Chapter 11

Chapter 11
Rory the Drummer

"All right now, let's go through that again," Miss Applewhite (also known as Kim) said patiently to her prize pupil. Rory was trying valiantly to learn the fine art of opening and closing the high-hat with his foot and hitting it with his stick at just the right rhythm--all while keeping the core bass-snare beat going with his other foot and hand at the same time. Nothing to it, right? Think again.

"I can't do it," Rory said forlornly. "I know how it's supposed to sound, cuz I've heard Denny do it." He attempted the rhythm once more but to no avail. "I just can't get all my hands and feet working together at the same time like I’m supposed to," he declared.

"Of course you can," Miss Applewhite told him in no uncertain terms. "You just have to keep working at it. Let’s start out very slowly, so you can have more time to concentrate on each step of the process."

So Rory, trooper that he was, gave it another try. "Hey, I think I’m gettin’ it," he exclaimed excitedly. "Listen to this! I'm really doin' it!"

"You certainly are," Miss Applewhite agreed in a matter-of-fact tone. "Now just gradually speed up a little more if you can."

Rory tripped up a bit when he attempted this, but now that he knew it could be done, his confidence was bolstered to the point where he was determined to be master of the high-hat, and not let it get the best of him any longer.

"There, you go," praised Miss Applewhite. "You're getting the hang of it. Now I'll play along on the piano, and remember, when I get to the chorus, you do that fancy roll we talked about, and then do the chorus with the ride cymbal, okay?"

"Okay," Rory agreed hesitantly. "I’ll see if I can."

"Excellent job," Miss Applewhite told him when they'd done a verse and chorus successfully. "Actually, though, I have an even better idea--"

"Tell it to me tomorrow. I'm gettin' kinda tired," Rory said. "Besides, I don't wanna miss supper."

"Oh, I won't let you miss supper," Miss Applewhite assured him. "This will be simple. Instead of hitting the snare drum on the verses, let’s find out how it sounds using the rim shot."

"No. That will be too hard," Rory complained. "I just learned how to do the rim shot a few days ago, but I won't be able to think about how to do that, plus the high-hat all at the same time."

"Let's just give it a try," Miss Applewhite insisted. "You thought you'd never be able to do the rim shot either, and now look at you. You don't even need the wood block anymore. So don't give up on something before you've even attempted it. That's not being a very good sport."

Rory sighed loudly. "I don't wanna do this," he muttered, even as his arms and legs were already beginning the rhythm. Within a couple of minutes Miss Applewhite's high expectations were again fulfilled.

"That's wonderful, Rory; I knew you could do it! Now let's just see if we can vary the rhythm a little bit--"

"No!" Rory rebelled vehemently this time. "I bet you couldn't even do some of this stuff. I don't wanna learn any more things right now."

"Rory," said Miss Applewhite sternly, “what kind of way is that to talk to your teacher?”

"I'm goin' home," said Rory determinedly, as he got up from his stool and headed for the door. "Mom says she's makin' fish and fried macaroni for supper, and I don't wanna be late."

"Rory, you come back here right now. I haven't dismissed you yet," Miss Applewhite called after him indignantly, reaching out her hand in an endeavor to catch him before he could get away.

Rory, however, was too quick for her. He leaped from her grasp just in time, and ran out the door. His teacher was left behind with only his beanie in her hand, which she had snatched from his head in her effort to stop his escape.

You'd think that Kim and I would have been more patient with our brother after that little incident and not try to push him quite so hard, but no such luck. Right after supper, we were back at it again, having our usual weekend practice session with Dad. Fortunately, Rory's enthusiasm for playing music had already returned by that point. This was probably mostly due to the fact that he knew that Dad's presence would keep things from getting too out-of-hand.

Tonight would be the first time we'd practiced together as a band since Uncle Rick's departure, and Kim and I weren't really looking forward to it. Rick had done a lot of the musical arrangements and had come up with most of the unique ideas. What would we do now without that input--not to mention without a lead guitar to add fancy licks and improve upon the melody lines of our songs? We knew we'd have to just accept the fact that this second album was destined not to be as good as the first one had been, but taking so many steps backward after all the progress we'd made was very difficult.

The atmosphere that evening was much more somber and far less energetic than was typical for our Saturday night sessions. Usually we would have burst into a spontaneous mini-jam session before getting down to business, but we didn't have the heart for that this evening. Instead, we dutifully took our places in front of our instruments and waited for the new order of procedure to take effect, whatever that might be. Finally, Dad strummed his guitar a couple of times and said in what sounded to me like a falsely enthusiastic tone, "Well, first on the list is our 'Cross Country' instrumental. What do you suppose we should do with that one?"

