Rockthrow, The Band: At Length

Continued

At first I would get excited simply to learn a new chord ("Wow! D minor!") because I could fool around with it and see how it might work with other chords I already knew ("It fits with A minor! Think of the possibilities!"). It's kind of funny when I think about it now--funny like pathos funny.

I didn't take any lessons. I had a year of piano lessons when I was eight--and I'm glad I did--but it was enough to convince me that I didn't want any more music lessons. In fact in 5th grade I was the only kid in my class of 40 who did not sign up for Band at the public school. In retrospect I think the problem was not the lessons themselves, but the fact that my teacher was a middle-aged "spinster," as it was phrased at the time, who wore make-up even on weekdays; and even though she was nice, it was a very prim sort of nice that I was not at all accustomed to, and had hardly ever run into before. I mean, I was an 8-year-old farm kid.

I began lessons in the fall. It was not long after my father started working at the John Deere shop in town. That way I could go to my lesson after school and ride home with him when he was done with work--otherwise it was a 9-mile hike. I had a lesson once a week, learning basic notation and scales--Every Good Bird Does Fly, All Cars Eat Gas, Stepping Up/Stepping Down/Then a Skip. Music lessons are really good for kids (see "This is Your Brain on Music: the Science of a Human Obsession," Daniel Levitin, McGill University, Chapter 8) in general, and I'm glad I had that experience, but still, as the weeks went by there was less and less daylight after school, and by the time we got to "Jingle Bells" the lessons had become just a bit spooky.

Her apartment was already small, cramped and cluttered--bric-a-brac is the word, I believe--and in a very precise way, but now it was also dark. There was no light on in the "living" room except a narrow little lamp over the center of the piano's keyboard. To the left of the piano, as I sat on the bench waiting, was the doorway to the tiny kitchen. I could only see the cupboard doors through the doorway, but back in the bowels of the room a pale ceiling light burned dim, and on the stove something was boiling, always something was boiling, and whatever it was she would stir it with what sounded like a wooden spoon when she, inevitably, tapped it once or twice on the edge of the saucepan.

Then we'd have our lesson. Who knows, maybe if I'd had a teacher who was pert, pretty and 18, with lots of floorlamps at her house, I'd be a pianist today.

But no, it was the guitar. I got some instruction books, learned chords and some scales, blues patterns--basic things. My younger sister took piano lessons, too, but she stuck it out long enough to learn popular songs, so I'd go through her songbooks with the guitar to see how "real" songwriters put chords together. I went so far as to purchase a "Creedence Clearwater Revival Complete" songbook when I was in Mankato for some reason. (You couldn't hope to find something like that in Wells.) I still have it.

One thing I noticed right away though--it's impossible to sound like John Fogerty on a classical guitar that cost $19.95 from a mail-order catalogue. And of course vocally no one else can sound quite that "gnarly," so for the most part for years I mainly played only my own songs.

In fact I was pretty shy about playing guitar at all, so when I moved to Minneapolis to go to the U of M I didn't play much--there were too many people around. So there I was, a songwriter trying to avoid an audience, if that concept can find some synapses to work itself through. But I did meet some kindred souls like Mark and Marty and Kemp, and after graduation for a while we would get together and jam around, and play around with song ideas. (Rockthrow songs from these sessions include "Pyramids," "Cast Off Your TV's" and "Bumper to Bumper.") We still do on rare occasions.

We never had a band or performed anywhere or anything like that, and eventually everyone went their separate ways. Mine was about 15 years of traveling on and off, working whatever jobs in between. For a long time every couple of years I would quit my job, move out of whrever I was staying, and go travelling for a few months, figuring that if I ran into a place I wanted to stay, I would. Traveling was fabulous. And also wearisome, and sometimes lonesome, and occasionally scary. It was the most alive and free I ever felt, but I kept ending up back in the same town, home from the road, broke, with no job and nowhere to live. I'd get some job and live wherever worked out: warehouse / basement in Dinkytown, insurance office / attic on the West Bank, market research office / apartment by the Dome, warehouse / Project Park duplex . . .

All the while I was getting ideas about various things, and sometimes I'd write them down, and sometimes they would end up as songs. Songs are funny. You get captured by some nugget of melody or lyric, then you notice something that seems associated with it, or complementary in some way. It's a "ta-dah!" kind of moment and the nugget grows. When it's really working it all seems to flow into your head from the sky, and you hang on and try to feel it, grasp it and write it down, or make an audio note on a cassette. Sometimes you get interrupted by the vicissitudes of life and it may be months or years before the last little link clicks into place and the song in your head finally seems to progress unimpeded from one end to the other. Finished.

Early in 2001 I met Ben Durrant of Crazy Beast Studio, and we began recording. Ben's a gem to work with. I asked my old frend Jamie Farnum to play drums on the tracks, and add some vocals, and I gave a CD of rough mixes to Theresa Horan to get her ideas. We've been collaborating ever since, through four discs on three albums. It's been a great experience and we're still working on more songs and albums. My deepest gratitude goes out to Ben, Theresa, Jamie and everyone else who has been involved in bringing these songs to life. Best of luck to you all . . .