In recent years, due largely to the influence of Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers series, storm chasing has exploded as an avocation. What began over fifty years ago with a handful of individuals roaming the American heartland in pursuit of nature’s most violent and beautiful storms has evolved into a hobby practiced by multitudes, shaped by the media, and facilitated by state-of-the-art technology.

Today, equipped with a laptop, a modem stick, and radar software, a beginning chaser has an excellent chance of seeing tornadoes right out of the starting gate. But it wasn’t always so. Once there was no GR3, no mobile data, no live streaming, not even any laptops—and nowhere nearly as many chasers as there are today.

New chasers conceive of storm chasing as it is, not as it was. That’s inevitable. People live in the present, not the past, and any of us can only board the train from the platform we’re standing on. Yet the past wasn’t all that long ago—that pre-tech era when the tools of the trade were few and the likelihood of busting far greater. Those of us who came up during those simpler times treasure the experience and carry a different perspective than those who cut their teeth on techno-chasing.

To scores of chasers who have been around the block a few times, Shane Adams needs no introduction. Shane has been a storm chaser since 1996. He’s well-known as a passionate and highly experienced chaser who lives, eats, and breathes storm chasing. With six storm chasing videos to his credit, Shane is the host of the weekly podcast The Debris Show; and, with his girlfriend and fellow chaser, Bridget Geaughan, he is the coauthor of the storm chasing blog Passion Twist.

Shane was good enough to do a written interview with me covering a broad range of topics of particular interest to storm chasers. The questions and responses range from the retrospective and occasionally philosophical to the practical.

Shane is an articulate, thoughtful, and passionate interviewee with much to share. Since the article is lengthy, I’ve broken it into two parts. In this first part, Shane talks about his personal development as a storm chaser; and, in the light of his own experiences, he reflects on the state of chasing today.

In part two, which I’ll release in another day or two, Shane talks about his personal approach to forecasting and chasing. He shares his unique account of chasing the tragic May 4, 2007, Greensburg, Kansas, supercell, and he looks back on the three most outstanding chases of his career.

Enough of my introduction. Here’s part one.

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Interview with Storm Chaser Shane Adams

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Question: Some background stuff to begin with. Talk a bit about your boyhood. You currently live in the Fort Worth, Texas, area. Have you lived in Tornado Alley all your life?

Shane: I was born in Oklahoma City and lived there until my parents divorced at age four. After the divorce, my mother and I moved to Healdton, Oklahoma, which is in the southern portion of the state. Growing up there for me was fun, because we lived in the same house for thirteen years, and I made many lasting friendships and knew the area well. We had a pasture that butted up to our neighborhood, and my friends and I would spend countless hours playing out there, back when kids actually played outside. That was pretty much my life pre-storms, although growing up in Oklahoma my entire life, I had been aware of storms as far back as I could remember.

Q: What event, or events, first served to flip the switch of your fascination with tornadoes?

S: As I mentioned, I had always known about thunderstorms. I can remember way back, first seeing this weird word they always used on television weather warnings: tornado. I knew about severe thunderstorms but had no clue what a tornado was. My mother tried to explain it to me, but her very limited knowledge and understanding, coupled with my young mind, just didn’t really paint the picture.

Then April 10, 1979, came along. A massive F4 tornado ripped through southern portions of Wichita Falls, Texas, just eighty miles southwest of Healdton. A few months later, one of the local television stations did a story on the tornado. I was in my room when suddenly my mother started yelling for me. I ran out into the living room, and she pointed to the television. I looked at the screen and saw a huge, black, boiling mass of cloud scraping along the ground below the most ominous sky I’d ever seen. “There,” she said. “That’s a tornado.”

I was hooked for life.

Q: It’s one thing to be intrigued by tornadoes; it’s another to actually chase them. When did you first start chasing, and what inspired you to do so? What was your first chase like for you?

S: I dabbled with chasing for years before I really started, but this was nothing more than glorified spotting. I would move from one edge of town to the other, but when the storms moved on, I never followed. I did this infrequently from 1988–1995.

On April 21, 1996, I went on my first true chase, where I actually drove out of town, over the road, to try and find a tornado. However, this too was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and I only had a cheap disposable camera and a cooler full of ice in case I found big hail. There was no plan, except that if I got into hail bigger than golfballs, I would back off, fearing a tornado I couldn’t see would be close behind.

I did get hail up to golfballs that day, saved a few in my cooler, and took a few snapshots I never developed. But this was nothing I would consider a real chase by my standards. To make it a real chase for me, there must be a video camera for documentation. Otherwise, it’s just a drive.

My first “official” chase was June 6, 1996. I was working a landscaping job with a friend of mine named Greg Clark. It started to get stormy early that afternoon, so we decided to knock off early. I said on a whim, “We should go chase these storms and try to find a tornado.” Greg not only liked the idea but suggested that we grab his mother’s video camera and tape the experience. It had never crossed my mind to actually videotape a tornado, but I was wild about the idea. (As it turned out, having the video camera that day was pivotal towards me becoming a chaser).

We grabbed the video camera, stopped by my place to look at a live update from one of the local television stations, and then took off towards a storm that was tornado-warned. There was no plan; we just called it as we went. All I knew at the time was, you want to be out of the rain, so we just drove right into the heart of the storm until the rain stopped. A lowering was to our south, so we turned east to pace it. We stopped, and I started shooting video. Literally seconds after I did, a small tornado formed out of nowhere, right in the spot I was pointing at, lasting less than a minute. It was pure dumb luck, but it was a critical moment for my chasing future.