My sister and I sat there silently for several moments. Then Kim spoke up. "I think we should just get rid of it," was her blunt response. "It won't sound nearly as good without Uncle Rick's lead guitar, and I don't think Ror is quite steady enough yet to be able to do the beginning intro all on his own, like Denny did."

None of us could dispute what she said, so Dad resignedly agreed that she was probably right. "Even if we take that one out though, we still have more songs than most albums do," he reminded us, wanting to put the best light possible on the situation.

This time, though, it was my turn to put the damper on it. "But of course, now we won't have Rick's and Denny's songs, either," I said unhappily.

"Well, maybe we can come up with something else to take their place," Dad suggested. But that prospect wasn't a pleasant one this late in the game either.

Rory was the only person who didn't seem to be very affected by Uncle Rick’s absence. He did an impressive drum-roll and crashed around on his cymbals until Dad finally told him to tone it down a bit.

"Dad, I know how to do a good high-hat beat now," Rory told him proudly. "Just listen to this." And he proceeded to show Dad his latest achievement.

"Wow! How did you learn that all of a sudden?"

""I dunno," Rory replied. "I just kept workin' at it, and pretty soon I got the hang of it."

"Miss Applewhite helped you, didn't she?" Kim hinted knowingly, deciding it was only fair to give credit where credit was due.

"No, not really," insisted Rory. "She just kept buggin' me, until I finally got mad and went home. She even grabbed my beanie; wonder where it is now?"

"I think she brought it home and put it on the table," answered Kim hurriedly, and then quickly changed the subject. "Dad, I’ve been thinking about something I could do on the keyboard for ‘Try a Little Kindness’, since Uncle Rick isn’t here to do that nifty guitar part anymore.”

I swallowed hard, trying not to think about the incredible guitar accompaniment that Rick had come up with to embellish the song. We would just have to make do with what we had left. Kim was fiddling with the buttons and slides on the electric keyboard where she sat. "Wonder what would happen if I used a lot of violins on the intro, with a little sustain added in?" she said thoughtfully, adjusting the sound a bit more while she spoke.

In fact, it didn’t sound bad, at all. Different from what the effect had been before, naturally, but definitely worth listening to and expounding upon in its own right.

"I'll play the piano at the lower end, so those high violins will stick out more," I reasoned. "And why don't we try to slow down the ending, like this..." I demonstrated what I was thinking, and the others agreed that it was a good idea.

We went over the song again, and as we did, I concentrated on putting as much variety into my piano-playing as I could, since we no longer had the lead guitar to fill in extra notes. I observed that some of the energy and excitement which had been lacking before, now seemed to be returning somewhat. Maybe, just maybe, with God's help, we could pull this off after all.

We rehearsed the song a couple more times and noted that it kept getting better with each successive attempt. "So far, so good," I had to admit to myself. Now if we could just keep the ideas flowing in a similar fashion for the rest of the night, we'd have it made. I figured that was probably wishful thinking, though. What we'd accomplished already tonight was more than we'd dared to hope for.

" Let's do 'Lord, Hear My Prayer' next," Dad suggested. Kim and I switched instruments, and Dad began to sing. He stopped mid-way through the chorus, though. "I just got a brainstorm. I wonder what it would sound like if we did it more like this?”

We started again, only this time Dad’s voice had a new timbre, and he was using a different style of singing. He changed the melody slightly, as well, and I had to confess that I liked the revised version a lot. It apparently inspired Kim, too, because she was playing differently than she had been before.

“Sounds really good, Kim,” Dad praised her. “How did you come up with that?”

Kim told him that she’d recently learned the slurring technique she’d chosen from listening to one of Mickey Gilley’s records.

“Well, however you’re doing it, keep it up.; it really adds a lot to the song."

"What's next?" I asked eagerly. It was hard to believe we were now actually anticipating each song, instead of dreading it. God was certainly giving us an extra measure of creativity tonight. It was impossible to ignore the fact that He must really want us to go forward with our plans in spite of everything.

"I think we'll do 'Little, But I'm Loud' next. How does that sound? Are you ready to give that a try, Ror?"

"Sure," Rory obliged without hesitation. "I know I won't have to sing and drum at the same time for the record, but I should still practice it that way, so I'll be able to do it at the concerts, right?"

"Not a bad idea," Dad agreed. "Let's give it a whirl."

I recalled with irony the first time Kim and I had broached the question to our parents of whether we could be allowed to play and sing at the same time. We had been way more than twice Rory’s age. But I decided it best to refrain from reminding anybody of that fact right now.

