New Keys

I’ve been playing music since I was about 11. Sometime that year my parents bought an organ. A Thomas, with a built-in Leslie speaker. An amazing instrument, and for that time an amazing expenditure. Quite promptly, it was decided I should receive lessons. For convenience (and he no doubt came cheap) they hired the organist at my church (who was also my 5th grade teacher) Mr. Lange. What followed was a period of fraught intentions on all parts and a near-calamitous ruin of my musical ambitions.

But the organ itself was the gateway to further explorations, especially after Mr. Lange departed (and no teacher was hired to replace him) and I discovered rock music and fell into company with a cadre of musical rebels.…