Addison Road

With Rod out recovering from surgery for a few weeks, the dean of the school of music asked me to step in and oversee the summer small groups. It’s the first thing I’ve done (like, ever, in my life) that’s more administrative than creative, but I’m happy to do it - it’s my small way of supporting Rod.

But getting up in the mix on this has gotten me thinking often about my own small group experience. Not the spectacular, talent-packed tours of my later years at APU, not the groups that spawned a half-dozen working pros and a group of friends that still hang out and teach each other’s kids dirty words.

No, I’m talking about my first small group experience. My very first. I was a freshman, a week into my college experience, and the School of Music was putting together a few groups to perform during the school year, at local churches on Sunday morning. I auditioned to play piano for one of the groups.

The Audition

The audition was … oh man. It was a hell of a thing. To fully appreciate how awful it was, you have to understand that back in the day, the School of Music was a cult of personality, and the whole program orbited around the gravitational pull of a man we called Doc. He put every small group together by divine fiat, and he did all the auditions himself, in front of a choir of 120, with everyone watching.

He asked me to play Amazing Grace. He asked everyone to play, or sing, Amazing Grace. It was one of his things.

The problem is, with a cult of personality, sometimes a punk kid comes into the orbit of the thing without knowing that you’re supposed to be all awe-struck and weak-kneed in The Presence. The cult sort of relies on everyone knowing that. It’s kinda the point of the cult.

I didn’t know that I was supposed to be in awe of the man - I thought he was a bit of a pompous ass. I decided to show him what a real musician could do.

So, I puffed out my chest and launched into a massive funk piano breakdown on “Amazing Grace”, complete with an intro stolen from a Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto. And in my funktastic version of Amazing Grace, there are 4 beats in every measure. It leaves a little extra room for my awesome piano pyrotechnics.

Imagine a 50-year-old retired Vegas showgirl wearing a bright pink fur coat with dangly plastic flamingo earrings and an orange fake-and-bake tan, still shaking her jiggly bits in a dank nightclub at Primm.

My arrangement of Amazing Grace was kinda like that.

About half-way through the 1st verse, Doc cued the 120 people in the choir to start singing along.

Did I mention my version was in 4/4, not 3/4? Yeah, it was also in minor.

Now picture yourself trying to ballroom dance with that Vegas showgirl.

(continued in part 2)