I keep a piano leg next to the chair where I do my writing. Flipped so what was once the foot points toward the sky, it resembles an obelisk, if obelisks were small, worn and wooden. I keep it not because I formed a fetish for old instrument parts, but because it is, for me, a sort of totem, a reminder of the kind of person I would like to be and the sort of legacy I would like to leave.
You see, the leg was once part of the piano that the late Vola Jacobs taught generations of Augustans on. The piano, which appropriately we remanifested into art by Augusta’s own Troy Campbell, was more than merely a convenient vehicle for endless rounds of scales. It was a magic carpet, a tightly tuned miracle that encouraged countless Augusta musicians – both enthusiastic amateurs and the most serious advanced players – to explore their musical inclinations.
I’ve been thinking about that piano leg a lot this week. The piano leg and what it represents. That’s because on Aug. 3 we lost another profoundly important and influential musician and educator – Sandra Brown.
I’m not sure when I originally met Sandra Brown. I feel certain it was shortly after my return to Augusta but, in truth, she is one of those people who has entered and exited my life so many times that she feels like a constant, someone who has always been and, I guess I thought, always would be.
I’ll admit my initial interest in Sandra stemmed from a certain celebrity. She had, after all, performed with the Met and the Chicago Lyric and the San Francisco Opera – all companies I had heard of and knew were well worthy of admiration. She had sung big roles – taking on everything from Wagner’s Ring cycle to a celebrated turn as Carmen. She spent years performing in Europe. She was, in the opera world, big time.
But she was also, by the time I met her, mostly retired.
Sandra had moved on to her second career and that, I believe, is where she truly left her mark – certainly as far as Augusta is concerned. Take a swift survey of singers – again both the enthusiastic amateur and the serious professional – and I have no doubt that a great many will have a Sandra story to share. She would have either served as a vocal coach or perhaps merely offered encouragement or a kind word. Her mission and purpose, I believe, was to foster an environment of musical appreciation. She understood the power of music – not just opera but folk, an early love, and her son Noel’s noisy guitar rock and synth experiments. To be honest, I would be surprised if, under the right conditions, she couldn’t wax poetic about a grade school recorder ensemble. She just seemed to have an innate ability to single out the extraordinary, amplify it and make all around her appreciate the act of making music.
That’s what made her a spectacular singer, a spectacular teacher and a spectacular human being. Music in Augusta is more widely practiced and appreciated because we were fortune enough to have Sandra Walker Brown amongst us. The songs we will continue to sing and the performances we will continue to enjoy will be her legacy, and that’s a pretty powerful gift.
Hello Mr. Soul
I do a lot of lamenting about the lack of attention paid to local acts. It’s the reason we put together the inaugural Press Play Augusta Songwriters contest and has been the inspiration for much of my writing since local publishers first offered me a platform. You might call it my greatest hit. My approach has been one of discovery and evangelism. Find those talents and then bolster their efforts through whatever platform has been made available to me. Success was measured in acts that found a following and were able attract an audience.
But over the past few years I began spot a disturbing trend. If an act could attract a following, where would they ask those acts to follow them to? Many of the mainstay venues either had rotated away from live performance or disappeared altogether. Local music fans talk a lot about the glory days of Sky City, but in truth that venue, as magnificent as it was, was not the only game in town. Musicians wanting to play original music had nowhere to go.
But the future has started looking bright and I think that, in no small part, is due to a name from our past.
When Coco Rubio shifted his attention away from his OG stomping ground at Soul Bar toward Sky City in the mid-aughts, much of the live music that had established Soul Bar as an institution followed. Certainly there were occasional acts, but for the most part it became an outpost for DJ culture. Over the past several months however, there seems to have been a shift. More acts are being booked and between that, DJ evenings and comedy nights, Soul Bar has come alive again. What’s interesting is that it is not the only legacy establishment reengaging with local music. The Fox’s Lair, the beautiful basement bar on Telfair that dates back to the early ‘80s has been keeping its small stage busy with listening room nights. Not surprisingly, some of the newer joints are following the lead of the elder statesmen. Edgar’s Above Broad has a regular schedule of open air entertainment most weekend evenings. Augusta, seemingly, has begun to rebuild its venue culture. Now it is up to the acts and audiences to make sure this often-delicate ecosystem continues to survive and thrive.
Buried Treasure – Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
It’s incredible how time can change the timbre of a book. When I initially read Microserfs in the summer of 1995, it felt like a book from the future. Although set in cities I was familiar with – Seattle and Palo Alto – it detailed a culture and characters that felt more than merely alien to me. They felt like they were from the future.
The book centers on six Microsoft coders who escape the safety of corporate monoculture in pursuit of creative and intellectual freedom in the tech frontier. It was heady and completely topical. A book of and about its time.
Now it is a full tilt period piece.
But here is what is remarkable. Despite no longer feeling completely contemporary, the book continues to hold up. It’s plot points may be dated but its themes – the need to create, the role of the individual, the shifting priorities of youth – remain timeless. I mean, readers have not given up on Jane Austen because nobody takes turns about the garden anymore. The same may be said for Coupland’s insightful glimpse.
Steven Uhles has worked as professional journalist in the Augusta area for 22 years, and his Pop Rocks column ran in The Augusta Chronicle for more than 20. He lives in Evans with his wife, two children and a dog named after Hunter Thompson.
