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This Old Upright Piano

In 1984 my Dad brought home an old beat up piano. The kind you see in the saloon in old westerns. Dad had taught me to play guitar sometime in 1980ish so I had a general understanding of how music was made. Chords, notes, rhythm…the building blocks of our human universal language. A piano however is an entirely different way of thinking about music. Yes the chords, notes and rhythm are the same but the emotion and structure involve two completely different mindsets…two completely different ways of placing those elemental blocks together.

Actual piano I learned to play on.

Slowly and repetitively I would sit with my guitar at the piano. “Ok, this is a G chord and it’s made up of these notes on the guitar, where is this note on the piano?”….Over and over….one note at a time…one chord at a time. Days, weeks hours. I would sit and try any possible combination of keys I could think of until I began to see a structure. Like The Matrix I could see reality. It sounds crazy but at that moment it was like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. I could see flow of the rhythm carrying the chords along while the notes floated around inside. It was amazing. It was spiritual. It was revelatory. It changed the course of my life in so many ways by changing my simple existence into that of a creator. a visionary led by the vibe…That old beat up piano that showed me my voice. That gave me the courage to express my soul. It brought out a way to express myself like nothing ever has. Creativity is such an awesome rush of endorphins unless you have felt it, it cannot be explained.

I realized soon that I had so very far to go and that it would take decades before I became the musician I wanted to be. Just to be remembered as one of the best in my field of Muncie Indiana. I think I made it to the top ten of where I wanted to be remembered. And it all started from that old piano.

Christmas of 1984

At sixteen I was sure I was going to change the world for Christ. I would open my heart, mind and path to his will whatever that will would be. Blind faith in an idea that was strangled by dogma. I later learned the difference between feeling communal spirituality and true connection to the higher consciousness. But in the early 1980’s, I was going to be used by God to help the world. Well, help the world become Evangelical Christians. The only true religion. (I’m so sorry. I’ve truly grown and changed.).

I picked up how to play the piano rather quickly. It just clicked between my mind and my hands. At the time I was so involved with my church. I had a captive audience that thought it was so good to see a young man trying. I had some great piano teachers in church that encouraged me and let me find my own way. I went to school there 5 days a week. I went to service there 4 times a week. When I had any free time, I was there just to hang out. Oh, and I was so in puppy love with my pastor’s daughter but that is a story for another time. I say all this to say that I had a lot of practice learning to play. An empty church in the middle of the night with all the lights off is an unbelievable place to contact your spiritual side. At the time, I felt Jesus. I felt the Holy Spirit. I felt as though I was an unstoppable force in Christ. But I was in the machine, not true faith. Training to be a spiritual warrior for a man’s idea, not an unblemished connection to honest faith. But for now just know it took me years to realize I was learning a “Style”. I had no idea that just playing is not enough. Your playing needs character…Style. This made all the difference many years later. Sorry to all the bands that had to struggle with me learning along the way and thank you!

This year for Christmas, Dad and Mom gave Tammy and I a custom studio package recording at the The Barn Recording Studio in Alexandria. Gaithers were the powerhouse studio in this area, but The Barn got a little more of the non Christian musicians….and a lot lower of the prices and possibilities. I was so excited!! I was going to be able to be a “Professional songwriter and studio musician”! This is where I become a star. My name will be on the liner notes next to the piano, guitar and keyboards. Next to the “Words and Music by:…” this was surreal.

THE BARN RECORDING STUDIO

We would have three 8 hour sessions to record 10 songs. To provide the music, I would get to play piano, guitar and keyboards, Tammy would sing. Studio musicians would be hired to play the other instruments. I was in heaven!! This was so scary, but so enticing. So pulling me toward a dream that I didn’t even yet know I had, suddenly now seemed achievable. I know it’s a head spinner.

So Tammy and myself were tasked to come up with 10 songs. At the time I was heavily into the CCM movement of the early 1980’s. Mylon LeVefeve and Broken Heart, Degarmo and Key, Petra, WhiteHeart. If you know you know…if you don’t, look it up. It was the time when Amy Grant was just becoming known to the world. We were all wearing mullets, pastels and no socks. All the guys wanted to be Don Johnson in Miami Vice. All the girls wanted to be Madonna. Tammy’s hair spray usage only at the time is personally responsible for three quarters of the damage to the Ozone Layer. The 80’s were weird indeed.