Q: That first tornado obviously hooked you. What was your growth curve as a storm chaser like from that point?

S: I laughed out loud when I read this one. To put it simply, I was horrible. For years. I got by the first four or five years on sheer passion and tenacity. I didn’t know anything about the atmosphere or that I even needed to. Computer models were something I didn’t even know existed for the first year I chased. All I was armed with was an unrelenting, unrivaled passion to see tornadoes. There really was nothing else other than the minimal, basic structural and behavioral experiences I was slowly developing as I chased more and saw more.

As the years started going by, I started to recognize patterns and tendencies purely from what storms looked like or what the sky in general looked like. By my fifth season, I was pretty good at working a storm—meaning, how I handled it once I found it—even though I knew virtually nothing about finding storms. Basically, I learned how to chase storms way before I ever learned how to forecast them.

Q: Who were some of your key influences during those early years—people who helped you learn the ropes or who simply inspired you?

S: The first storm chaser I ever heard of was Warren Faidley. I received The Weather Channel’s Enemy Wind on VHS for Christmas in 1992 and wore the thing out. I had no clue there were people out there who actually chased storms seriously. But even more, I had no idea there were several people other than Faidley who had been doing it for years.

The first storm chaser I began to seriously follow and look up to was Jim Leonard. He was bigger than life to me. I was brand-new to chasing and just discovering the wonders of my storm chasing passion. Jim was the guy who, in my eyes, had done everything I wanted to do. His dedication to the art of chasing, and the fact that he’d started around the same age as I was and was still as dedicated well into his forties, was amazing to me. I idolized him, and I’m not the star-struck type. I met him briefly at a landspout seminar hosted by Al Pietrycha in Norman in 1997. I asked him a few questions about what was, at the time, my favorite intercept video from him: his June 8, 1995, Allison, Texas, wedge tornado. It was such a thrill to actually be standing next to my hero, although he had no clue who I was or that I worshiped him LOL.

Another chaser who, in my later formative years, really reached out to me was Gene Moore. He realized how ignorant I was but also saw my passion and dedication. While he could’ve easily ridiculed me, he instead took the time to talk to me about a few things he considered the basic, important essentials for storm forecasting. Things I still use to this day, every forecast, every chase.

Q: You came up in a time when technology and the media hadn’t yet shaped storm chasing the way they do today. What was chasing like for you in those days? What benefits do you think you gained from the minimalist, old-school approach that younger chasers today are missing?

S: The main difference between chasing now and chasing when I started is the laptop computer, but that’s over-simplfying things. Back in the day, we didn’t just not have computers, we didn’t have smart phones or iPods either. Today’s chasers never have to deal with long hours on the road the way chasers did years ago. Sure, twelve hours cooped up in a vehicle is still extreme, but it definitely softens the experience when you have constant entertainment at your fingertips, the way you would at home.

Chasers today don’t talk to each other, they chat. They stream. They surf. They listen to music. There will be a carload of chasers and each one will be in their own world, playing on a cell phone. Chasers today will never know what it’s like to spend twelve hours in a car when all you have for passing the time is conversation. And many times for me personally, I didn’t even have that, because many of my past partners were champion sleepers when there was nothing exciting going on. It takes a special kind of person to willfully strap themselves in for a ride that could last over twenty-four hours, with absolutely no guarantee of seeing anything—even less of a guarantee without constant streaming data 24/7 to lead you to the storm on a string—and absolutely nothing to pass the time. These techno-generation chasers will never experience that level of dedication, and quite frankly, if many of them were to, I doubt some would stayas dedicated.

Basically now, chasing is just people doing all the same things they would be doing at home otherwise, except there’s a drive involved and maybe a storm or tornado. The “grueling, long hours” which are so often brought up by chasers praising their allegiance to their craft are nothing more than what they do every day, except they have to stop to use the potty.

I’m very grateful I was able to endure the type of chasing I did for a good number of years. We would jump in a car and drive to Missouri or Illinois from Oklahoma on a whim, with nothing to guide us except NOAA radio. We were always broke, so hotels were an extremely rare treat at best, maybe once or twice a year. Normally we’d just drive in shifts, and do straight-through chases of twenty-four hours or more. And this was with no Internet, no Spotify, and no Angry Birds. Just a carload of guys who shared one common goal: to see a tornado.

One time in 2000, we left Norman at 1:00 a.m. and drove straight through to North Dakota only to miss all the tornadoes by forty-five minutes. We stayed the night in Fargo, then drove straight back the next day, missing even more tornadoes because we got there too late again. That was a 2000-mile, two-day trip for some thunder and lightning. We had several of those back in the day, when the only thing fueling us was the desire to simply see and videotape a tornado.

There are few of today’s new chasers who would ever willfully endure that type of experience. Kids today want everything on a plate, with a remote, a keystroke, or some other too-easy device designed for no other purpose than to make an already easy life that much easier. A lot of chasers like to toot their own horn (nice pun, eh?) about how dedicated, extreme, and hardcore they are. Doesn’t take much to drive 500 miles when you know you’ve got Internet the entire way and a nice, comfy hotel bed waiting for you that night. Try it with nothing but a NOAA radio and knowing that regardless of what happens, you’re not sleeping again until you get back home the following day. That’s hardcore.

