—in my opinion—want it bad enough.

I’ve had students who loved being in band in high school, so they decided to continue studying music in college only to drop out the moment they hit a brick wall in theory class, or when they faced the inevitable scenario of practicing for hours and hours and not improving. Then, when their archrival—the one who never practices—makes first chair, it knocks the wind completely out of their sails. “It’s not fun anymore” is the reason most often given for dropping out. But again, it raises the question “how bad do you want it?”

American singer and frontman for the rock band Counting Crows, Adam Duritz, explains it like this.

“You’ve heard people say this a million times. They’re doing something they really like and then it gets hard and they’re like ‘it isn’t fun anymore.’ That’s the line that divides artists from people with hobbies because hobbies are fun—and they should be. Art can be enjoyable, but it’s not supposed to be [fun], and that’s not the deal. That’s not what it’s about. I mean it’s great if it’s fun but it’s not going to be fun all the time. And it’s hard and it should be hard and you’re gonna be miserable and hate it at times or just hate the experience—not the thing—because its real; it’s your whole life and that’s different.” 

That’s the line that divides artists from people with hobbies because hobbies are fun—and they should be. Art can be enjoyable, but it’s not supposed to be [fun], and that’s not the deal.
—Adam Duritz, Counting Crows

But is it possible to want something too much? 

Yes, the cost of going “all in” on the pursuit of your goals can be quite high. It can affect your mental and physical health and your personal life. In the film The Devil Wears Prada, Nigel (Stanley Tucci) wipes his brow as he tells Andrea (Anne Hathaway) “let me know when your whole life goes up in smoke. Means it’s time for a promotion.” Nigel’s cynical view is that seeking career advancement can bring personal hardships if you are willing to sacrifice everything else in your life for work as he has done. It is important to keep in mind that when desire becomes an obsession it can create a vicious cycle where the very intensity required to achieve your goal pushes the desired outcome further away.

The reality, however, is that most people aren’t really at risk of over doing it in pursuing their goals which is probably why I’m not a professional baseball player today (among other reasons). Even the overachieving Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and writer of sonnets, Michelangelo, believed that “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 di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564)

*Yes, I know that I have used that quote in a previous post but, hey, it’s a good one.

It’s all about balance. 

There is a reason why as a culture we enjoy entertainments that require exceptional balance. Things like walking a tight rope, juggling, or spinning plates in the circus, the balance beam in gymnastics, or log rolling at the lumberjack competition are just a few examples. We respect and admire the skill needed to maintain balance because without good balance there is the inherent danger of failing—and falling.

The secret of maintaining a good work/life balance is to keep three areas of endeavor equally apportioned. These are the things we have to do, the things we need to do, and the things we want to do.

The things we have to do include those that are necessary to sustain life such as eating, sleeping, seeing a doctor, or simply stopping occasionally to “sharpen the saw.” Habit #7 of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is the concept of sharpening the saw. According to Covey “this habit is called Sharpen the Saw because dull or rusty tools are much less effective than clean and sharp tools.” Taking time to stop working and care for your tools will make things easier when you start again. The same applies for taking a break from practicing in order to let your mind and body (your tools) recover.

The things we need to do are those that we are required to do because of our responsibilities to others such as homework and attending classes, jobs to help pay the bills, or even mundane tasks like shopping for groceries which also impacts the things we have to do. For a musician, this might mean practicing for an ensemble you really don’t enjoy but is a requirement for your degree.

The final piece to be balanced is in the things we want to do. This is where your passion, your art, your calling lives. It is also the part that can knock your work/life balance completely out of whack! If we are passionate about something we are tempted to try and steal time from the things we have to do or need to do in order to focus on what we want to do.

I think every person who has pursued their passion has tried to cheat the balance at times and often with great success. This is an acceptable—even necessary—practice but, again, there is a cost. For anyone passionate about their life’s work, that cost is sometimes unavoidable because eventually the two neglected areas will demand equal time.  

Here is an example the late pianist and composer Chick Corea gave about his creative process. “When I compose for a record, I work 18-20 hours a day, I eat and sleep very little, and I feel fantastically good! I have my businesspeople leave, and I don’t take phone calls or have visitors. I isolate myself and get that creative flow going. Once it starts, it’s like a snowball…”

In doing this, Chick was stealing time from the other areas of his life to focus on creating his art. Both in his life and in his music, Corea made good use of the musical concept known as tempo rubato. The term comes from the Italian word “rubare” which means to steal. In music this means stealing time from some measures making them shorter or adding time to others making them longer to facilitate a more expressive performance. The point is that time (in music and in life) doesn’t budge so, if you steal time from one measure (or part of your life) it must eventually be repaid. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Just reread two paragraphs above one more time.

Don Henley puts this all in perspective for us but, I think you are getting the idea:

So, you put a hold on happiness
A day, a week, a year
You got to bring somethin’ to this party, boy
If you party here

If you’re lookin’ for love
I have to ask you

How bad do you want it?
Not bad enough…

So, as Fall brings you new opportunities, try to keep your work/life in balance and keep asking yourself “how bad do I want it?”

Oh, and don’t actually spit into your hand; that’s disgusting.

Citations:

Buffett, Jimmy. Trip Around the Sun from the album License to Chill (2004), Mailboat Records, August 16, 2004

Beato, Rick. Counting Crows: Adam Duritz Interview, accessed August 21, 2025

Covey, Stephen. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
https://www.franklincovey.com/courses/the-7-habits/habit-7

Corea, Armando “Chick”. Interview on writing the Mad Hatter album, Downbeat Magazine, March 1978

Devil Wears Prada. Film directed by David Frankel and produced by Wendy Finerman, screenplay, written by Aline Brosh McKenna, based on the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, the film stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt, 2006

Henley, Don. How Bad Do You Want it? End of the Innocence album, Don Henley, Danny Kortchmar, Stan Lynch, Geffen Records, 1989
https://youtu.be/DCahCPN3Kho?si=8Q_4JFSKzWVeFDli

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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

“Inlets” rehearsal with John Cage.

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.

Early Sons of Rayon promo pic; Karen Boggs, Kelly Werts, and Paul Elwood. (Photo courtesy of Madeline McCullough)

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 South African Zulus from the KwaZulu-Natal province. 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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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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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