We decided we would write our own songs. Dad is a great songwriter. Surely it must be a little genetic…right? Well, just remember in listening of the time and place this was created. I am not sure but I think we came up with 15 or 16 songs. Simple little melodies talking about Jesus. As I listen to it now I realize how corny it sounds. But at the time this was top notch local level teenage first-timers Christian music creation.

We turned the songs over to the man that would be producing the CD. I wish I could remember his name. The next week-ish we would start. One day for music, one day for vocals, one day to finalize. The recording studio has a feel like nothing I can think to compare it to. The smells of the electronics and speakers. The almost dungy in a good sorta way. Lived in. Created in. Cried in. Born in. Magical.

BOB AND TOM’S ALLSTAR BAND (AND JOHN MELLENCAMP TOO)

Four studio musicians from Indianapolis were hired to play the instruments I would not be playing. To the best of my ability this is them. Scott Kemper – Keyboards, Randy Melson – Bass, Dane Clark – Drums, Sandy Williams – Guitar. The drummer was quietly beginning to play for John Mellencamp at the time. I knew and it hadn’t even been announced yet. WOW! Everybody but the keyboard player played on all of the Bob & Tom recordings of the time. WFBQ Indianapolis was one of the most popular radio stations in the nation at the time and the people who made the music for them were now taking our simple songs and making them….what do I want to say?…..Real? It was like another reality had sucked me in. And I fell in love.

I remember struggling at first with “How” to play differently as the old piano in the back room is so foreign to the Yamaha Grand Piano I’m now setting at. The touch was different. The sound was different. The producer game me a “Chart”??? “What’s this?” I had no idea. Studio charts are “shorthand” for what the musicians are playing. Sheet music broken down to the basic elements of chords, some notes and the rhythm. Wait a minute…I recognize those….Then that Beautiful Mind moment came back. I literally remember seeing the music represented as colors. A lot of the CD is recorded in G which I remember looking blue. The same blue that makes up the cover.

From then on the recording process was great. I could hear where my playing belonged in the mix of the other instruments. I got to play a few state of the art for the time keyboards that I never could of imagined. Although my old piano was back home, I was able to bring a little of home with me as I played Dad’s acoustic guitar on one of the songs. Now on to Tammy’s vocals.

I feel so sorry to my twelve year old sister for having to put up with me during this time. I felt a pressure to try to make everything perfect…and that meant my way! I was a sixteen year old boy being raised in a christian evangelical isolationist, patriarchal, misogynistic box. Doesn’t make it right, but explains why. But she was a trooper. Giving it everything she had. As I revisited this for the first time in over twenty years, I hear a heart singing with such depth that the words deceive. We had no kind of any kind of life experience but the church. We couldn’t write songs. But as I listen to her sing now I hear with such a different set of years… I mean tears…. I mean ears! Yeah that’s what I mean. I love my baby sister Tammy Lynn Hicks LaDue so very much. I’m so proud of what we did together.

Music done. Vocals done. No time left for background vocals or too many overdubs if any. The studio musicians are gone. My ability at the time is so raw I’m just learning. So we made do with what we had. I remember being both proud and disillusioned with what we had created. “17 years old and I’ve recorded my first album?” “Best musicians in the state, best playing I never imagined I could do.” But listening to the lyrics…they didn’t feel like songs you might hear on the radio. And when you listen you will hear we copied every churchy cliche about the love, the blood, the protection of Jesus. Simple rhymes for simpler times. We had no idea what “REAL” life was. It’s almost kinda funny if it wasn’t so sad that some people never move on from those ideas.

We needed a cover and title for the project. Tony and Tammy…Tony ‘n Tammy.…TNT!! That’s it! Dyn-o-mite! Kids, this was before the internet. Before Adobe Photoshop. If you wanted a picture you had to draw it…by hand, on paper, with markers. In my best 8th grader notebook art novae I drew and colored the cover idea with Tammy. And we liked it! I know primitive, right?

