Jazz Bass Electronics And Wanda the Terrier: A Tale of Two Barkers

Several viewers of the OPB Art Beat segment about Barker Bass have noticed the cameo appearance of Wanda, the Pound Hound. She seems unaffected by the attention.

Very little in her life introduces changes, and she responds happily to routine. This would be contrary to other terriers, who are often described as "dogs who will do whatever you want them to do...whenever they decide to do it!"

When a Barker Bass reaches the "clean bench" which is the one in the office where all the electronic and stringup tasks are accomplished, it loses the individuality it had enjoyed in the initial construction processes. There, the wood is identified by some characteristic--"the one with the swirl toward the middle" or "the one with the stunning alder pattern on the back" and that nickname sticks, for a while. It may even generate special attention, particularly when Dean Mancini, our artful finisher, gets his hands on it.

On the bench, though, the instrument becomes less individual and the tasks more rote. The electronics we want to be dependable, functioning exactly the same, every time. When you roll the volume of the upper pickup just this far, you want it to sound the same as it did yesterday. Quality components and attention to detail are the guarantors here.

Wanda wants to go outdoors about 6:30am, and when she comes in, she heads straight to the food dish. If that has not been the focus of the same sort of rigorous attention that the volume and tone pots get at the shop, she gets in my way and stays there, moving adroitly but always staying face on, until I dredge the measuring cup out of the dogfood pantry and clatter the kibbles into her stainless steel platter.

The wires for the control cavity are cut according to a chart, identified by color and length, stripped, tinned (technical term for melting some solder into the strands so individual tiny wires don't stray out of their yard), and laid out for their turn to be soldered in place and coiled neatly out of the way.

When Linda and I innocently went to the Redmond Humane Society some 10 years ago, we were overwhelmed by the barking and yipping in the yard. Then we noticed this diminutive, warmly colored but excessively fozzie dog sitting quietly on her haunches and looking us right in the eye. Our hearts were toast at that point, and are still warm when she attends to us, or moans her sighs of contentment as she lies by the fireplace in the evening.

The Barker Bass does not shout its way into people's lives. They are often looking for something else when it catches their eye.

It's likely to become a constant, dependable companion. Character? Of course. Fickle, no.

Big Leaf Maple, Hawthorn, and other Wood Surprises

Two wood stories whose common thread is merely time:

Some 20 years ago I cut down a tree in our front yard. It was a pest. Hawthorn, I believe, with spiky limbs (though junior varsity compared to locusts) and tiny leaves that make a mockery of raking. Son Joel and I had planted a ponderosa pine nearby, and we didn't want it to have to compete with its vexatious neighbor. I bucked a couple of 12 inch sections from the butt and painted the ends with oil based paint to insure slow drying, and squirreled them away. This December they landed in my mental lap: gifts for the kids who would remember, vaguely, the tree. I tried to turn bowls. Not successful. I ended up making Christmas tree ornaments, shown in the image.

But look closer at this amazing section: The pith--which we expect to be in the center of a tree--is right at the edge!

The annular rings are not rings, they are Cs, and they radiate from the pith and then form "thumbs" as on a mitten, and the bark turns inward and folds onto itself.
It's a mys-tree for sure.

Part Two: a trip to the hardwood yard. I can pretty much stay on a budget in a shopping situation with this exception. I was trolling through a unit of big leaf maple, cut in Oregon, and turned up these three boards. All different, all loading themselves in my truck before I knew what was happening. They will indeed show up on Barker Basses in the future. I'm not sure what model, I'm less sure when, but all three captured my eye and my heart. Budget, begone! Art reigns!

Note: those who sell me wood--Dan and Tom--know me and smile benignly when I succumb this way. I sign the ticket, eyes glazed enough they often need to point to the line. I never leave empty handed, and at the end of the month, their hands aren't empty either. If you can't sell me wood, you would do well to sell me naphtha: That's the strange solvent which, when spread on wood, makes it appear as it would under clear finish. It evaporates readily and leaves the wood unchanged. I buy it by the gallon.

Followup: Juni, Congenital Hip Dislocation, and Spica Cast

After three months in the cast, Juni was set free. All seems to be progressing properly. The transition appliance, which supplies rigidity from the blue plastic form, is fulltime for a while then goes to naps and nighttime only.

