{"id":2255,"date":"2014-02-20T13:45:23","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T18:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=2216"},"modified":"2025-12-09T14:05:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T19:05:59","slug":"the-music-to-wabash-always-fights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2014\/02\/20\/the-music-to-wabash-always-fights\/","title":{"rendered":"The Music to ‘Wabash Always Fights’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"a<\/a>Steve Charles<\/em>\u2014Making a living as a professional musician requires a \u201cWabash Always Fights\u201d attitude like few other vocations in America.<\/p>\n

We may love music, but we prefer not to pay much for it. The Internet has broadened the range of music available, even increased the number of musicians who can reach an audience, but just try to make a living off of iTunes, CD baby, or Pandora if you\u2019re not a mainstream artist.<\/p>\n

Which makes the careers of the Wabash musicians I\u2019ve been working with this past month\u2014several who will return to campus Friday for Wally Tunes: A Symposium on Music and the Liberal Arts<\/em><\/a>\u2014even more remarkable.<\/p>\n

All of them contributed tracks to a commemorative CD that Media Specialist Adam Bowen and the Wabash Office of Communications and Marketing produced for the Wabash Archives and to be given away to the first 180 attendees at the symposium. All of them embody that \u201cWabash Always Fights\u201d spirit in their own way as they\u2019ve built liberal arts lives around music. Working with them on this project was one of the great pleasures and honors of my time at Wabash. Just room here for five of the dozens of memorable moments:<\/p>\n

\"a<\/a>1. We call the CD Scarlet Hues<\/em> after a song written by Dick Durham \u201964,<\/strong> and it\u2019s the final song on the CD. I had emailed Dick to discern his interest in the project, and I found out in succeeding emails that 1. He had recorded a song called \u201cScarlet Hues\u201d;
\n2. He had dedicated it to Wabash on his solo album, Solilokeys<\/em>; 3. It was the first song he ever wrote; 4. He wrote it when he was a student at Wabash, only a few years after he began playing piano, which he used to sneak into the Chapel to play. In between emails with Dick, I learned that Sam Vaught \u201916<\/strong> was being interviewed for an article on the Web site and had told us about his own recent experiences playing piano and organ in the Chapel: \u201cI like to go in there whenever it\u2019s not being used \u2013 often in the dead of the night \u2013 and just play\u2026create so much sound. \u00a0You can rattle the windows with that instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n

I emailed Sam\u2019s comment to Dick, who responded: \u201cCool\u2014the aura lives on!\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Allen Schulz \u201987<\/strong><\/a>, founder of Random Access Music in New York City and an award-winning composer, wrote a piece for the symposium\u00a0called 3 Phantasies<\/em>. Thanks to pianist Diane Norton (Allen\u2019s teacher at Wabash), cellist Kristen Strandberg, and Wabash Audio Technician Phillip Merriett \u201908, we were able to include the beautiful second movement of 3 Phantasies<\/em> as a sort of prelude (a world premiere!). But because we had limited space on the CD, we had to edit Throttle,<\/em> the other piece Allen had contributed. Rather than getting angry, he gave us permission and thanked us for the work we\u2019d done. The Gentleman\u2019s Rule in music! Philip Seward<\/a>\u00a0\u201982<\/strong> was equally gracious when we had to change his selections, as was Professor Peter Hulen<\/strong> when we had to ask him to edit his.<\/p>\n

3. No one embodies that \u201cWabash Always Fights\u201d spirit quite like Dan Couch \u201989<\/strong><\/a>. He worked 15 years as a performer-then-songwriter in Nashville, currently the most competitive music market in the world, before his songs written with Kip Moore\u2014 \u201cSomethin\u2019 \u2018bout a Truck\u201d and \u2018Hey Pretty Girl\u201d\u2014hit #1 on the country charts. (Read about the “Moment of Inspiration” for one of those songs here.<\/a>) With that success, Dan\u2019s been crazy busy lately, but he still took time to record \u201csongwriter night\u201d-style versions of those songs\u2014just Dan and his guitar\u2014for the Scarlet Hues<\/em> CD and worked up a bio and photos for us. When it came in just a day after I\u2019d expected it, he thanked us for our patience! We felt lucky just to have it.<\/p>\n

4. I was playing guitar in a jam session with a friend in the pouring rain at the Indiana Fiddler\u2019s Gathering last summer when a guy and his wife in the circle sang a song. The guy played and sang like a pro\u2014way above our pay grade. That\u2019s when I found out we\u2019d been playing with Gordon Bonham \u201980<\/strong><\/a>, who I had known only from articles that declared him one of the best blues players in the country. Or, as WFYI\u2019s Matthew Socey writes, \u201cone of the best musicians in any genre in the state.\u201d You could tell from his playing, but you would never have guessed that from his generosity and interest in everyone else\u2019s music that night. (He was there, in part, doing research for his \u201cbanjo meets the blues\u201d project.) At the top of his game and still learning!<\/p>\n

5. I emailed Amos Garrett \u201964<\/strong><\/a>\u2014one of the most respected players in the world and a guitar hero of mine\u2014not expecting a reply. His kind response was cool enough, his contribution of a track (okayed by his agent and sent from Stony Plain Records) way beyond that. I\u2019ll be interviewing him in March for the magazine (along with several of the folks on the CD) and hope to confirm a story from Jim Durham \u201964 that has Jim driving the poet James Dickey to the airport after a Wabash reading, Amos along for the ride, and Dickey pulling out his guitar and playing for them. Got to know if Amos, then 18 or 19, played along.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a story behind every one of these \u201cmusical warriors\u201d on that CD\u2014each makes Wabash proud in his own way. Gordon, Allen, Philip\u2014along with Eric Stark \u201988, Andrew McKone \u201907<\/strong>, and Rick Fobes \u201972<\/strong>\u2014will join Wabash faculty at the Wally Tunes symposium Friday. If you\u2019re near campus, I hope you\u2019ll join us in welcoming them home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Charles\u2014Making a living as a professional musician requires a \u201cWabash Always Fights\u201d attitude like few other vocations in America. We may love music, but we prefer not to pay much for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2014\/02\/posterlores.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3770,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions\/3770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}