GONE BEFORE, CONT’D

In the spring of 2011 I was having a conversation with two of my colleagues in the Boston University Theatre Department about a pending reunion with my old friend Steve Haferbier.  I was trying to give them some idea of what an unpredictable, and frankly, unreliable, character he was, and how our seeing each other in person that coming summer might lead to a renewed and fulfilling friendship, or it might just lead nowhere.  Well, it led somewhere, all right.  It was a joyous reunion, followed by the creation of a CD of my original songs, featuring Steve on lead guitar.  That much I had dared to hope for.  What I hadn’t anticipated was his suicide a few years later, or the resulting compulsion to create some kind of monument for him. 

 

Steve died in September of 2018.  His widow Carol and his daughter Esme went to work planning a “Memorial Jam” for November 24th at Mooney Hollow, an old barn converted into a music hall, just outside Green Island.  This date fell within my upcoming Thanksgiving break, so I was able to drive back to Iowa to participate.  My wife Susan and my daughter Rory were generous enough to join me.  And we had to drive because Nikki was coming along.  No airplanes for Nikki.

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There were a lot of people there at Mooney Hollow that night, and I didn’t know most of them.  I huddled with a few friends and family, waiting anxiously for my turn to join the musicians on stage.  Of course I was in the bathroom when I heard them call my name over the PA.  I climbed up on stage alongside BJ, Esme and her future husband Dean Mattoon.  We played four or five songs.  A couple of them were mine.  It was a dizzying out-of-body experience.  I hadn’t had much experience playing music for a live audience since I was a teenager, and was nervous enough to forget how to play songs I’d been playing alone for years. Growing along with my panic was the realization that the songs I was singing couldn’t begin to say what I needed to say that night.  I was letting Steve down in front of a room full of strangers who happened to be his friends and family.  I made it through, but barely.  After the set, Carol and two of Steve’s sisters thanked me for coming, and Susan, Rory and I made our way down the long wooden stairs and out to the dimly lit parking lot.  I spent the rest of that evening, and much of the drive back to Boston, castigating myself for failing to honor Steve properly.  And contemplating what I was going to do about it.

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In the months that ensued I wrote and rewrote an account of my friendship and collaboration with Steve, and how he fell victim to his mental illness.  I gathered music, conducted interviews, wrote and rewrote, recorded, and kept sending it all, one audio draft after another, to my friend and project-partner David Remedios.  David had handled the mastering on the CD Gone Before, and had played a number of the bass tracks, as well.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to assemble such a complex recording without him.  It took a while.  But on April 1, 2023, at the Becket Arts Center in Becket, MA, I was able to present the memoir live, with David on stage with me handling all the cues.  I left the arts center that night feeling lighter than I had in a long time.  The recording offered here is of that live performance in Becket, which happened thanks almost entirely to the support of my dear friends Paula Langton, one of the two BU colleagues I mentioned at the top, and Ken Cheeseman.  David, Paula, and Ken --- couldn’t have done without you.