Her crawling mobility is increased with the power from both feet now readily available. Her pelvis rocks left to right, much as some reptiles' do, when she gets going. She has also figured out how to pull herself up! You may recall she was doing that regularly when the dislocation issue was discovered and the cast prescribed.

Through this all, she has been a normal kid--happy sometimes, grumpy others. Her spirit is clearly resilient, and her sister Lily is obviously excited to have her playmate back in a way that permits them both to explore the world a little more aggressively than the past 90 days have allowed.

Green Plow Coffee Roasting: Pat Schmidt on the Podium

You approach the orchestra prepared to lead them in creating beautiful music. Just before you lift the baton, you remember that the oboe player has a chest cold and won't be able to play the long notes like he usually does. In this hall, you recall, the bright sounds are really projected well so you must hold down the brasses, especially the trumpets. And the tympanist has broken up with her boyfriend, and she's going to be back there whomping out the painful beats of her broken heart. Use the softening gesture toward her, but remember to smile too...

It's those variables and how you respond to them that puts your performance either in the "art" category or the "cookie cutter" list.

So it is with roasting coffee. All this time I had lumped the beans with a turkey: you put it in the oven at 325 degrees, did the math and checked on it after the elapsed time and if it looked done, took it out.

Then I watched Pat roast.

So starting with the coffee, where is it from, what experience have you had with it?
Answers to those questions will drive the two principal variables, roasting temperature and time. The gas-driven flame you can see, the clock you can watch, and the beans must be looked at regularly by sliding out a little handled tube, taking a quick, analytical glance, and thrusting them back into the heated fray.

Roast time is 14 minutes, give or take. Pat packs a clipboard and records the temperature every 30 seconds, glancing at the flame, pulling the tube out and observing carefully and quickly, making adjustments to flame and air, and then it's time to record the temp again. The analogy to conducting an orchestra is physically very apt, which leads to a challenge to Brian Johnson: Film this guy and set it to music!

When the beans are done, based on human judgments of their color and the presence of tiny dots of oil (the cheerful deliverers of that exquisite fresh-roasted flavor), they make a steamy entrance into the cooling tray where chaff is blown off from the popping phase (and yes, it sounds a little like popcorn).

The graph is saved. And while it is not as exquisite as Charles Minard's famous chart it will be valuable to Pat, contributing to the consistency of his roasts, in spite of the oboe player and the tympanist.

If you can buy a bag right then, your hands will be warmed all the way home from Green Plow Coffee Roasters on 6th street in Redmond, Oregon.

Juni, Congenital Hip Dislocation, and Spica Cast

A month short of her first birthday, Juni's parents discovered she had a displaced hip. It happened this way: The sisters were rasslin' and when that ended in loud noises and tears, Joe and Sarah thought perhaps Juni had injured a foot. Off to the Emergency Room for the Right Now X-ray. Good news: Nothing broken. They're on their way out of the hospital, relieved, when the X-ray tech comes up behind them and invites them back in. "I'm seeing something on the X-ray," he said. And there it was. Sarah, whose sister had CHD early on, had noticed the manifestations of this in Juni's crawling, but her concerns and observations had been discounted by the doctor.

The course of action was to relocate the ball of the femur in the socket. And then the spica cast, all under anesthesia. Wikipedia tells us a spica cast is one where there is a smaller cast branching from a larger one; hence, a wrist cast that includes a branch for the thumb would be a spica. There are subspecies of this critter, and what Juni ended up with was a one-and-a-half hip spica. One branch goes to her ankle, and on the other side it stops above the knee.

So that's the medical part. Oh, and three months is the time part, with a remove-and-replace midterm because these li'l ones just grow so fast! The parenting part: Juni was just pulling herself up to walk and this will frustrate her progress! So dad and I are busy designing machines for Juni. Joe came up with a great little table which allows her to sit comfortably--note the legs are splayed out--and do stuff with one year old toys on a tray with a lip so they're less likely to be launched (good in theory). As for our mobility aids? Well we tried, and cleverly at that, but she surprised us all: She developed her own point A to point B techniques, shown here

It's no summer festival for Juni, and it's all new for her sister Lily who is used to a playmate who doesn't tote literal pounds of plaster of paris. And Juni has discovered how, if she gets on her back, she can use sophisticated counterbalancing techniques to get her dorsal side up.

What it is from here: A window on the personality of this wonder-child who is teaching us about perseverance and spirit and acceptance.