But it’s a different world, and I have to accept that. I look around, and I really can’t relate to most newer chasers. They rely on electronics for their lifeblood, they care as much about making money as simply videotaping a tornado, and they’re all so busy trying to come up with the next big thing or gimmick. For me, at the end of the day, it’s about the storms and tornadoes, period. Streaming doesn’t matter, money doesn’t matter, and every other chaser out there doesn’t matter. All that matters is my video camera and that tornado in front of it. My day ends when the last tornado ends and the setting sun bleeds away. Their day is just beginning, hustling to contact brokers or potential customers with their day’s bounty. That’s fine for them, but chasing isn’t work for me. It can’t be, because I love it too much to ruin it by putting money at the top of the priority list. Everyone likes to deliver that famous line, “Hey, if I can get some money back that’s great,” but the reality is, once you taste money from chasing, it stops being about seeing storms and starts being about selling video. Because making $$$ from chasing is too much work for it not to be the top priority.

I’m happy fading back into obscurity, with my long resume filled with amazing catches the world doesn’t value because they haven’t been splashed all over the internet and television. I’m perfectly content to sit back and watch the flame wars, the ego battles, and of course, the constant brand/money wars. I watch this blur of an activity, as it is today, and smile inside, thinking back to how simple and innocent it was so many years ago. Even more simple and innocent years before my own career started. I’m proud to have come along when I did, to get a taste of the tail-end of a great era of storm chasing. There’s no doubt I’m the chaser I am now because of the way I learned, and that’s something I cherish. I haven’t seen the most or the best, been the closest, or lived through the worst, been the most famous or the most respected. I’m just doing my own thing the best way I know how, and will continue to trudge forward, ever-attempting to pen the next chapter in my life’s storm chasing adventure.

(Coming in Part Two: personal forecasting and chase approaches, the 2007 Greensburg storm, and top three career chases.)

I don’t normally let so much time elapse between posts, but…

• •  I’ve been hugely focused on an editing project; and
• •  I sprained my ankle a few weeks ago, greatly curtailing my activities; plus
• •  this has been an abnormally warm, largely snowless winter thus far; and so, adding everything together
• •  I haven’t had much to write about.

But that has changed with the arrival of this latest winter storm, which I am live-streaming on iMap even as I write. Here’s what it looks like on the radar as of around 9:20 a.m. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) A little farther down the page is a corresponding view from my balcony here in Caledonia, Michigan. Let’s put it this way: it’s not very pleasant outside.

The Grand Rapids weather office has this to say:

...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EST THIS
EVENING...

HAZARDOUS WEATHER...

 * SNOW WILL CONTINUE TO FALL ACROSS THE AREA INTO THIS MORNING
   BEFORE TAPERING OFF. SOME LOCAL POCKETS OF HEAVIER SNOW WILL BE
   POSSIBLE AT TIMES.

 * STORM TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 6 INCHES ARE EXPECTED
   THROUGH 7 PM FRIDAY EVENING...WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS
   POSSIBLE.

 * SOME WIND GUSTS OF UP TO 30 MPH WILL CAUSE SOME BLOWING AND
   DRIFTING SNOW LATER TODAY.

The updated aviation forecast includes this addendum:

AREAS IN THE WARNING WILL SEE 5 TO 8 INCHES WITH SOME AMOUNTS UP TO 10
INCHES POSSIBLE.

Latest station ob at GRR shows a temperature of 27 degrees. That’s not at all horrible for this time of year in Michigan. What we’re getting is actually standard fare. But that’s not to make light of it. Conditions certainly aren’t balmy, and a 20-knot northwest wind doesn’t help. This is a great day to be inside. It’s times like now when the benefits of working at home become strikingly apparent. No scraping ice off the windshield of my car. No driving down icy roads. Just a manuscript to edit while catching glimpses of the birds swarming the feeder against a backdrop of windblown snow.

Life’s good things aren’t necessarily pricey. I’m content with a cuppa joe, a warm apartment, my work in front of me, and a pretty landscape outside the window with the snow piling up. From the looks of it, we’ve got around four inches right now. Bring on the rest of it. I’m not going anywhere.

With the arrival of the new year, Winter 2012 appears to finally be kicking into gear here in West Michigan. I’m ready for it. We got off light in December, with little in the way of snowfall and much in the way of unseasonably warm temperatures. On New Year’s Eve, temps scraped above 40 degrees. In that respect, this New Year has been very similar to the last one, though not quite as warm.

The mercury started dropping yesterday afternoon as the wrap-around from a departing low ushered in colder air, and with it, the first significant snowfall of the season. Here’s what the L2 radar looked like at about 1:00 p.m. yesterday as the snow was getting started. Possible blizzard conditions were in the GRR forecast discussion at that point, but the winds never intensified to that level. Station obs currently show northwest surface winds up to 20 knots through West Michigan, and just up the road at the airport the temperature is 25 degrees. That sounds like winter to me.

And the snow that is piled on top of my balustrade and covering the cars out in the parking lot looks like winter. Here’s a view of the bird feeding station out on my balcony to give you an idea of how much snow has stuck since yesterday. Looks to be about four inches. More may visit me yet here in Caledonia, but right now we appear to be situated between bands of the heavy lake effect stuff, with the most intense band streaming south-southeast from along the lakeshore by Muskegon and Grand Haven toward Kalamazoo and Centreville.