Rory, of course, did a great job. I couldn't help but wish that Uncle Rick was there to hear how well we were managing this evening. I was so proud of my little brother as he ran through the song without a hitch. Afterward, Kim suggested that to add an extra little touch, it might be a neat idea to modulate to a new key on the last verse and chorus. We tried it and agreed it was a good plan.

The rest of the practice session that night went just as well as the first part had. It was decided that we'd even get Mom involved in the action by asking her to play her tambourine on a couple of the tunes. Kim and I thought of a different-sounding beat for Rory to do on the verses of one of our songs, which would add a unique flavor; the chorus was played with a 4-4 rhythm, while the verses would now be done in more of a 2-4 pattern. When we'd gone through all of the songs, Dad suddenly had yet another brain-storm.

"I just got to thinking--you know that song Denny was going to do, 'Outlaw's Prayer'?"

"Yeah, what about it?" we asked in unison.

"Well, instead of that, how about I do the story out of Grandma's scrapbook about the school teacher? I’ll just read the story, and you girls can play some nice background music. I think that would be a good way to close out the album."

"Good idea," I affirmed eagerly. “That will probably end up being one of people’s favorites.”

"And you could even close out our concerts with that same song,” Kim added. "It would be a good lead-in for how you usually like to end the program, explaining to people about becoming a Christian and what that means and everything."

We couldn't wait to tell Mom all about how productive our evening had been. She was very happy to hear that everything had gone so well, and it gave us all a much-needed boost to carry us through until the time came for recording our second album.

The big day finally arrived, and we felt well-prepared for what was to come. I think that even more than the final product, what we were looking forward to most at that moment was showing off Rory's talents to Harvey, the recording engineer who had produced our first project and would be doing the same for this one.

Harvey was very professional about it, though, and simply treated him like one of the guys. The only time he deviated from this pattern was when he'd finally had enough of Rory's big sisters' constant little criticisms and corrections of their brother's drumming.

"Ror, you were a little late coming in with that new beat after the chorus. Try it again."

"Ror, you're dragging a little bit. Be sure to listen to the rest of us and stay right with the rhythm."

"Don't forget that fancy roll before we head into the chorus, Ror."

"For Pete's sake, you girls! The kid is only what--five years old? Give him a break, all right?" Harvey's exasperated voice came through the speaker into the room where we were recording.

Then we heard input from Mom, too. "That's right Kim/Kon," she said, referring to us in the single-name-combination she often used when reprimanding us both. “He doesn’t have to do everything 100% perfect.” Then in a lower tone, she added for Harvey’s benefit, "We all forget he's just a kid most of the time. I'm glad you told them to lighten up a little."

Kim and I realized it would do no good to point out that the only reason we expected so much of Rory was that we knew he was always capable of delivering whatever we requested of him. Instead, we just made certain that our directives to Rory were not spoken into the microphone after this incident, in order that Harvey would not be able to hear us.

Just as he had done on our first album, Harvey was always on the lookout for ways of making the recording the best it could be. At one point, he suggested that we double our vocal tracks, to have the effect of giving our voices a fuller sound. It seemed funny for all of us to be singing along with ourselves, but we all liked the finished product very much, and were glad he'd given us the idea. Harvey also thought we might consider adding some extra harmony tracks and additional instrumentation, using some different guitars and keyboards that he would make available to us. Dad wasn't so eager to take his advice on this score, however.

"Why don't you wanna do it, Dad?” I asked in surprise. “It would make everything sound even better, to have more variety.”

"I don't like it when I hear a record that sounds totally different than the real thing," was Dad's logic. "When people go to see an artist, they want the music to sound just the way it does on the records. So I don't want to do things on this album that we won't be able to copy during our live performances.”

"But why is it any different than letting us sing over our vocal tracks?" Kim wanted to know. "We won't be able to do that on stage either, but we did it on the record."

"Don't remind him," I said dubiously. "He might decide to undo that now that you mentioned it."

"No, this is different," Dad reasoned. "All that did was to improve the quality of our voices, because we just sang the same notes over again that we'd sung the first time. We didn't add anything extra, like we’d be doing if we put in some entirely new instruments."

Reluctantly, we agreed that he was probably right. And in the end, we had to admit that it was a good feeling to realize that there wasn't anything on the album that we wouldn't be able to emulate perfectly during our shows.

"Maybe when we get back home, we can look into getting a keyboard synthesizer for you guys," Dad compromised. "That way you'll have a whole lot more instrument voices to work with, and we'll have even more sounds on our future albums."

"Cool!" said Kim with anticipation. "But how will we be able to play it, if one of us is always on the piano, and the other one has to use our electric keyboard to play the bass guitar sound?"

