Noises On

I’m getting what’s coming to me. Karma is grinning. The teenager next door just got a drum set. All those hours spent practicing in my bedroom, my dorm room, my small apartment with thin walls, or in some suburban basement or other are being revisited upon me. It sounds a little something like this:



The kicker here is not that he’s playing the drums, but that he’s been known to play them as late as 11:00 PM. Or, he USED to. Poor thing: he actually thought that they wouldn’t make that much noise if he wished it hard enough. So there I was last Friday night in all my 40-year old, foster-father-of-two-sleeping-toddlers glory knocking on the garage door, ready to haul out my stern look of disapproval for this rude and naughty teenager. But before I could narrow my eyes and furrow my substantial brow, the culprit appeared before me, his own eyes wide with the sudden realization that he had DISTURBED THE NEIGHBORS. He was so apologetic and so quick to stop what he was doing without complaint that I simply ASKED him if he could stop for the night. I came away from the meeting feeling pretty rotten. Maybe it was the sudden recognition of the timid, well-meaning ghost of my own past that made me want to go back and tell him that he should keep playing: play LOUDER, in fact – and let me give you a few pointers while you’re at it. Of course, I didn’t; that would have been foolish and embarrassing. I am happy to report that he’s still playing, though only during the day and early evening, thank goodness.


The other noises we hear in the neighborhood these days are the sounds of tractors and dump trucks. The city of Terre Haute is replacing all the main sewer lines in our subdivision and widening our streets. It’s presented us with an increasingly messy combination of mud and gravel pretty much everywhere. It’s also helping us improve our brain power by confronting us each day with a new labyrinth to navigate in order to get to our driveway. But the sudden appearance of dozens of tractors and trucks has simply thrilled David. Each morning, just after waking up and having his juice, he positions himself at the front door and enthuses about the “yellow tractors.” Listen in:



But the best noises of all this week arrived in the mail in the form of a two-CD collection of recordings from my very good friends Doug Hubley and Gretchen Schaefer. I was fortunate enough to play in two bands with Doug and Gretchen during the early 90s: The Cowlix and The Boarders. I’d just come down from trying desperately to be a rock star, and playing with D&G taught me a ton about how to play a song properly – how to think about what each instrument was doing and what the overall atmosphere of the song was supposed to be. Doug is in the process of mining his musical past (which covers 40 years now…exactly how old I am) and this first collection focused on the key songwriters in his musical development. Listening to the collection of basement recordings by the various incarnations of Doug’s bands (of which The Cowlix and The Boarders were but two) made me miss that part of my life greatly. I initially posted a cover of an old classic from my days with the Boarders here, but became uneasy about the possible copyright implications. So, I have removed it in order to follow the advice I give to all my students: avoid even the appearance of impropriety. If you want to hear the Boarders or the Cowlix, you will have to build a time machine and travel back to Portland, Maine sometime between 1992 and 1996 and keep your eyes peeled for one of these posters. Then, go to the location advertised, sit down, order a beer or a scotch, and enjoy the show. Or you could park yourself outside D&G's house just up past "Morrill's Corner," and listen for the sounds coming from the basement. Just don't tell us to keep it down.