Musician finds his instrument
Fort Qu’appelle musician’s instrument of choice is the Chapman Stick
Brian Baggett saw every corner of his hometown of Houston in search of the elusive Chapman Stick.
In the early 1990s, this was his best bet of finding one, with the internet not yet widely available.
He’d been captivated by the 10-string instrument, invented 20 years earlier by Emmett Chapman, since seeing a performance by the Texas funk band Ten Hands.
“I must have visited like all 29 music stores in Houston asking about it ... and nobody knew what I was talking about,” said Baggett, who now lives in Fort Qu’appelle.
The exception was Rockin’ Robin Guitars & Music, a mainstay in Houston music stores. Its staff knew about the instrument, but didn’t have one in stock.
“’You have to buy that from the man who makes it; he’s in Los Angeles,’” they told Baggett. “And I just at the time thought, ‘Well, there goes my chance, I’m never going to get to see this.’”
It was a year or two later that Baggett saw an ad in a bass player magazine — he also plays bass — advertising the Chapman Stick.
In 1996, his dream finally came true.
“The first time I got my hands on it was when UPS brought it to my door in Texas and I was like, ‘No going back now, here it is,’ and it comes with an instruction book.”
He likens the stick to the piano: “On a piano you have your left hand play one thing, but your right hand may play something totally different, but they go together.”
In that way, playing the Chapman Stick fulfilled a lifelong dream for Baggett. While many kids are forced to take piano lessons, Baggett gladly would have learned the instrument, if not for one problem:
“I came from a very unmusical family and my parents didn’t know what to do with that, and there was no music in our house,” Baggett said.
To him, the piano “looked like this big puzzle to me and infinite possibilities.”
He said that’s what the stick became.
Learning the instrument had its challenges. It was so different from bass guitar and French horn, which he learned in school band.
“I call it a counterpoint instrument … two or more lines of music going at the same time,” Baggett said.
The stick is held upright and parallel to the body while playing it, instead of perpendicular to the body like a guitar.
Baggett figures he spent a year developing bad habits before meeting his mentor, Greg Howard. They ’d have a lesson whenever Howard was passing by Abilene, Texas, where Baggett lived during and after university.
“That was before Skype … (Now) you can just get online with a real teacher and learn right there in your bedroom.”
Today, Baggett is well-practised at the instrument and celebrating the release of his third album, Bookmarks, with upcoming concerts in Regina, Saskatoon and Fort Qu’appelle.
He’s performing solo, as he usually does these days. That’s one benefit of the Chapman Stick.
“As a bass player, you have to be in a band with people. With this instrument … it sort of fit my lifestyle,” said Baggett, who has three children with his wife Angela.
“With kids, I just wasn’t going to go out and rehearse every night and travel and be away, but I could sit and practise in between running their baths, or whatever, when they were babies.”
The Chapman Stick is more widely known than it was when Baggett first obtained the instrument, but it’s still a novelty for spectators — that’s perhaps because Baggett is the only stick player in Saskatchewan, as far as he knows.
From an audience, he most frequently gets two questions: “It’s a tie between ‘is that a sitar?’ … The other question, especially because I’m a woodworker, everyone assumes I built it.”
He didn’t build it, and says he wouldn’t ever try: “I just have too much respect for the (Chapman) family and the instrument they do.”
On Bookmarks, Baggett covers some of his favourite jazz songs by composers such as Pat Metheny and Vijay Iyer. There’s a song by The Who and the enduring Classical Gas, by Mason Williams. Three of Baggett’s own compositions are on there too.
See Baggett in concert in Regina at the Creative City Centre on Thursday, Nov. 8. Brodie Moniker (a.k.a. Brodie Mohninger) is sharing the bill.
He’ll be solo at Mcnally Robinson in Saskatoon on Nov. 23.
On Dec. 1, Baggett plays at the Qu’appelle Valley Centre for the Arts in Fort Qu’appelle, along with Regina duo The Stillhouse Poets.
With kids, I just wasn’t going to go out and rehearse every night and travel and be away, but I could sit and practise in between running their baths, or whatever