What Are You Listening to? Wednesday

Chuck has lived a lot of places in his lifetime.

He was born in Rhode Island. Then he lived in Hartford, Connecticut. Spent most of his childhood in West Springfield, Massachusetts. And when he was a young teenager, his family moved to Cleveland.

Chuck loved Cleveland. He's still friends with buddies he met 30 years ago. Chuck only spent a couple of years there before he joined the Marines and moved to North Carolina, but the city really made an impression on him.

He even cheers for the Browns and the Indians. Even though they suck.

*cough*


This is a photo of Chuck when he was about 15 years old, 1976-ish. His sister Laura is on the left, and his friend Dave Anderson is playing the guitar on the vintage 70's couch and Chuck is clutching his "Houses of the Holy" record.



Chuck was a hot 15-year-old, wasn't he?

I would totally be arrested if I was a teacher. Good thing I never became a teacher.



I had the pleasure of meeting his friend Dave the first year I lived here in NC.

Dave "Symphony Boy" Anderson is the principal bass player in the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans.



When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, his house in New Orleans was completely flooded, all his family's belongings trashed.

Dave's wife is a harpist in the orchestra, she lost 5 harps in the storm. They were both on the road at that time, Dave was playing in Kansas City. His wife had just enough time to get back to New Orleans, rescue the pets, and one harp.

They were displaced for a year. Dave found temporary work with an orchestra in Minnesota, while his wife and kids stayed in Durham, NC.

In June of 2006, they invited us to a goodbye party in Durham. They were finally returning to New Orleans, and starting over. Chuck had just gone through his last round of chemo. We didn't have a lot of money at that time, and Chuck felt guilty about going even though we live only two hours away. I convinced him to go, since he hadn't seen Dave in years, and I'd heard so much about him that I wanted to meet him.

These are some of the pictures:

Dave and his wife were nice enough to let us sleep at their house for the night in Durham, after the party. This is the harp Dave's wife saved, in the living room of that house. I was very struck by this instrument...it was HUGE in this little room. Talk about impressed!




A pic with Dave, me, and a dude that played in the North Carolina Symphony. I think his name was...Lenny? And he was from....Latvia? I think. We got to see him play in a special performance by the symphony at a park here in Jacksonville, NC. Very cool.




This pic is my favourite. I think it's very striking. With Chuck's bald chemo head and that crazy looking bass...I think that part of that bass (the neck?) was from one that Dave had that was wrecked in Katrina, and he made it over.

LOVE that bass. Cool is the word.



Dave is a very eclectic musician. Definitely classically trained. His dad was a bass trombonist in the Cleveland Orchestra.

Dave is a composer, both of classical pieces and jazz pieces.

This is video of one of the LPO performances they did. They were playing Verdi, but they snuck in some Stanley Clarke (a jazz musician) fingering as a private musician joke...Dave is the one straight down on the end...he's wearing a cap in most of the other pictures I posted, I was afraid you wouldn't recognize him ;)




Edith, I think that even you might have liked that video!

He also did an NPR interview a couple of years ago, and you can see what he sounds like. He's very down to earth. He talks about his 210 year old bass, and his experience with Hurricane Katrina. It's a long interview, so no pressure to listen. But it's neat...

http://www.jockamofeenanay.com/communitygumbo/audio/0711/cg_daveanderson_lpo_071103_64k.mp3



I just love how he marries classical with jazz. And I'm not even a huge fan of jazz! He was known for playing with the symphony, and afterwards going to the jazz clubs and playing in his tux.

And, he's one of the nicest, smiliest people I've ever met. I'm very glad we had the experience in Durham.

This last video is one of the song 'Skinny', by Alex Bevan. The video is some silly thing made up by some dude on Youtube, it's the only way I could find the song in it's original studio form. But the song is really cool. I love the lyrics, the guy in the song(not the video) is totally Chuck....

"I'm a skinny little boy, from Cleveland, Ohio...come to chase your women, and drink your beer..."





It's worth a listen. Hope you enjoyed my little bio about Dave.