A Musical Journey

My musical journey started before I can even remember. At some point in my early childhood, I got one of those noisemakers shaped like a trumpet at a fair. I can’t remember if I won it as a prize or if somebody else gave it to me, but I remember making so much noise on that thing. And it developed within me a deep desire to play the trumpet. I also remember at one point taking a toy guitar with plastic strings up front at church and “playing” along with the music - by which I mean ruining the music with awful noise.

My actual ability in music got kicked off in the fourth grade. We had a day in music class where representatives from the local music shop came in and we got to try the instruments we wanted to play in fifth grade band class. Obviously, I headed directly for the trumpet. They cleaned the mouthpiece, put it to my face, and I blew as hard as I could.

And no sound came out.

Not fully able to process what was happening (I was 9), the representative moved me over towards the clarinet, and asked that I give that a try. Once again, I blew as hard as I could. Only this time, it made a sound.

He then proclaimed that I should play clarinet, and moved on to the next student.

I went home that day and cried to my mom about not being able to play the trumpet. Looking back now, it seems silly, and the poor representative was just trying to get through everybody in the short time he had. But I was devastated. But my mother told me “you go back there tomorrow and you tell them that you want to play the trumpet!”

And so I did. And they gave me another shot at it. And this time, it made a noise. My first musical accomplishment: making a single noise on trumpet.

So I started learning trumpet in 5th grade band and continued through Junior High School. Around the end of Junior High and the start of High School, I became interested in guitar, due in large part to seeing my stepdad’s guitars. I asked for my own, and was told I had to learn on one of his before they would buy me my own. So he gave me some materials to help me learn and I got started.

I still have the guitar they bought me for Christmas that year (in fact, I still have nearly every instrument I’ve ever owned), a red Squier Stratocaster. Soon after that I started playing with a friend, and played my first talent show. Then I started playing with another friend, then a group of friends, and I was in my first band: Oblivious. We played original Christian Rock songs, and became the house band for our local youth group: Ignite. We even got to play at the regular day service once. Over time, more people joined and at our last talent show we had six members. I went from the singer/guitarist when we first had four to playing mandolin as new members took over singing and chord duties.

Now you might think that playing guitar in a band meant that I left the trumpet behind. Not so. I became more interested in improving my skills on both instruments. In fact, every member of Oblivious was in the school band, and I always wanted us to incorporate those instruments into our own band, but it never happened. But with growing trumpet skills came more responsibilities: section leader, solos, and standing front and center on stage during pep band performances to physically hold the bass drum in place with my foot. I was never the best trumpet player, even at my small school, but if I didn’t have other great players to keep me motivated to get better, I might not have improved.

But I did improve. And during my senior year, I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in music. With some guidance from my parents and teachers, I made contact with the staff at Illinois Wesleyan University. Turns out they needed euphonium players, and euphonium has a lot of similarities with trumpet. So I decided to “switch” from trumpet to euphonium, and was accepted into Wesleyan with a scholarship.

Now by this time I had begun exploring other instruments. Obviously, as mentioned earlier, I was playing mandolin. But I had also been reaching out to bass, cello, and drums as well. So to me, the idea of learning euphonium didn’t seem like that much of a challenge. But there’s a big difference between playing instruments well enough to perform some songs with friends and being able to master an instrument as part of a college degree. But while there were plenty of challenges I had to overcome, I still wanted to keep learning more and more instruments. As part of our curriculum, we were required to learn piano for our degree, and we had to take classes on all the main families of instruments: brass, woodwinds, strings, and percussion. But while most of my fellow students would try to forget those instruments as soon as the test was over, I loved learning new instruments and expanding my skills “horizontally",” becoming a “jack of all trades” as it were, while most of my peers preferred to be a master of one.

I continued to explore new instruments and skills throughout college. I played in multiple bands and ensembles - both within the school of music and externally. Within the school, I was a part of up to eight ensembles at a time, including tuba/euphonium quartets, tuba/euphonium ensemble, the pep band, the symphonic band, and a “lab orchestra.” I also joined one of the choirs, something that I hadn’t done since Junior High, because I knew that was likely something I would have to know when I got a teaching job. While I was comfortable singing in bands and the like, I was very underdeveloped when it came to reading vocal music, and singing a part rather than just whatever I wanted. Not my favorite experience, but valuable information to learn.

Outside the school, I played in multiple bands, including one for a youth group, and a couple with friends, mainly a punk balled we called “My Chemical Bromance” that rotated through a few members. We played talent shows, a welcome event for incoming freshmen (where I got to shoot a confetti cannon!), and a block party. I also briefly ran the worship music for a new church service in the area, before they decided collectively they’d rather use a CD.

Speaking of teaching jobs, my advisor in the school of music told me I would never get one. Her “advice” to me was to drop out and get a manual labor job, because I wouldn’t be able to get an actual teaching job. Yet miraculously, my first semester after graduation, I did get my first teaching job. And as I had predicted, it was teaching choir. And while I had tried to learn about the choir world in college, I only stayed in for a semester, so I still had a lot to learn. I also had to send kids to Solo & Ensemble contests, take choirs to contest, participate and host festivals with other schools, put on talent shows, and direct a musical.

That’s a lot for a new teacher, so maybe it wasn’t the best idea that I also started playing with a cover band outside of school, Flashback, and got a small taste of the “gigging” life playing in a few bars and restaurants. I also briefly filled in as a church organist, and accompanist for the church choir, before joining the choir as a singer once the original pianist returned. While these both added to my plate, they also both gave me valuable experience with playing keyboard instruments and understanding harmony. But while I was struggling, I had a lot of great students who were very understanding and very patient with me.

The school administration, however, were not as patient, and they let me go after my second year. I can’t say it was a bad decision on their part - from what I can tell my replacement was much more knowledgeable about choir than I was - but it still took a toll on me, and I heard those words from my mentor creeping into my mind again.

During this time, a friend of mine had started teaching himself to play drums. After shooting him down for months whenever he asked me to jam, I finally agreed on condition that I would be an absolute jerk - I’d play what I wanted to play, whether he knew it or not. He accepted my (very unfair) terms and took it as a challenge and learning opportunity. And before long, we were jamming out for hours and I was having way more fun than I wanted to admit. It wasn’t too long before he was wanting to start gigging. I had been through this before with Flashback, and was “past that phase in my life,” but he was persistent.

So, we got to work on naming the band: something else I didn’t take seriously. Blink 183, Third Ear Deaf, and Deaf Oranges were just a few of the obvious rip-off names I suggested, while “We Can't Finish Songs” and “We Don’t Have a Name” were also horrible suggestions I threw out. After I decided to actually give it a try, we settled on “Manor Hill Moat” - which probably seems just as random, but it was created using the letters of both of our names. With a name (and logo) picked out, I reached out to the only bar owner I knew through a series of small-town connections that I had. He agreed to let us come in to play, but we still had to get ready before we could pick a date.