I see that a few storm chasers are out for a romp. Enjoy yourselves, lads. Me, I’m recovering from a sprained ankle and my car is in the shop, so I’m not going anywhere. Today is a day to ice my ankle, kick back with a big mug of Lapsang Souchong tea, watch the finches frolic at the feeder, work on an editing project, and let the icy winds blow.

Happy New Year, everyone!

A white-breasted nuthatch was at my bird feeder a few minutes ago searching hopefully for seed. Poor little thing! The seed stash has been low these past few days. Monday I sprained my left ankle while hiking in Yankee Springs, and I haven’t been up to replenishing the feeding station. In fact, my life has been largely reduced to sitting in the couch keeping my leg elevated and my ankle iced.

Lisa has been taking great care of me. Still, I like to do what I can for myself, so for three days I hobbled around gingerly, thinking that, c’mon, I hadn’t hurt myself all that badly. But I had, and I wasn’t doing my ankle any favors.

Yesterday I finally concluded that maybe crutches wouldn’t be a bad idea after all. I’ve never used them before, and these ones have taken some getting used to. I wish they came with training wheels. But I’m getting the hang of them, and taking the stress off my ankle is definitely helping. Maybe in a few days I won’t need the crutches anymore.

Anyway, I just refilled the finch sack with thistle seed and both feeding tubes with sunflower seed. A couple of chickadees have already discovered the fresh supply, and it won’t be long before the rest of the birds do as well. I think it’ll be a matter of only minutes before the finches arrive and my balcony will once again swarm with bird action.

What a wild and difficult ride this year has been! And now we’ve arrived at the last day of it. Poised on the brink of 2012, I look back and think, whew! No repeats, please. Nationally and globally, this has been a year of horrific natural disasters, economic turmoil, and unprecedented political upheaval. On a personal level, I have struggled financially as copywriting projects for a key client slowed down from what had been an abundance to a trickle and finally to nothing.

The tight finances massively hampered my ability to chase storms, and consequently I had to sit out some incredible events. Missing them was more than frustrating; it was painful, and it has taken a toll on my sense of identity as a storm chaser.

Thankfully, there have been good things to even out the bad. I published The Giant Steps Scratch Pad Complete, which duplicates the material in The Giant Steps Scratch Pad in all 12 keys. That has been a major accomplishment. I also began chasing locally for WOOD TV’s Storm Team 8, and my first chase for them resulted in a pretty solid coup during a damaging straight-line wind event down in Battle Creek. Also I got to experience Hurricane Irene down in South Carolina, and while I opted out of catching the eye at landfall, I saw enough both on the coast and inland to satisfy my curiosity.

Moreover, Lisa has been recovering nicely from a horribly painful frozen shoulder that she incurred at the beginning of the year. And while Mom’s knee replacement sidelined me from chasing what turned out to be a history-making super-outbreak of tornadoes down in Alabama on April 27, the result has been more than worthwhile; Mom’s knee is now pain-free and Mom can walk again.

As for my copywriting and editorial business, The CopyFox, other opportunities have been coming my way. I definitely miss the steady flow of business from my key client, but I much enjoy the new kinds of projects I’ve been getting from Bethany Christian Services and Baker Books. I’m currently in the middle of editing a book for Heart & Life Publishing, a new publishing service operated by my friend Kevin Miles. If there’s one bit of wisdom that I continue to prove through the years, it’s to step through open doors and embrace new opportunities to learn and grow in the talents God has given me. It’s important to know when to say no; but that being understood, there is a lot in life to say yes to.

I have no resolutions for the New Year. There are and will be goals big and small to reach for in their proper time, and I find that approach to be more realistic than making resolutions. I do hope, though, that I’ll get in a few successful chases this coming storm season to make up for the ones I’ve missed this year.

Still no snow, by the way, and it looks like that’s how it’ll stay through tonight. The 1723 UTC station obs show 38 degrees at GRR, and we’re forecasted to get up into the low 40s, so a green New Year is in store, just like last year. But it won’t stay that way for long; West Michigan’s first major winter storm is set to dump six to eight inches of snow on us tomorrow through Monday, and these warm temperatures will soon be a thing of the past. January is poised to swoop in with fangs bared.

So it’s a good thing I got those bird feeders filled back up. The finches still haven’t arrived. But the chickadees have been doing steady traffic, a couple of rosy-breasted nuthatches are making sporadic appearances, and the woodpeckers have been bellying up to the suet all along. The birds are taken care of. Now it’s my turn. It’s early afternoon and I’m still sitting here in my robe; time to shower up and get the rest of this day in gear.

Lord, thank you for this difficult but nevertheless gracious year. When disappointment and hardship hit, I find it easy to complain. But you are always there in the midst of my life, and I have no problem seeing your goodness when I seek your priorities over my personal wants. My part is to do my best, but you’re the one who calls the shots. Thanks for tonight’s gig with my good friend Ed. Thanks for my dear, dear woman, Lisa, and for my mom and siblings and friends. Thanks for the gifts of storm chasing and music, which not only make me come alive, but also shape me as a person. Thanks for the beautiful Michigan outdoors which I love so much–the wetlands, the wildflowers, the sandhill cranes ratcheting in the marshes, the rivers and streams and lakes filled with fish, the blonde sweep of dunes along the Lake Michigan shore, the forested, glacial hills at sundown. Thanks for the gift of my senses that lets me drink in all of these things, and for emotions that let me feel the wonder of it all. Thank you for the gift of life. Thank you for love. Thank you, precious Lord, for you.

