I took piano lessons when I was ten years old and quit
after 3 months because I had no interest in music. The only 2 albums I owned before the
age of 18 were the C. W. McCall classic "Convoy" and the theme to "Star
Wars." Thus, my two earliest influences were the lyrical genius behind the line:
"I got a CJ5 with a four-wheel drive that’s a-settin’ out back of the
jail" and a bar band that featured a green 3-breasted lead singer. When I turned 17 I
started listening to a contemporary Christian musician named Don Francisco
("He’s Alive" was his big hit) and Billy Joel. I began to realize the power
behind music that was driving all those guys who got stoned behind the gym to wear their
Journey t-shirts. I was a long way from playing the piano, but a friend named Steve Priebe
took 10 minutes and taught me how to play guitar chords on the piano. Thus ended my formal
training.
Some time late in high school I found my self staying with a Jewish family in Chicago. One night the Mother of the household put on some skin-tight jeans and a low-cut blouse and announced she was going out dancing. Her husband refused to go with her, and she invited me along. Never having attended so much as a homecoming dance, I politely declined. The father took out his two sons for ice cream, leaving me alone in the house with nothing to do for the 2 hours before Monday Night Football came on. I put on Billy Joel’s "Songs in the Attic" vinyl album and heard the live version of "Captain Jack." The raw power of that performance swept me away, and every word of cynical lambasting aimed at suburban life hit me right in the soul. Like I was walking home on the road from Damascus I could suddenly see everything – I knew why people wrote music and poetry, and it turned out not just to be to get an extra line next to their names in the yearbook.
In college I started listening to a revolutionary and almost totally forgotten Christian musician named Larry Norman ("Why should the devil have all the good music") and Pink Floyd. Mostly, because I knew chords and how to jimmy the door to the music practice rooms, I started to write. And I loved it. Nothing was then or is now more central to me than writing music. Oh, sure, my music has no commercial appeal, and I have no actual talent, but what a vehicle for self expression! I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than play music.
Steve Priebe, after he had taught me how to play chords, scored in the 99th percentile of every college entrance test he took. Showing that those test scores don't really prove you're smart, he wrote some songs with me. We named ourselves "Kerygma." We met a woman named Becky Brandt at a church who agreed to let us play their special music section. She sang opera. With that threesome we recorded our first song into Steve’s stereo through a broken headphone we attached to the end of a mop. It did not surprise me that Steve, the genius who could turn a mop intoa microphone, grew up to be an electrical engineer. At our peak Kerygma played an evening concert at our local church that brought in 35-40 friends and relatives and 3 attractive teenage girls. The girls passed me a note after the show. I thought it my first step towards developing groupies. The note said that they thought I was a showoff and should chill out during the performances.
Steve’s fiance scraped up $200 and we actually recorded 10 songs in a professional studio that was located in a condemned high school in American Fork, Utah. It was good fun but mostly a waste of money; we had no drummer or bass player and had a great quality recording of Steve's guitar and my piano.
Later my younger brother Trey played base for us and Steve’s wife Janice started singing. We played some more "special music" sections at various churches and eventually found a drummer named Keith. We practiced with Keith in the industrial building that housed his church a couple of times. I thought he had really bad body odor, but it turned out that a rat had crawled into his base drum and died. I hit a new musical high when we moved beyond the church venue and actually rented a high school auditorium to play in for $40. We again drew 30, but this time most of the crowd was from Keith’s church (not just friends and family!) and after we passed the plate around we raised $43 and change, turning a profit and becoming professionals. Steve moved away to St. Louis and I went to California. Kerygma faded into the dustbins of history.
I kept writing but didn’t play again until I was getting my PhD at Utah. A guy named Brian, who had played rock in lounges in Hawaii, ended up in the grad program with me. He decided that rock music was too shallow and to go back to something more authentic, he started playing original Delta Blues. He had a second guitarist join him, and I played 2 evenings with them under the name "Mississippi Blues" in the back of the best pizza joint in the world, called "The Pie." No attractive young girls passed me notes, I got paid $50, and ate 2 pizzas by myself. Brian was unfortunately a good judge of musical talent, and without telling me started practicing with a harmonic player and scheduled 5 gigs with him and without me. Brian and I had one very uncomfortable conversation that made it clear I was out of the band. I didn’t really blame him, but because music was so important to me it felt like someone was rubbing sandpaper up and down my ego. I knew I was bad but I loved playing so much that it hurt like hell to be shut out.
So I bought a Tascam 4-trac recorder and a Yamaha drum machine, borrowed my brother’s Juno-60, and I could record songs on my own. The best thing I ever got on tape was a song with a heavy salsa beat and a slow organ melody. I chanted non-rhyming words in the background and called it "Jungle." It had no content at all, but it was interesting.
After grad school I suffered a horrid lapse of judgement and took a job at Baylor University. There I played organ for a church on the same old Juno-60 that my brother had by this time given up any hope of ever seeing again. There was an actual pianist named Susan who played on an electrical piano standing next to me. I just held my guitar chords on the organ and changed them every 4 beats but jumped around like a maniac. The overall effect was that if you were watching us play you could hear really great piano sounds coming out of Susan’s piano but all you could see was me leaping all over the place behind a keyboard. The church actually met under a freeway overpass and a large part of the congregation was recovering from one addiction or another; it was not uncommon that Susan’s awesome keyboard parts were attributed to me.
As many clouds have silver linings the upside of Baylor was that I met Bill Loges. Suddenly, all those guitar chords I had been playing on my keyboards sounded like, well, guitar chords. I could write and write and write and play and play and Bill never seemed to tire of recording with me. Unlimited ability to work with my songs. I was as close as you could get to heaven while living in Waco, Texas. I upgraded the 4-track to an 8-track Tascam and we were in business. We played together for about a year and recorded well over 60 original songs.
To me, the power of rock music is that you can combine an energetic style of music with the cognitive force of poetry – you get to put sound and words together to make an artistic thought. You get to make an idea come alive. I don’t always accomplish it, but it's always fun. A song is a good song when the music and the lyrics drive the idea forward and make it compelling in a way that a poem without harmony or notes without words just can’t.
Whenever Mary’s Garage Band has moved forward in a clear way, from 4-track recording to 8-track for instance, it’s been because Jon pushed it forward. This includes our move from tentative cover versions to our own songs. It’s a wonderful moment in the relationship between musicians when they trust each other enough to say "Uh, let’s try this song I wrote." Jon did that the first time we played, because he takes his songs seriously enough to cut to the chase. Fairly early, the whole point of us getting together was not to perfect cover versions, but to explore one another’s material. Jon established that atmosphere.
Jon demands trust, commitment, honesty, and good humor. He not only provides these in return, but adds energy, enthusiasm, patience, and intelligence. One thing I’ve come to appreciate about Jon is that he pays attention to the smallest detail of everything he does, and that you might do in collaboration with him (be it debate, softball, or music). When the song (or game) is over, he can recall some small effort you made in a small part of the project and point out what he liked about it. It’s immensely gratifying.
Jon and I joke about his musical and vocal skills, but it’s important for me to point out that Mary’s Garage Band exists because Jon wills it into existence. His determination, creativity, and energy (and equipment) bring life to both his music and mine. Any joke I make about his musicianship is only a joke, because I am grateful that he takes his talent seriously enough to share it with me, and of course with you. His songs are often a blast to play, particularly since he writes them with guitars in mind. So much of Mary’s Garage Band’s sound seems (to me) guitar driven, but at least half of it was written by Jon, who (to my knowledge) does not play guitar. That, friends, takes talent. I’ve written nothing for keyboards. I’m just not talented enough.