Renewable Resource

Since COVID turned down to a simmer and the Pittsburgh Symphony went back to work there have been few pipes, and in the last two years there have been no pipes. This is a word of explanation for those who email from time to time asking about commissions, and whose emails often go unanswered because this website has been a drifting ghost ship. I’ve left it up for nostalgia and for this blog, which has a couple of the better things I’ve written, if I say so myself.

But I rarely check it, and when I do the emails are mostly from bots promising to make my site show higher in a google search.

So, here’s the deal. One of my golf buddies says, “If I knew I was going to live this long I’d have taken better care of myself.”

Word. I’ve always used my body hard. Sometimes for fun, often for income. In my 20s and 30s I made bamboo fly rods for a side hustle, then switched to pipes in my 40s. Ironically, a big reason I stopped making fly rods was the number of flaws (bug holes, mostly) I was getting in the raw material.

I tapered my pipe making down when I started subbing full time with the PSO in 2012, and all but stopped when I got the full time job in 2015. Making pipes is hard, wearing work, at least when you do it the way I do and you’re lightly built like me. I am now paying for decades of concentrated, repetitive motions with arthritis — knees, thumbs, shoulders, neck.

When COVID hit, I panicked a bit. I got back into pipemaking, and the income and the community and connection with all of you kept my head above water. Thanks. But it also proved a couple of things. First, I was never going to cover my nut making pipes. Second, even attempting it was not sustainable physically. Those of you who read the blog attentively probably noticed the arc of needing more and more breaks as my hands hurt more and more.

The good news is that, if I’m careful, I can still play the clarinet just fine. And in general, I’m doing great. As a musician I have a dream job in the PSO and I’m teaching at two universities. And I still enjoy making things. There is a line of stummels in various stages of completion above my bench, and from time to time I think about finishing one. But there is always a concert just around the corner and I can’t afford for my hands to be stiff.

I’m not saying never, just explaining the equation. I’m hoping to get another 5-10 years out of my orchestral career. So little time, only so much cartilage remaining. There are things I make (like this multi-clarinet stand I just made for The Cleveland Orchestra) that require less repetitive motion, and perhaps I’ll change this website around to show things like that, if not to offer them for sale. Maybe there will be a spec pipe, no promises, but I’m not accepting commissions.

So, thanks, everyone, for everything. I’ll see you around.