By MIKE
ARGENTO
Among the lengthy catalog of the great tragedies to arise from Hurricane Katrina is one that pales in comparison to the monumental human suffering left in the wake of the flood waters.
In the grand scheme of things — particularly when you’re talking about the catastrophic losses suffered by thousands of people — it may not even be on the map.
But it is important.
We’re talking music.
And when Amy Hopkins, who runs Stringed Instrument Repair in New Freedom with Jeff Hostetter, was thinking about doing something to help the people of New Orleans, she wasn’t thinking about music. She was just thinking about helping. She originally planned to just go to New Orleans and work with Habitat for Humanity or some other group that was trying to do something to put a dent in the widespread devastation.
Then, she learned of the plight of New Orleans’ musicians from an on-line forum for instrument makers, and as a musician, she felt kinship. She felt she had to do something.
She got in touch with the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, and one thing led to another. And last month, she and a group of volunteers traveled to New Orleans and worked on the home of a guy named Sunpie.
Like a lot of things associated with New Orleans, this is a long, complicated story with a lot of seemingly strange connections.
Amy spoke with Bethany Bultman, one of the founders of the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, a health clinic founded in 1998 specifically to serve the community of musicians in the Big Easy. One of the co-founders was a Louisiana physician named Jack McConnell, who, in addition to being one of the people who developed Tylenol, is best known as the father of former Phish keyboard player Page McConnell.
Bultman suggested Amy and her band of volunteers work on the home of Sunpie Barnes. Sunpie is a former professional football player — his real name is Bruce — and he played for the New England Patriots back in the day when pro football didn’t pay the kind of bucks it does now. He works as a park ranger during the day and plays the accordion at night with his band, the Sunspots.
See, it’s just a normal kind of story involving the father of the keyboard player for Phish who’s also one of the guys who invented Tylenol and a former professional football player and current park ranger who fronts a zydeco band.
In yet another coincidence that seems commonplace in a weird place like New Orleans, Sunpie Barnes sat in with former Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio at a gig in New Orleans in April last year.
Back then, Sunpie’s house hadn’t been under 9 feet of water.
But that’s what happened when Katrina hit and the levee broke.
Amy and a group of volunteers from York County traveled to New Orleans in mid-January. They had obtained a $3,000 grant from Home Depot to pay for materials and had raised another $4,000 from an auction conducted by the instrument makers’ on-line forum.
They needed every bit of that money.
The house, in New Orleans’ Broadmore district, had to be gutted. All of the Sheetrock had to be replaced. The wiring was shot. The air conditioning ducts were ruined. The flooring and subfloors had warped. The main support beam had also warped and had to be replaced.
“It was a lot of work,� said Chris Newman, a Dallastown construction worker and guitar and bass player.
They had to jack up the house to replace the main beam. Newman’s wife, Cheryl, a novice at construction work, installed new insulation.
The work went well, but there was a lot left to do when they left. Meanwhile, Sunpie and his wife and two kids are living in a FEMA trailer across the Mississippi from the city, a 60-mile round trip from their former home.
And there is a lot left to do all over the city.
“It’s still really bad down there,� Newman said. “These people need a lot of help.�
Newman said in their travels around town, they saw areas that appeared not to have been touched since the flooding. The scale of the devastation is astonishing, he said. And while a lot of people are working very hard to help, there’s just so much to do.
And musicians need a lot of that help. Most of the musicians in that city are people who work gig to gig. They aren’t rich recording artists or huge rock stars who command seven-figure paydays to play for 13 minutes at halftime of a football game. They represent a tradition that’s a huge part of our culture. Katrina scattered a lot of the musicians, and it’s not known whether many of them will be able to return. They are working folks, and they deserve help.
“There’s just so much that needs to be done,� Newman said.
Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.
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