Grandma and Grampa are proud of all four in this family.

About five weeks to go at this writing.

CinderBlue, Green Plow Coffee Shop, and, like, Beatnik Poetry

He'd sit on a stool and drone on about a subject which would be the subject of several sequential sentences. Monotone was the music, eyeballs occasionally would stray from the crumpled manuscript to fasten on some object in the far distance, ignoring both the "Like, I'm into it, man!" and the mindless, wordless gaze returning to his.

Discussions on the way out would always have the word "existential" in them, and often.

That was the coffeehouse long before Starbucks. Music was usually singles, strumming an acoustic guitar in great earnestness.

Now Redmond Oregon's own Green Plow Coffee Roasters straddles those extremes with a coffeehouse that takes from Starbucks the idea of very good coffee, stirs in sustainable and eco-friendly requirements for their suppliers, and leaves behind the stainless steel and the tacky "I'm into coffee" tschotschkes. Result? Coffee that tastes good to taste and feels good to drink.

But instead of the lost-soul poet loosing his angst like a cocker spaniel doing its early morning pandiculations, Pat and Mandy have music. Like, f'r instance, oh, maybe, like CinderBlue let's say. (Be it noted: the picture of Lee Barker and his long time guitar playin' compatriot Rex Gatton was taken by Timothy Park. The image of the CinderBlue front line (and back) is from Joe Fettig. Thank you both.)

Ok, ok, it's self-serving to say that. They hired us, we did the job: Full house both times, and we didn't do any morose doggerel and we didn't do any whiny folk songs which one is required to sing with one's eyes closed, especially during the chorus.

So having linked these things up--the history of the coffee house in 1.5 paragraphs, the guilty-as-charged confession of the musician in the pictures, how come then the word "like" appeared multiple times in a sentence and that annoying affectation is back, loud and strong? Is it the coffee house that's the carrier of the virus?

Knowing Pat and Mandy, I think not. They're just enjoying providing the place for coffee, community and conversation, and when that list is expanded to include music, it's, like, way cool. The coolest man. So far plowed out, man. I mean, you know, it's like whoa.

Humility, Arrogance and the Barker Bass

Frank Lloyd Wright said there came a time in his life when he had a choice, and he chose "honest arrogance over humility." Most would grant him this, based solely on his architectural work. It was of his time yet beyond it in its timelessness.

In 2003 Linda and I journeyed to Portland, Oregon (125 miles away) and were gifted with delightful accommodations downtown courtesy of our son, Joel. That night we caught the Max light rail out to the Rose Quarter for a Yanni concert. Big room. Lots of people. Big orchestra, big sound.

Yanni prides himself on the internationalness of his musicians, and that would include bassist Hussain Jiffry from Sri Lanka. We had met him months prior, and in fact spent some time that afternoon with him in Portland. Now we were in his musical presence and he was playing a five string fretless Barker Bass.

After the concert, we walked back to the Max stop, delighting in the crisp fall weather. I was quiet; Linda commented on that. "Hummph," I probably responded. She stopped me, got in front of me, grabbed my sleeves at the biceps and shook me firmly: "Don't you get it?" she said, lips firm, "An instrument you made was just played by a world class bass player in front of thousands of people...and that is happening in cities across America and Canada. Don't you get it? You made that bass with your own hands!"

Humility is a thick crust to break.

The Dodge brothers, early 20th century creators of the car later called the Dodge, were a quiet and surly pair. In the apocryphal story a man walks into their dingy garage and asks, "What's so good about this Dodge Brothers automobile?" to which one sibling snapped, "Ask the man who owns one!" And went back to his wrench.

Einstein knew how fragile his work was. "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

Comments from the web from Ed Goode, whose custom Barker Bass has been chronicled in prior posts to this blog:

"The quality of construction is perfect, but those of us that play Barker Basses have come to expect the highest quality. This bass does not disappoint in any way! Flawless, and I truly mean that in its most literal sense .... not a blemish to be found on her.

"...in the several hours I have played it at home it lives up to exactly what you'd expect from a Barker. Great sustain, deep lower end and a clear, well-defined tone on the C string."

I can hear the words but sometimes I can't internalize them. Other days, yes. Today.

Dag Hammerskjold: "Never, 'for the sake of peace and quiet,' deny your own experience or convictions."

That is a very nice bass, Mr. Goode. Very nice. My hands to yours; play it in good health.