I hope that a few of you will make it down to Fall Creek down in Hastings this evening to catch Ed and me. But whatever you wind up doing, have a fun and safe night. Happy New Year, one and all!

In a world that has become bewilderingly complex, may the simplicity of faith in the person of Jesus be yours today and every day. I don’t think it’s any secret that Christmas is almost certainly not the actual calendar date of Jesus’s birth. What’s important about Christmas is, it reminds us that Jesus indeed was born at a specific point in time, at a certain hour on a certain day, really and truly. If eternal life were just a matter of sound moral teachings, he need not have bothered. But he came to provide something far more than one more model in the display case of spiritual teachers; he came to offer us himself as the object of our trust in matters far too vast for us to comprehend.

Look around you. Look inside you. Is it really so hard so hard to believe that what we need is not merely answers, but a Savior?

“For God loved the world with such unfathomable depth and passion that he gave the Son whom he himself sired–God, reproducing his very heart and character uniquely in human form, clothed with flesh, emotions, personality, a voice, appetites, and a name–so that whoever puts his or her trust in the Son may possess an entirely different quality of life: eternal life, today and forever.”–John 3:16, my rendering

A blessed and gracious Christmas to all my friends.

Politically incorrectly yours,

Bob

(Continued from part 4.)

Over thirty years have passed from the days of God’s Family Band until today. Dad’s horn has been a constant companion in that journey, though I have not always been constant with it. There were times when I set it aside for a season, and other times when I thought how much simpler life could be if I put it behind me forever. Yet every time I have set down the saxophone, I have returned to it. I have kept at it–because I must. It is more than a passion; it is a calling, integral to the way God has designed me.

There are many other stories besides the ones I have told in this brief series, more than I wish to share here. The long and short of it all is, Dad’s horn has shaped me both as a player and as a person.

Thus far, I have talked about the journey my father’s horn has taken me on. Now I would like to tell you a little about the horn itself. I own two other saxophones beside it: a Conn tenor that is even older than my alto and has long been in drastic disrepair, and a Yamaha soprano that I sometimes play. But the alto remains my voice, and I have always owned only the one, Dad’s. I’ve had no need for any other.

Not that I haven’t tried other horns. I’ve sampled a fair cross-section of altos over the years. But the one I learned to play on is the one I play today and the one on which I will someday play my last note, and then, I hope–though I have no children of my own–pass it on to someone else as a legacy, just as Dad passed it on to me.

Of all the saxophones I have played, my father’s horn sounds the most resonant, offers the greatest flexibility of sound, and blows the freest. It is an amazingly open horn. It will take as much air as I can supply and convert it into a sound that fills a room. Not that the Conn 6M is a miracle horn; it has its drawbacks. While I can get around reasonably well above high F, the altissimo is not as responsive as on other saxophones. Manufactured before the introduction of the high F# key, Dad’s sax does not feature uber-high notes as one of its strengths. Also, my repairman tells me that the rolled tone holes–a hallmark of the 6M–are beastly when it comes to getting pads to seat properly. When I have pads replaced, I usually need to visit the shop more than once to get the sax sealing tightly.

But once that job is accomplished, oh, man! Dad’s alto is a dream to play, and I fall in love with it all over again. It has a sound and a response like no other, and it has served me well for over four decades.

Dad was always the greatest fan of my playing. During the last three years of his life, he, like me, had an encounter with Jesus that changed him–not a little, but drastically. The anger that seemed to lurk below the surface disappeared, and while his feistiness remained, it was tempered with humility, even a sweetness, and above all, a peace I had never seen in him before. The ghosts that I think had haunted him from World War II seemed to lose their grip. There is a verse in the Bible that reads, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (II Cor. 5:17) Whenever I read that verse, I think of Dad.

I was 28 years old when Dad passed away. That was nearly thirty years ago. Several years ago, I wrote a letter to my father. I thanked him for all he had done for me and for our family. I told him how, now that I was older and wise enough not to know as much as I did back in my twenties, I wished I could sit down with him and listen to him tell me about his life–how it was in the Great Depression, and in the War, killing and watching his friends be killed. I told him that he was my hero, and how glad I was, how very glad, for the peace he had found. The transformation that had begun in him when he first encountered the Lord was now complete. When next he and I would meet, Dad would no longer be a white-haired man crippled by a back injury, short-winded from a chronic heart condition and breathing from an oxgyen tank. I envisioned him striding toward me, grinning, his arms outstretched, his face that of a vibrant young man, his eyes filled with a spark that can only be found in one who has looked into the very face of Love and Life, and in its Presence found his home.

On Memorial Day, I took my letter to the small cemetery out in the countryside where Dad is buried. A tiny American flag fluttered by his marker beneath a tall fir tree. It is a beautiful little place, and Dad, who loved trees, would have been pleased with the location. I cleared away a few sprigs of grass that were encroaching on his modest gravestone, and I dusted off its surface. With a piece of Scotch tape, I attached my letter to Dad’s marker.

Then, standing up, I fulfilled one last, important part of the letter. “Thanks for the saxophone, Dad,” I had written. “It was your legacy to me, and I’ve brought it with me. Perhaps, just for a minute, the Lord will roll back eternity and let you get an earful of me playing it just for you.”

