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Rowayton Music
Three Bands
1971-1991
Rowayton Music Links
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Blue Light
Chapter 2 - Dave's Room
Chapter 3 - Airfix
Chapter 4 - Blue Monday
Chapter 5 - The Boston Years
Chapter 6 - The December Projects
Chapter 7 - Pinkney Park
Chapter 8 - Grass Roots
Chapter 9 - The Albums
Bridges
October Palace
Headlands
Leftovers and Other Exotic Foods
New Shoes
Chapter 10
Appendices
Albums
Songs

Chapter 10

X

“… hopes and dreams will always slip away”

After

1991-Today

After

Harry Hussey remained the most active musician and prolific writer among us. While in Blue Monday and after, Harry played with a series of bands, starting in the summer of 1980 like Cartoon, Special Children, Hoi Polloi, Vision, Banter, Janet Feld and the Garage Band, Tiffany Park, Big Rocks and Jo Henley. His current band (with drummer Tony Savoie) is Centralia. He produced some of his best work in the late 1980’s and into the 1990’s; including one I admire very much, Norm & Jack. He still composes regularly.

Tom May moved to Portland, Maine and continued to play music, mostly by himself. He came down to Norwalk for a last visit in September, 1990. Audrey Ludemann, Alan Freedman and I played with him once more during that time, a marathon session at my house on 5 Fourth Street in East Norwalk. It was the last time we’d see him. The last recording we seem to have from Tom are home tapings and a more formal studio session he did up to March of 1991, with Phil See up in Maine. Kevin Tisdall mixed this in December of that year. Included are several takes and finished versions of the following songs:

  • Little Red Rooster Howlin’ Wolf
  • Amazing Grace (Instrumental) John Newton
  • Rain on the Union (Instrumental) Tom May(?)
  • Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring J.S. Bach
  • Rock It with I David Lindley
  • Black Rose Blues (Instrumental) Tom May (?)
  • Cows Phil See
  • Stand by Me Ben E. King
  • So Far Away Mark Knopfler

If we think about the past at all, we think about “what if”. This relates to what I came to see as our biggest losses.

We never mined Dave’s songs. Only two were ever recorded. He had some other ones that had potential. (Breakback Station comes to mind.) These disappeared with his personal papers after his death. By 2003 Dave had regained sobriety and was as sharp as he had ever been, and he had a particular kindness and sense of humor that had never left him. This “new Dave” was someone I hadn’t seen since the Airfix days, but by the Fall of 2003, he was stricken with cancer, so we never had the chance to tap the reservoir of talent that was in him. Alan Freedman, Harry Hussey and I last saw him and did some playing with him in January, 2005 in Marietta, OH.

Likewise, Tom had years more music in him when he died in 1991 at 34. His writing and playing had reached new levels and he had developed a maturity and professionalism that would have put him at the center of any group or project. Two samples of his lyric work survive, both marked as composed in 1987. One, Disbelief, Confusion, and Lies was recorded by Harry Hussey. The other, Evening My Love, survives as lyrics only.

Noyes & the Boyes still exist. The core members are Audrey Ludemann, Alan Freedman and me. We’re among the few who still live in the area. We played out about a dozen public performances between 1991 and 1994 and even recorded material at Soundtec in 1992. Ironically, our first gig in this configuration was at Tom May’s memorial service in July, 1991.

On December 28th, 1991, Noyes & the Boyes (Alan, Audrey, I) played a feature at the United Methodist Church in Rowayton (across the street from Pinkney Park). The set included:

This performance was an interesting confluence. Tom May had died six months previously. Dave Procter recorded the session for us and would soon move to Ohio. Patti Buckley (visiting with her husband, Joe just before they moved to California ) was in the audience along with other friends. We played at a venue literally across the street from Pinkney Park, the site of so many performances. One of the songs we played (and still play) was Bob Dylan’s New Morning, a song Dave and I had first learned twenty years before.

Now it’s been forty years since Dave and I first played in the basement of the Rowayton Community Center. A surprising number of the people we played with are still playing music as we all navigate our sixth decade of life.