500 shrink wrapped cassettes with cover art and song list on sleeve. Song order printed on cassette. This was the real deal. Now to hit the road to perform….I mean pay for this project….I mean minister. But first to premiere the project at our home church. I can’t truly remember how it went. I know the church loved us. Nobody would’ve told us they didn’t like it even if they did. We had grown up with these people and they loved us. They were proud even if it was a little different then what they liked. They made us feel like superstars. This year we were invited to play one or two songs at our church’s national meetings for all of the Church of God Mountain Assembly Worldwide in Jellico, Tn. Once again truth alludes me but I believe the crowd was around 500 or 600 people. It was a super humid week in August in the mountains of north central Tennessee when the Elders of the church would get together and discuss business during the day and have good old fashion Pentecostal church services at night. A lot of running, shouting and speaking in tongues. It seems so foreign to me now, but that was all I knew of the world. The night for us to perform…I mean “minister” came and I was sure we would be amazing. We had “tracks” made that had the piano and vocal parts removed so we both could perf….minister.

“Ladies and Gentleman please welcome a young brother and sister from Muncie Indiana, the home church of Pastor Ray and Judy Landes….Tony and Tammy Hicks.” We walked out on stage to tepid but trying people in the hot August Tennessee heat. I went to the beautiful shiny grand piano, Tammy walked to the center of the stage. The soundtrack kicked off with the first song on the album, “The Answer” which starts with a hard drum snap to begin. Evidently a little too hard of a snap for the old folks who look like they had just stepped out of 1954 LIFE magazine. “TURN IT DOWN!! TURN IT DOWN!!” As a musician that phrase would be the most common phrase I would ever hear on a stage. So off to a bad start. We persevere. Make some adjustments. Sounds down to nursing home level for 500 people who seem more interested in buying fudge than listening to us. We try again. I had been told not to talk, just play. I never liked being told what to do. I don’t remember what I said but I thanked the crowd and told some story. Did not go over very well. I thought it was great. I guess I was the only one. Nowhere near the response we received at home. I missed the love. Something didn’t feel right. We sold over 30 tapes at home, but here in front of 500 people we couldn’t sell 4. “Were we really that bad?” “What could I have said or done differently?” It crushed my ego and joy. This was the start of my disillusion from religion. Love should be love no matter you station or relation in this world. Christ taught us that, religion denies it.

We did a few more shows….I mean services back home at local churches that knew us. Nothing came of it. I think all in all we may have sold 60 tapes out of the 500. I wanted to be a rock star, Tammy wanted to be a 14 year old church girl. That’s the direction we took. We both ended up very happy.

Thank you Mom and Dad for what you’ve done from the start.

We love you both forever from our heart.

The Answer

1st song we recorded. I’m playing the grand piano.

Heaven

Besides piano I also got to add some of my Whiteheart synth riffs. My first time playing a Fairlight synthesizer. One of the most popular new synths of the day.

Mom & Dad

One of the songs I’m most proud of. With a little more time this one could have been really made it to something special. Playing piano.

Joy Cometh In The Morning

This one was Tammy’s. I’m playing the piano, but she wrote both the words and the music.

Someday

Another one that was mostly Tammy’s. I tried to get creative with the word play and melody. Cute song. Playing piano.

Shelter From The Storm

This was mine and also happens to be my favorite. I got to play my Dad’s Alvarez acoustic guitar. I had just learned to play the intro to More Than A Feeling from Boston at the time I wrote this and with the Rockman chorus pedal…love this sound. Also the first time I used sound effects. Future guitar players will hate me.

Wonderful Jesus

Believe it or not this one was Dad’s. We planned on it being an upbeat country song. Somewhere along the way with the producer and the musicians it turned into Jimmy Buffett Margartiaville country reggae groove. A really fun song. I also got to play Dads guitar again.

I’m Going Up

Influenced by the Whiteheart album “Vital Signs”. When Steve Green was their lead singer! YES, that Steve Green. Once again if you know you know. Look it up. I got to play both piano and synthesizer on this one.

Covered By The Blood

Another one that belongs to Tammy. Classic gospel music for the church at the time. Playing piano. The lyrics seem a little strange to me now. Another time and another place. (look that up as well.)

Someone Prayed For Me

Influenced by Thank You by Ray Boltz. Little did the world know at the time the changes that not only Ray, but the Christian church at the time would begin to face. I can’t understand his journey, but I know the scales were about to be lifted from the churches eyes. For God so loved the world, EVERYONE, not just straight, white, male Republicans We forgot somewhere along the way to take the time to pray for others. We began praying for ourselves. Our Tribe. Our vision for what is moral and ethical. The simple Jesus loves me songs were no longer enough for our opened eyes. Christian means something more to me than who gets 10% of my tithe. Did I serve others or myself today? Did I show love, compassion and charity to the least of these? Did I leave the world a better place than when I found it? That’s what this all means to me.

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