Taking the horn, setting its mouthpiece in my mouth, and wrapping my fingers around the golden, pearl-covered keys that I had first seen and admired when I was a little boy, I began to play. With his old Conn alto sax, I played for Dad the song I had performed on the day when I was baptized at Bethel–the song that over the years had become my theme song and was a fitting description of Dad’s own life.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see.

A saxophone cannot verbalize those words, but it most certainly can communicate them. That day, I played them with all my heart.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come.
‘Twas grace that brought me safe this far, and grace shall lead me home.

The legacy of my father’s horn lives on. I love to play it, and while I am no Kenny Garrett, I continue to practice regularly, and thus to grow as a jazz musician. Today, I realize that Dad’s gift to me of his saxophone was ordained by my heavenly Father–by my father’s Father and mine. I am his son, his man, and his musician. And with gratitude, until a day known only to him when my last song shall end, by his grace, for his pleasure, and in honor of the Master Musician, I will continue to play my Father’s horn.

(Continued from part 3.)

Writing this article has opened my eyes to just how immense a legacy my dad left me when he put his alto sax in my hands as a boy. I never intended to pen a lengthy, multi-part personal history, just a brief tribute to Dad and the shaping force his old Conn 6M has been for me. Now, four parts into “My Father’s Horn,” I realize that I could write a book and still not tell the full story. But writing a book was not, and is not, my intention. I see a need to condense, to say much in few words.

Yet I am not sure how to do that. Dad’s horn has been as pervasive an influence in my life as yeast in bread dough. It has been a source of tremendous satisfaction and great frustration; a creative outlet; an intellectual challenge and stimulus; a doorway of faith; a parable portraying truths about God’s kingdom and how He designs individuals; a song of joy, a wail of pain, a voice of my soul; a catalyst for insight, choices, and growth; a blessing to many listeners and, first and foremost, to the player; a gift, a discipline, and most certainly, a calling.

When I was 24 and playing in the Aquinas College Jazz Band, I got a call one evening from a guy named Rick Callier. Would I care to play in a musical that the Bethel Pentecostal Choir was presenting called “The Beautiful Story of Jesus”?

I learned that Rick’s cousin, Kimball Owens, had recommended me to Rick. Kimball was my buddy in the jazz band–a non-stop chatterbox, funny, super-likeable, a fine tenor sax player, and my friend. I knew nothing about either Rick or Bethel, but, while I wasn’t a Christian, I had grown up knowing about Jesus and was glad for an opportunity to offer my talent in His service for an evening.

That event was my introduction to Rick, to Bethel, and to a number of talented black gospel musicians and vocalists: David Jennings, Chico DeBarge, James Abney, Craig Tyson … the list goes on, too many to name. Even more important, playing for the Bethel musical ushered me into the beginning of my walk as a disciple of Jesus.*

Back in the 1980s, white churches in West Michigan didn’t have much use for the saxophone. Not so black churches. I knew nothing about the foibles of religious culture and cared even less about racial distinctions. All I knew was, I had fallen in with some people who loved Jesus, loved music, projected joy, and welcomed me and my horn wholeheartedly. And my heart was open. I had been seeking God for a long time, searching for meaning; searching for something bigger even than the music; searching for Life. And I found it. Or rather, I found Him–because throughout the years, He had already long been seeking me.

Thus it was that a few days after Christmas in December, 1980, I was baptized at Bethel Pentecostal Church. On that day, I had an encounter with God. It was, as best I can describe it, a sense of being overwhelmed by joy and praise. The experience was almost physical in nature and one I have never forgotten.

From there, I played often with the Bethel Pentecostal Choir. As a white kid from a German family, I was a salt grain in a pepper mill, but it didn’t matter. Love of the Lord and of music made ethnic differences something to be appreciated and enjoyed, and a source of insight.

At that time, I also joined the horn section of a gospel group called God’s Family Band. The band was co-led by Rick Callier and David Jennings, with Rick doing the arranging and David working with the vocalists. Both of these guys were incredibly talented. In partnership with a friend named Larry Rhodes, Rick also used the horns in studio sessions for other gospel artists, notably the Grammy-Award-winning group Commissioned. It was under Rick and Larry that I gained experience both as a horn section player and as a studio musician. I’ve never played for more exacting producers. They would do take after take, striving for perfection. Rick and Larry set a benchmark for excellence. Working with producers of their caliber was an eye-opening, rewarding, and hugely valuable experience.

All the while, I continued to study music at Aquinas College and play in the jazz band. My college education equipped me with the tools I needed to grow as a musician. To be honest, though, I wasted my first years in college, and I only really began to learn my horn after I got out of school. As a result, I’m mostly self-educated as a jazz saxophonist.

One influence from my college days to whom I will always feel a debt of gratitude was Mel Dalton. A wonderful Grand Rapids area tenor player, Mel was the closest thing I ever had to a musical mentor. For a brief but memorable semester or two, I use to get together with him on a weekly basis at his home. Mel didn’t exactly teach me how to play jazz; mostly what he did was spend time with me listening to Coltrane records, talking about music, playing with me through solo transcriptions, and encouraging me. Mel modeled what jazz musicianship was about. He was a beautiful player and a warm, wonderful human being, and I wish he was still here today.

At this point, I need to fast-forward. There’s a lot of story I could tell, but it wouldn’t serve my original intent in writing this article. It’s enough to say that my father’s horn has opened up doors of relationships, opportunities, and experiences.

