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Brown's thoughts fly as fast as the traffic passing him. Every few seconds, his hands come off the steering wheel, wildly gesturing as though conducting an orchestra. A car zooms up on an entrance ramp, moving frightfully close to the boxed-in New Yorker. "No place to go but fast-forward!" Brown exclaims. And the New Yorker growls into a higher gear, away from the merging car and closer to San Marcos, where musician Bryan Crowell awaits an examination of his 80-year-old upright piano. Crowell, lead singer for the pop-rock band Fluffers Union, leads Brown through the house, past the Frank Zappa and Beatles posters and into his bedroom. A dark-brown upright piano stands in the corner. Crowell, his long, brown hair tucked behind his ears, removes the piano's wooden covers with Brown's help. Death Machine, Crowell's black cat, pads around the pedals. Brown sits on the floor, a flashlight in his mouth, his hands on the strings as he inspects the piano's damaged bridge. Crowell nods his appreciation when Brown repairs two clanking keys to make the piano sound better for rehearsals. He breaks into a grateful smile when Brown says he can return in two weeks to tune and repair the piano for $150. Crowell didn't want bad news. He recalls another old piano he was fond of which several tuners advised him to trash, saying it wasn't worth more than firewood. So this time, Crowell called Brown. The self-described country doctor will tune any piano, no matter how badly out of pitch or how old. For a starting fee of $65, Brown tunes church pianos, bar pianos, school pianos, pianos in shacks, pianos in multimillion-dollar homes where a maid might answer the door. Brown says he couldn't live like a University of Texas tuner he knows who services the same pianos again and again without human contact. "Look at what I'd miss," Brown says. "I'd miss Bryan." New life to old things A piano is like a living thing, Brown says. It moves, it breathes, like the baby grand he's tuning on a Monday afternoon at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Southwest Austin. "I'm listening to this piano," he explains, finishing a Mormon hymn and smoothly segueing into his own composition, "Angels Led Me Home." The song's title mirrors Brown's spiritual journey -- one that led him through grief and anger and back to the Mormon faith, which he embraced in college. He's lost in the music and is surprised his lips are moving. "Were they?" He gathers his tools and walks to a classroom where a small upright piano awaits him. This is an atypical day for the 51-year-old father of eight sons -- four grown and four at home, ages 6 to 15 -- who prefers chatting in someone's living room as he works. With his hand resting on a green hymnal, Brown retraces the path he followed to Central Texas and a piano-tuning career. |
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“In the Key of Brown” continued pg. 2 |
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Paul Brown Piano Tuning & Repair Serving the Greater-Austin Area |
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