Memories Of A Mentor

Sometimes you get reminders of why you do what you do.

Some folks have read on these pages that I’ve been a little bummed about certain things fading away in life for careers. I’ve quit stuff outright before, or knew it was time to go - that’s no problem. Teaching and mentoring have been things that I’ve been trying to hold onto more these days. I’m down to one music student and really, it’s a complex combination of factors such as competition for folks’ time and activities, our ever-changing population base, numbers, and demographic, and other such factors. It is what it is and you’re given what you get along the line - that I can’t do much about. But it was nice to see a Facebook tribute to me from the mother of a former student who just graduated from Western Iowa Tech and is now head to the next state up north for a promising job opportunity in his field of study, namely audio engineering.

Gabe was my longest tenured student ever - ten years we counted up one day. It’s nuts to start someone in elementary school then mentor them through high school into college, but that’s the way that it worked. This made me think about one guitar teacher - and I’ve had a couple, even when I started playing professionally - that made an impact.

I first saw Doug Miers at a northside bar with his band, which included one of my high school buddies, Mike Williams, on keyboards and organ. Mike was underaged at the time and needed a work permit to work in clubs playing gigs. That fact didn’t deter the rest of his high school friends, me included, from marching into Joe’s Two Lounge one evening to see Mike and the band play a gig. Thus, the dubious start of my career hanging out in bars, either playing music or watching bands. It was a pie-eyed, magical experience that pretty much cemented my resolve to, yeah, I want to do this for a career.

My parents were extremely proud, as you could imagine not.

Doug Miers went to the high school just over the district line, Ankeny, and started his own music career early. Doug took lessons from a guy who was seemingly everyone’s sensi back then in the 1970’s, Don Archer, the guru of jazz guitar back in my old hometown of Des Moines. I took lessons from Don at one point and Don was an intimidating figure back then. These days, I just would have said okay, Don, let’s cut the shit and get on with it, but I was a nervous wreck of a 19-year-old. Sometimes, you’ve got to grow into yourself. But Don’s mere presence commanded respect and accountability if you were serious about learning music. Don emanated the feeling of ‘don’t waste my time’.

Doug took from him and got me on that road to being a player by starting me on what he started on, which was the Mickey Baker Jazz Guitar book series. I made through book one, barely cracked book two. There were some complex chord progressions that I had to transcribe to all twelve keys, written out and learned. It was tough - I was a rock guitarist who loved Robin Trower, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Rory Gallagher. This was some next level stuff. Plus, my sight reading for music was horrible, so I had to get more competent on that as well.

Technical issues aside, Doug did one thing that I carried over to my students when I started teaching - he would take the time to hip me up to new music. I never would have found out about jazz guitar greats such as Pat Martino and Kenny Burrell if it wasn’t for those Saturday afternoon listening sessions at Doug’s studio after we finished a lesson. Doug also encouraged to study electronics, which open the door to my first stint at college at vo-tech school, then a gig at Music Connection, a music store in Urbandale. Doug worked at the store and ironically, was the one that fired me after a year for just having my head up my ass as far as working on music gear repairs. I was such a greenhorn. This was probably the best thing that ever happened to me at the time, because it forced me to get better at my craft, job, and vocation. We used to joke about it later on in life (Doug still felt bad about having to do that, twenty years later).

When I started building tube amps for people, Doug was one of my first customers. We designed our own version of a tweed Fender Deluxe amp and Doug had that model for years. With anything that you create, there’s stuff you could have improved on, and there were things that I could built better on that amp. You live, you learn.

The last time that I saw Doug in person, 2015, we met halfway between Des Moines and Storm Lake on I-35 at a roadside park just off the freeway. Doug had retired from his job at the phone company and was getting ready to move back to Arizona where he was originally from, with his wife Cindy. Doug gifted me back that Deluxe amp, along with some other music items that he didn’t want to move. To be frank, I was out of my head at that one - my dad just passed away in April and there was a lot of family dysfunction and squabbles that were hidden and came to light. I had also started my job as a job coach for people with disabilities with Genesis Development, plus was still trying to juggle teaching music lessons, subbing in school districts during the school year, along with my shop Polich Electronics. Throw in being married and being a parent, and it was a full plate.

I think during our talk and farewell at that park, I found out that having music in common was enough, as we had differences politically, spiritually, and personality wise. Sometimes you can overcome that, sometimes you can’t. We tried to communicate via Facebook, but that petered out quickly. All things end, even relationships, although I don’t know if it ended or just lost steam and died out.

That aside, I look back without mustering any bias or malice on everyone that had a hand in forming me as a person. Doug was one that guy, as I was to my student Gabe, and hopefully a few others since 1977, who helped mold Mick Polich, musician. A sad note: I’m not sure if this is true, but my very first guitar student, Keith Mccauley, who might be the same guitar teacher that taught for my old store, Rieman Music, ended up passing away recently. If this is true and it truly was Keith, then, yes, I’m sad. I had only been playing guitar for two years, 1977, when I graduated from Saydel High and thought that teaching music might be a useful skill moving forward in the local music industry. Turns out it was. I might have charged Keith $10 a lesson, but what the hell, I was just figuring out what to do post high school, along with wrestling with this thing called a guitar and giving writing songs a shot as well. You’ve got to get out of the chute somehow.

50 years is a bit of time to devote to a craft, but that’s how long me and this music thing have been battling it out. Only one thing that I’ve been working on longer and that’s artwork - I started when I was five.

You get a chance to mentor or teach, five minutes, five months, or five years or longer, I’d highly recommend it.