{"id":218,"date":"2014-09-07T20:37:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T20:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=218"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:57:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:57:24","slug":"joyful-noise-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2014\/09\/07\/joyful-noise-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Joyful Noise"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"dan<\/a>The whole room is moving,\u00a0<\/strong>and not because of the Guinness I drank.<\/p>\n

Can I Get an Amen<\/a> is the closing act of Old Lazarus\u2019 Harp, \u201ca music collective of four rising forces on the Chicago folk scene,\u201d and I\u2019m sitting on the 100-year-old red oak floor of the Galway Arms Irish Pub on Chicago\u2019s Near North Side photographing the band.<\/p>\n

Feet stomp, knees wiggle, hands clap, heads bob. The mouths of young women hoot and sip craft beer. Shadows leap and slide across the honey-brown wainscoting and crimson walls while the 20- and 30-somethings standing\u00a0in the doorway sway like ocean plants caught in the current.<\/p>\n

The room is awash in music.<\/p>\n

Chris Kimmons raises his Takamine acoustic guitar to his ear, throws his head back and roars out the chorus of \u201cSugar Hill,\u201d one of three tunes in the group\u2019s signature medley. Banjo player Evan McBrayer Collins matches his\u00a0volume, while Eli Namay leans over\u00a0his massive acoustic bass and thumps out the beat.<\/p>\n

\"dancers<\/a>A long-legged woman in red jeans, spaghetti-strap top, and chestnut hair swept back into one of those claw things clog dances within two feet\u00a0of my left thigh. The floor shakes when\u00a0a guy jumps into the small space in front of the band to join the woman. He tries to catch her eye. No way. Dance all you want, but here the sex is in the music.<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0center of the band and driving it all, Dan Gillespie \u201908 draws his bow across the strings of his violin with a grace that belies the whirlwind he is weaving. He\u2019s wearing a plaid shirt and the scruffy beginnings of a beard and\u00a0his brown hair is disheveled as during his college days, if a bit thinner. Music decrescendos as he improvises a haunting bridge between \u201cBonaparte\u2019s Retreat\u201d and \u201cSoldier\u2019s Joy,\u201d his head cocked to the right, the fiddle nestled beneath his chin, his dark eyes staring ahead with\u00a0the intense focus I remember from his senior recital at Wabash. He\u2019s an accomplished musician now\u2014one of the best old-time fiddlers in the city, the folk\u00a0aficionado sitting behind me insists.<\/p>\n

But Gillespie the performer seems\u00a0as somber as I remember from his\u00a0playing at Crawfordsville\u2019s old Iron Gate.<\/p>\n

Then he smiles.<\/p>\n

He calls out the next tune in the form of a question, laughing when he realizes he\u2019d almost played the wrong one.<\/p>\n

\"guitar<\/a>Then he sings, joining Kimmons and McBrayer and punching out the last line of the medley\u2014\u201cThat\u2019s a Soldier\u2019s Joy\u201d\u2014as the audience stands and cheers.<\/p>\n

And Dan Gillespie is exactly that\u2014joyful. A restrained joy, sure. But miles from the frustrated Wabash art major who said in an interview for\u00a0WM\u00a0<\/em>in 2008, \u201cI\u2019ve been in a state of conflict.\u201d Accepted into programs at Rhode Island School of Design, The School of the
\nArt Institute of Chicago, and\u00a0the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, he couldn\u2019t decide which way to go. He wasn\u2019t even sure\u00a0art was his calling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think recently I\u2019ve enjoyed music more than art,\u201d he had said. \u201cI\u2019d really love to play music.\u201d<\/p>\n

And today he really does. But he\u2019s surprised the joy\u00a0is so obvious.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know I looked\u00a0so happy when I played,\u201d\u00a0he emails after receiving some photos from that\u00a0concert. \u201cI always assumed\u00a0I displayed a surly face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not anymore. His senior recital as a music minor\u00a0at Wabash was a harbinger\u00a0of all this. He played the required classical pieces,\u00a0but slipped a fiddle tune\u00a0into the program. And he\u2019s been playing fiddle ever since, either with Can I Get an Amen or with his other band, Coyote Riot, who describe their sound as\u00a0\u201cthe twang of the rockabilly style guitar sitting nicely with the pluck of the bass and the chuck of the tenor banjo, while the harmonica and fiddle harmonize like\u00a0crickets in heat.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been making fiddles, too.\u00a0Violins, violas, even cellos. Gillespie attended the Chicago School of Violin Making and today spends his days\u00a0repairing stringed instruments, nights playing music, and any available free time in the studio making violins. He sells everything he builds to top-end players.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got some decisions to make,\u201d says Gillespie\u2019s friend and Wabash mentor, Professor of Economics Kay Widdows. \u201cTo decide where to devote most of\u00a0his time\u2014to building or playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s found his vocation, if not the exact way to practice it. Deep down he knew it even during those conflicted Wabash days when he told us, \u201cEvery-where I\u2019ve lived I\u2019ve been able to find people who enjoy playing music, and I\u2019ve made my best friends when I\u2019ve been around music people. It\u2019s easy\u00a0for me to connect with them. It lights me up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier that evening at the Galway Arms I took a photo that didn\u2019t quite turn out. Fiddle music was playing in\u00a0a dimly lit room as a man approached\u00a0a young woman. She turned to him, smiled, placed her left hand in his, and rested her right hand on his shoulder as he pulled her gently closer. They danced a slow waltz in that small space. It was the way she looked at him I wanted\u00a0to capture but missed in the low light. It\u2019s a gaze those of us lucky enough\u00a0to receive never forget.<\/p>\n

Looking at that photo I think of Gillespie\u2019s recital at Wabash, when\u00a0those fiddle tunes first entranced him, and his masterful playing in Chicago today. Which should he choose now\u2014play fiddle or build violins? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

But I know love when I see it. When-ever he tucks his fiddle beneath his\u00a0chin and plays the way he did at the Galway Arms that night, Dan Gillespie\u00a0is dancing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The whole room is moving,\u00a0and not because of the Guinness I drank. Can I Get an Amen is the closing act of Old Lazarus\u2019 Harp, \u201ca music collective of four rising forces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2014\/09\/dancers-copylores.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5068,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/5068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}