Brown was 32, broke and reeling from a divorce when he moved alone to Austin in 1982. The child-prodigy organist who received a music education degree from Brigham Young University worked at an Austin convenience store and twice was robbed at gunpoint. He grudgingly threw newspapers to make extra money, but the route profited him in an unexpected way: His future wife, Kasi, had a newspaper route at the American-Statesman's same North Austin branch.

In 1986, after four years of marriage, he and Kasi, a Baptist, became members of a Mormon church in Austin. Although estranged from his parents, who raised him Lutheran in Rochester, Minn., Brown felt himself healing.

It marked a dramatic change for Brown, who insisted on being excommunicated from the Salt Lake City Mormon church he and his first wife, his high school sweetheart, had belonged to for 14 years. Brown, who believed he was too liberal for that church, became an Episcopalian. Deep down, though, he missed the Mormon church. Ultimately, he found the courage to ask for his membership to be restored and start the long road back to the church closest to his heart.

Back on his true spiritual path, Brown began buying old pianos, rebuilding them in the garage and selling them. While Kasi worked as a grocery store office manager, Brown taught himself to tune and repair pianos.

He advertised he would work on English and square grand pianos, notoriously difficult to tune because of their configurations. His tuning business slowly grew, but four years ago, Brown was doubting himself.

Then a couple called from South Austin. The old upright they bought for $25 was in bad shape. The woman said Kasi had promised her that Paul would fix the piano for $60. Brown took the job. He opened the piano and tried to be professional, but the woman saw the truth in his eyes. The piano was a mess. She said she understood if he couldn't fix it, but he'd have to stop now because $60 was all she had.

Brown studied her face and said he'd repair her piano. He knelt at the piano's pedals, praying for help. When he was done, after three intense hours, the woman sat down and began to play, filling the house with old gospel music. She turned to her husband and said, "I really have a piano."

Then she started weeping.

And Brown thought, "Am I doing the right thing? I think so."

Unexpected blessings

Brown, who has relative pitch, says a piano tuner with perfect pitch would live like a savant, the imperfect world never living up to his or her expectations.

Brown starts tuning sessions with a meter, using it to set a piano's temperament to one middle octave. From there, he tunes by ear, octave by octave up and down the keyboard, using mutes -- slender rubber wedges with metal handles -- between each set of three strings to isolate pitches and tune the strings to the middle one.

He remembers once accidentally leaving his four mutes at someone's house. The next day, at his next appointment, he and his customer briefly talked and she walked upstairs to give him privacy.

In a mortifying split second, Brown realized he didn't have his mutes.

He tried to make his own, but they were too inflexible to fit between the strings. He silently prayed, "God, if I only had one good mute . . ."

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“In the Key of Brown” continued pg. 3

Paul Brown Piano Tuning & Repair

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