That’s enough for now. I’ll save the rest for part 5, which I think will be the conclusion of “My Father’s Horn.”

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* I’m cautious about using the word “Christian” to describe myself. I am a Christian; however, these days the word has become a label freighted with meanings that have nothing to do with what it means to follow Jesus. The word “Christian” has become politicized. It has become a marketing niche. It has come to stand for a subculture that in some ways misrepresents what Jesus and Christianity are truly about. So I prefer to be thought of as simply a disciple of Jesus–a fallible man who seeks to know Him, love Him, and live in a way that reflects his Lordship in my heart.

Today is the first day of meteorological winter. Since my post on this date last year explains why, from a weatherly perspective, winter begins on December 1 instead of December 22, there’s no need for me to re-pave that same road here.

However, the weather today is quite different from what it was a year ago. Back then, we were getting a pretty good dusting of lake effect snow, and I included a radar capture in that day’s post to show what we could expect for the next four months. In contrast, today has dawned clear-skied, and this bright sun streaming through the sliding glass door directly onto my face is forcing me to squint with my left eye and prompting me to fetch my broad-brimmed Tilley hat directly after I dot this sentence.

There, hat installed. Much better. Now, what was I saying? Oh, yeah … unlike last year’s snowy opener here in West Michigan, this winter is stepping in with a smile. But that signifieth nothing. Two days ago, on November 29, the state got its first taste of accumulation in a belt that slanted, roughly, from Coldwater up toward Saginaw.

Here in my little town, what was initially forecast to be at least an inch of snow turned out to be just an errant flake or two. The payload didn’t miss us by much, though; just a few miles to the east, the snow came down. Last night, driving home from a practice session with my sax in Clarksville, I noticed that the fields were covered. The satellite photo to your left shows what the actual accumulation looks like from above. (Thanks to my friend Mike Kovalchick for initially posting this image in Facebook.)

Cold temperatures are becoming the norm. From here on, the forties will be a high, and anything in the fifties, a gift. We’re in that transition zone between rain and snow, with snow becoming the dominant form of precipitation. More of it is in the forecast for this week, and I don’t doubt that by the time the winter solstice arrives on December 22, meteorological winter will already have settled in with a smug grin on its face.

Today, though, the sun is shining, and while this isn’t exactly T-shirt weather, I’ll take it. Time to sign off and get the rest of the day rolling.

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PS  You might also enjoy reading my explanation of the meteorological seasons in  “Winter Comes Knocking,” posted yesterday in my new blog, Fox’s World.

(Continued from part 2.)

For a couple of years after I graduated from high school, I cast about with no certain direction. I worked a series of odds-and-ends jobs, none with any promise, and lived alternately with my parents, in a tiny shotgun house in Eastown, and in a former chicken coop converted into a rental home out in the countryside of Cascade. (Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! The place was really nice for that time in my life.)

The one constant in my life was music. But in those days, I had largely set aside my horn in favor of my acoustic guitar, which I had taught myself to play. I was hugely into Jethro Tull and wanted nothing more than to be another Ian Anderson. So I was doing my best to develop as a singer/songwriter.

It was the sax, though, that opened the door to some key musical friendships. In those days, I was hanging with my buddies Perry Werchowsky and Scott Smith. It was these guys who in different ways spurred me on to learn more about what I was doing.

The three of us used to get together frequently at Perry’s house and jam, with Perry playing piano, Scott on the guitar, and, of course, me on the alto sax. Perry was studying with veteran jazz keyboardist Eddie Russ, and Scott had begun to take music classes at Grand Rapids Junior College. Scott was constantly talking about the latest musical concepts he was learning in music theory class. Triads, inversions, augmented chords, secondary dominants, cadences … all fascinating to hear about, and frankly, I was starting to feel a bit jealous. I wanted to know about that stuff!

When I told my parents that I thought I might like to study music, they leaped at my mere mention of the idea. A whirlwind of college visits, applications, and financial aid forms ensued, and when the dust finally settled, I found myself sitting in the afternoon jazz band at Aquinas College under the directorship of Dr. Bruce Early.

Bruce put me in the lead alto chair, but he made it plain to me that the arrangement was only temporary. Someone else would be playing first chair, and once that person arrived in a week or two, I would be demoted.

“Right,” I thought. “Just wait till you hear what I can do!” Rehearsals got underway, me playing with all the gusto and confidence that comes from either great talent or monumental ignorance. From the impression Bruce was doing of being utterly unimpressed, I knew I was secretly blowing him away. He just wasn’t letting on.

Then one afternoon as I was assembling my horn for rehearsal, into the room walked another saxophonist named Dan Bryska. I had heard Dan play before; he had sat in on a few Formal Aires gigs in months past. I felt a bit nervous. Here was my replacement, apparently, and I knew he was good.

Dan put together his horn and began to warm up with a series of bebop licks. In fifteen seconds, the guy blew lines through his sax that I had never dreamed of. And like that, my cocky attitude evaporated. Geeze, Dan wasn’t just better than me, he was a lot better. There weren’t even grounds for comparison.

Until now I had been a small fish in a smaller pond, and I had made the mistake of believing the people who told me what a great player I was. Now here was the truth, staring me in the face. I was a novice, so green that I didn’t even know how badly I sucked. But Dan had just given me a clue. It was a humbling experience, but it was good for me. It suggested that if I wanted to become anywhere near as good a player as Dan and some of the other guys in the band, I was going to have to work at it.