Patti Buckley married and is now Patti Tartaglia. She has children and lives in Morgan Hill, CA, south of San Francisco. She and her husband are in a band, Rockin Blues Experience, with Patti singing, playing guitar and writing. Some of her performances are here:
http://www.myspace.com/rockinbluesexperience
http://www.youtube.com/user/RBEband#p/u/0/rRejAwOrLqY

Mike Burns is a realtor in Damascus, MD. He has a teenaged daughter and is still involved in music.

Ed Flinn still lives in Norwalk and works for Yale Newhaven Hospital in IT. He’s as reclusive as he always was and remains more connected through the virtual world.

Alan Freedman is a marshal for the State of Connecticut. He has two sons and became a grandfather (twice) in 2010. He lives in Norwalk and still plays informally with Audrey and me.

Bill Galey lives in Chicago and still plays music. He can be found online in a band called Voodoo Pilot.

Lisa Hansen studied flute at Julliard and went on to become an “internationally renowned” flautist and teacher. She lives in New York City.

Mike Hector lived in Connecticut for the rest of his life. He died in 2007 of cancer.

Dave Hopkins is a house painter. He lives in Newport, RI.

Chris Hussey is married with many, many children. He works for Goldman Sachs and still lives in Rowayton, CT.

Harry Hussey is married and is “artist in residence” in Melrose, MA, above Boston. He is still very active in writing, recording and performing music as well as a range of other projects. He has a site that covers much of this, http://www.conceptualirregularities.com/ you can see some of his work on http://www.youtube.com/hmbhuss1

Melissa Janicke (now Melissa O’Day) is married with four children and lives in upstate Connecticut. She still plays, but much less than she’d like.

Steve Kraemer is an associate professor of astronomy at the Catholic University of America in Maryland. He does work for NASA and still plays blues with various bands, including his own, The Bluesicians. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXRLfraEAkU
http://music.napster.com/artist-music/tracks/12484358/?artist_id=12484358

Josh Kramer lives outside Portland, OR, married with one teenage daughter. In June of 1981 he sent me a tape of twenty-two originals written and performed with a local musician, Sam Davis. In the early nineties he visited Norwalk and played all the old songs with Audrey, Alan and me.

Mark Lebow plays drums with Tastes Like Chicken http://www.tlikechicken.com/ on the local bar circuit in Fairfield County, CT and had played with Straight Up previously. He’s a land surveyor and lives in Stamford, CT. Here’s his band in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNYU-0P5xOQ

Tricia Lowrey now Tricia Lowrey Lippert is an artist and living in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. You can see some of her art on her website http://www.tricialippert.com/4/

Audrey Ludemann (nee Noyes) works in the field of educational consulting and lives in Wilton, CT. She has two grown children. She’s sung opera and sings with the Norwalk Community Chorus and still plays with Alan and me in Noyes & the Boyes. Occasionally Harry Hussey and others sit in.

Tom May moved out of Norwalk. First to New Jersey and later to Portland, ME. He suffered from what was probably bipolar disorder. He killed himself in Portland in 1991. His ashes are buried in Norwalk.

Jenny O’Neil’s whereabouts are not known. One report has her married in the mid-1980’s and living in St. Lucia. I last saw her in the early 1980’s when she was living in New York City. She had spent time in Spain and was itching to return. Her passion for things Spanish inspired the song, Spanish Dancer.

Dave Procter moved to Marietta, Ohio in 1994. He quit drinking and smoking, but died from throat cancer in 2006, just before he turned fifty. His ashes were scattered off Rowayton.

Tony Savoie lives in Boston and is a statistician for the Assessing Department of that city. He still plays with Harry Hussey as of 2010.

Holly Saxe lives in Hopkinton, MA with her fourteen year old son and works for a software company.

Phil See moved to Florida and eventually to Maine. He builds high-performance sailboats and is married with two daughters. Phil did some occasional playing with Tom May, including Tom’s last known recording session in March, 1991.

Kevin Tisdall is married and handles IT for a law firm. He lives in Stratford, CT and still plays in local bands.

Scott Wyland lives outside Bend, OR. He and his second wife run an eldercare facility. He plays occasionally with his local band, Rising Tide.

I live in Darien, right near Rowayton. Some summer Sundays, when the wind is right, I can hear the music coming from Pinkney Park.