"I'm sure we can figure something out," Dad promised. "Maybe we can position the synthesizer in such a way that you'll be able to reach over and play it with your other hand, while doing the bass with your left."

Our second album caused just as much stir for our family and friends as the first one had. This was likely due to the fact that everyone was curious about how a 5-year-old could possibly be good enough to drum on a record. When the demo finally arrived in the mail, everyone once again gathered in our living-room to listen to it together. Even though our grandparents had heard Rory drumming a few times at our recent concerts, they were amazed by the great job he had done. Kim and I couldn’t help but take pride in the fact that we had taught him many of the skills that he was now demonstrating on each song, but we knew our responsibility was far from over. In fact, it was just beginning.

Our work was indeed cut out for us as we began making plans for the third album, which would be called "Country Gospel Blend." This time, Rory wouldn't be able to just copy the basic rhythms that Denny had already laid down for him before leaving the group. Now it would be completely up to us to assist Rory in creating and cultivating his own drumming style, and try to come up with interesting and unique new ideas to give each song a special touch.

Even little Reed was going to sing on this third album. He would be nearly three by then, which we thought was high time that he begin developing his own musical talents. He was growing up to be quite a charming little boy. Reed was never in a bad mood. Even when his asthma was acting up and his breathing became labored, this didn't slow him down any. He never complained about anything and was always happy and carefree. It was impossible to imagine that there had ever been a time when he wasn't an essential part of the family.

In spite of the age difference, Reed was Rory's constant companion and playmate when Kim and I were at school. Mom often made the comment that just as God had given Kim and me each other, He sure knew what He was doing when He gave Rory a little brother to play with and love too. They looked out for one another and stuck together, just as Kim and I always had. Rory enjoyed having someone closer to his own age to interact with now, and Reed certainly looked up to and admired his big brother, as well.

One day when Rory was playing our little organ and trying to record some songs he had learned, Reed was making a bunch of racket in the background and distracting his brother. Rather than get mad at him though, Rory just calmly suggested to Reed that it was time for his nap, and that he should go and notify Mom of this. Reed dutifully went in search of his mother, and when he found her he obediently did as Rory had instructed. "Ror says I'm supposed to remind you that it's time for my nap now," he informed her. "But I don't wanna take my nap!" he protested tearfully at the end of his little monologue. Nevertheless, Mom hid her amusement and told him that it was, indeed, getting close to his nap time, and then proceeded to put him to bed.

Even at a young age, Reed was always thinking and usually had a witty comment ready for any occasion. Once when Mom told him to put away his toys, he replied innocently with the logic that "I wanna take turns like you say we should. I took the toys out, so now you put them away."

Unlike the rest of us, Reed had a mop of curly hair, which was so cute and adorable that Mom found it hard to have it cut. Whenever anyone asked him where he got his curly hair, his matter-of-fact response was that "God gave it to me," as though wondering what could be more obvious.

True to their word, Mom and Dad helped us purchase a synthesizer that year, and we loved it immediately. The control panel had buttons similar to those on a calculator, with a different instrument sound for every 2-digit combination from eleven through ninety-nine!

"This is going to make our music sound so much better!" Kim exclaimed joyfully.

"I can't wait to give it a try," I agreed with fervor. "Now we'll have so many instruments to choose from that we might have to start Brailling up a song list before each program, so we can remember what we're doing for each one."

From that point on, each time we had a booking, one of us would take her turn at the Brailler--putting two sheets of paper in at once, so that both of us would have a copy. Then Mom would read off the song titles that we'd all chosen for that particular program, while we took notes.

We also had another reason to be joyful that spring. It was looking more and more likely that Kim and I might be able to begin attending high school in Lemmon the following year. An IEP (individual education plan) meeting had been scheduled at the school in Aberdeen to discuss the matter. Many blind students were now being mainstreamed into their own communities, and we reasoned that we should be allowed to do the same. For the past two years, we had already been attending a couple of classes at a local public junior-high school in Aberdeen, just to get our feet wet, as it were.

"We'll just leave it in God's hands," Dad said. "We've been praying about this for several years already, and we believe our prayers are being answered. Now we'll just trust in Him to work out all the details.”

PostScript by the Author: The following is an audio link to "I'm Little, but I'm Loud," Rory's solo on our second record album, Cross Country. As stated above, he was five years old on this recording. Unfortunately, this was before the days of video, but what you'll be hearing is our dad playing rhythm guitar, my sister, Kim on piano, me on bass and strings, (we girls also doing backup vocals) and Rory drumming and lead vocals. I thought this would be a neat way to close out the chapter, as tangible evidence of God's goodness and provision. Enjoy.