In other words, practice. What a novel concept!

But practice what? I wasn’t sure. I had begun to take jazz improvisation lessons with Bruce Early, but my ears just couldn’t wrap themselves around the complexities of even the simplest jazz harmony. A ninth slapped on top of a minor seventh chord didn’t sound pretty to me; it sounded wrong.

I forget how I stumbled upon Jerry Coker’s renowned book Patterns for Jazz, but I’ll never forget the impact it had on me. By then I was two years into music school, and I was slowly developing, but I think I was mostly just a source of frustration for my saxophone instructor. Then along came Coker’s book. I took it to school with me, hit a practice room, and began to work on a pattern that consisted of major triads ascending and descending chromatically.

“Hmmm,” I thought, “I wonder if I can memorize this.” I took up the challenge, persevered at it, and succeeded. And light began to dawn for me. I could do this stuff! If I practiced, I could become good. Maybe even really good.

I was hammering away on my triads one afternoon when the door to my practice room suddenly flung open and my sax instructor, Fred Bunch, rushed in. “YES!” he yelled. “That’s it! That’s it! Keep doing it!!!”

The man had a wild look in his eyes, and I had left my pepper spray at home. But I felt more inspired than nervous. After all those years of misfiring, it looked like I was finally on the right track.

(To be continued.)

(Continued from part 1.)

During my eighth-grade year, my father’s horn opened the doors to a formative experience in my life. It began when a fellow junior high school classmate, Steve Afendoulis, asked me if I would like to play in a band he was forming. Steve being a drummer, I thought he was talking about a rock band.

Now, I have to be honest: Much as I enjoyed playing the saxophone, rock music was in its psychedelic heyday, and what I really aspired to be was the next Jimi Hendrix. The only hitch was that I didn’t play guitar. Still, while I’d never heard of Dave Sanborn, I thought that maybe I could carve my niche as a rock saxophonist. I’d be cool, and “cool” was a quality I lacked and desperately wished to cultivate. So I told Steve to count me in.

Thus it was that I wound up playing lead alto in a 17-piece dance band called the Formal Aires. It was not exactly Woodstock material. Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong … good heavens! I was playing my parents’ music! Whatever image it might project for me, “cool” didn’t figure in.

I hadn’t a clue what an amazing experience I had walked into. What I did know was that, cool or not, I really enjoyed the weekly rehearsals with my 16 other junior high and high school bandmates. They came from several schools around the Grand Rapids area, and even as our athletic teams clashed, we harmonized.

Steve’s dad, Gus Afendoulis, served as the band’s manager. He owned a tuxedo rental and dry cleaning shop on Michigan Street in Grand Rapids and also wrote a weekly column on bridge for the Grand Rapids Press. Being well-connected, Gus managed to secure frequent weekend and holiday gigs for the band at top country clubs, wedding receptions, and social and community events throughout West Michigan. I’m quite sure it was Gus who purchased our music library for us. Owning his own tux shop, he saw to it that we were properly outfitted in formal attire. He secured a couple of music directors who worked with us during weekly rehearsals, helping us to properly interpret the music and develop our sound. Above all, Gus loved us kids. He was a sweetheart of a guy who made it all happen for us and did so in such a low-key way that his immense significance never dawned on me till years later.

I mentioned that the band had two music directors. These men, Sid Stellema and Ted Carino, were the guiding forces for the band. Ted, an alto saxophonist with prior big band experience, was there every week, walking us through the charts, rehearsing us, encouraging us, shaping our sound. Ted was the person who first made me aware that not all mouthpieces are created equal. I had been playing the stock mouthpiece that came with dad’s horn. With its small tip opening, it was not designed to move a lot of air, and it gave me a feeble, overly dark sound with little volume or projection. It was by no means a lead alto mouthpiece.

One night, Ted pulled me aside and handed me a box containing a brand-new Brillhart mouthpiece. I put it on my horn and experienced an epiphany. This piece was so much louder! And its brighter tone gave me the edge I needed for the first alto chair.

Sid Stellema also helped rehearse the band. His involvement wasn’t as extensive as Ted’s, but his experience as an arranger provided us with invaluable input. Sid also guided me in writing my first–and only–successful big band chart: an arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne.” In those days I knew nothing of music theory, and my inner ear was informed by rock harmonies rather than jazz. Thanks to Sid’s coaching, though, I came up with an acceptable arrangement of the Guy Lombardo classic, which the band played every New Year’s Eve henceforth and eventually passed down, along with the rest of its book, to its successor, the Stardusters.

The Formal Aires was a profoundly important part of my musical learning curve. Through it all, my father and mother faithfully drove me to the weekly rehearsals. The saxophone that Dad was unable to play now rested in the hands of his oldest son, and Dad could hear both it and me coming to life, doing what we were created to do.

I played in the Formal Aires, and afterward the Stardusters, all the way through high school and even into my early college days. I think the Formal Aires must have played at every country club in West Michigan, and not just once, but frequently. We had the New Year’s Eve gig locked in every year at the Cascade Country Club. The band was a great way for us kids to make a bit of money playing music–and above all, we had fun! To Steve, to Gus, to Ted, to Sid, and to all my old bandmates: Thanks. I’ve never forgotten.

The Formal Aires and the Stardusters steeped me in the classic swing band literature and gave me the confidence I needed as a lead alto player. Too much confidence, really. I was naive as to how much I had yet to learn …

(To be continued.)