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Big changes are what we have come to expect from St. Joan’s this past year. Our revered long time Sunday morning piano accompanist Dan Chouinard will vacate his position as our band leader next week. Accompanying our musicians, SJA Choir and guest performers with an assured rock steady pace that is executed with grace, timely wit and style, he leaves behind exceptional musical skills, both with piano and accordion. Accomplished jazz pianist George Maurer will take his place. Both have musical educations from St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN.
Just after Christmas, I discussed with Dan his reasons for parting and decided to elaborate more in depth with further discussions. Just after the New Year, I sat down with him and our St. Joan’s Liturgy and Music Director Anna Vagle to discuss how their working relationship has evolved through the years at St. Joan’s, what he will miss about playing for St. Joan’s Sunday Mass, his future plans and how his presence will still remain with us.
Michael: How long have you been in the position of the Sunday morning accompanist?
Dan: I guess I mark my real involvement at St. Joan’s around 1993/94 when I was pretty regular there. We started talking about creating a position.
Michael: When you started with Sunday masses, how did that conflict with late night Saturday night gigs? Did that start to take a toll with budgeting your time?
Dan: : I don’t remember it all that well, so it must have not been a big deal. At the time I had also done some teaching in French and Italian, both at the University and as a Public school teacher for a very short while, and that was really what had presented the greatest conflict between late night and early morning. With St. Joan’s it must have not been too bad. We show up at St. Joan’s at 8:00 or 8:15 [AM]. Not as bad as showing up for Junior High School kids at 7:00. If it’s a gig that I don’t expect to return home until two or three in the morning then I’ll make sure that somebody else is filling in for me at St. Joan’s.
Increasingly for me the issue is that I have work out of town—Saturday night concerts. Some of them are far enough out of town where it’s not even a question that I’ll even be back, but a lot of it is in the five state area. So the question becomes, I’ll drive home at two in the morning, is it worth it? Increasingly it becomes an issue when I get back in the Saturday work mode.
Also some of my work now is fed by my travel and travel that extends over extended periods of time, places in Europe and this summer in Quebec. And since my work relies on this and gathering material over a longer period of time, that too, makes it difficult to maintain a commitment to a regular presence at St. Joan’s.
Michael: Then after the New Year do the duties officially turn over to George?
Dan: If I had to mark a date, it would be the Sunday after Martin Luther King Concert [That would be Jan. 21, folks]. I’ll be around working with Gwen Matthews and Debbie Duncan and T Mychael Rambo and just want to be around St. Joan’s to help promote my concert and to work with the choir as well.
Michael: How often in the past have you found yourself sitting in the house at a St. Joan’s Sunday Mass?
Dan: Sitting in the house? Not very often. I can count maybe two times.
Michael: You’re usually up there playing.
Dan: And even when I’m not, I’m out in the room thinking like a musician. It will be very interesting to see whether or not the few times I come back as a spectator or as a participant whether or not I’ll be able to extricate myself from the band leader mind set.
Michael: You’ll find your self conducting a cue here and there.
Dan: Right.
Michael: Anna, what drew you to select Chouinard as your accompanist and how has the role evolved through the years?
Anna: During the second Cabaret it was very clear that everybody wanted Dan to be there and you really wanted to be there, too.
Dan:
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| Director of Music/Liturgy Anna Vagle |
Anna: So it was just a natural. When Kate [Cuddy, former accompianist] decided to go to Benilde full-time and give up her position at St. Joan’s and you had already done a lot of work taking over. But I actually knew Dan when he was in grade school. I always take responsibility for the fact that I brought him and his brothers to St. John’s to audition for the sisters of St. Benedict’s and I attended your concerts with Dr. Barryman when you guys were in grade school.
Dan: And then over the years at St. Joan’s, I gravitated toward a band leader sort of role just because of my controlling and empowering nature. [Laughs from us.] We did have a discussion later on about creating a position so that I would have a predictable schedule and a certain degree of income at St. Joan’s. So all of these years, I’ve had a part-time position but it has been a staff position.
Dan attended staff meetings and felt like a very integral part of St. Joan’s through the years.
Michael: What was the sound system like to adjust to through the years? Did you have more involvement with it and get to understand more about it, or let someone else take care of it?
Dan: Fred [Vagle] has taken care of it. We’ve put a mixing board out in the gym and mostly Doug Lohman has been running it. That was a big step.
Anna: That was the biggest step since the renovation. [Around 1994]
Dan: Until then, not only did you have the band behind the altar but you also had the sound guy …
Anna: ... diving in and out of the sound hole.
Dan: Whenever there was a problem. It must have really been distracting for the audience.
Anna: Dan, remember the sixty cycle hum that no one ever figured out where it came from in the building. Honestly, we haven’t focused on [this stuff] for a long time.
Dan: It’s really one of those things that runs itself and that’s a great credit to Doug. Videography, PowerPoint and running the sound have allowed other people with strong expertise like Fred Vagle to step up to the plate so that the musicians can just concentrate on their music.
Michael: How does the process of selecting music work between the two of you?
Dan: Well, there’s a dog-eared, stapled together, stack of yellow sheets of paper—golden rod—I believe, and they’ve been around for years. It’s a mimeographed sheet of the St. Joan of Arc song list. It probably dates back to ...
Anna: ... I don’t want to say. [Laughs from all]
Dan: With a lot of the classics organized by genre, like the greeting songs.
Dan works mostly from a list he has compiled through the years on his computer but Anna still thumbs through these old stacks of paper occasionally.
Anna: We eliminated like 32 songs that we don’t think we should use anymore.
Michael: So Dan, do you introduce songs to Anna first?
Dan: No, not necessarily. I think we enjoy a great balance in our working relationship. Perhaps mine has been more focused on the technicalities of members of the band working together as an ensemble and the tools that are required for that to happen, such as charts for everyone and partly a song list where the music is solid.
Michael: Would it be daunting for someone to step in as a sub for you?
Anna: [Interjecting] I think so, especially in those early years when we didn’t have charts and you’d say, well just listen and you’ll pick it up. I think how Dan changed the sound of the band is that for years and years we just got together and banged away. It was really fun and everybody played just as loud as they could and took solos. Every tune began to sort of sound the same. Well, Dan brought different rhythmic ideas. He’d say, “No guitar on this.” Now the guitarist didn’t like that. It’s always been something we’ve had fun about, but this might just be a piano tune and also I don’t think we did any a cappella singing until you came, Dan. That’s really been fun, I think, especially for the congregation. Sometimes he would say, let’s just do a sparse harmony like an open fifth or something. That would just change the sound and made it really interesting.
Dan: I love to hear the sound of the congregation singing. Sometimes in the band it’s hard to do that when you’re playing, especially on a lively loud song. That may have been one of the more selfish desires for me, to sing more a cappella so that we as a band can listen more to the sound of the room.
Anna: So, if you see Dan kind of glaring at [us on stage], pulling his mic away, you know he wants to let the people sing. [Abundant laughs ensue] When you hear the congregation sing, it’s really
Dan: lovely
Anna: so fantastic.
Michael: When do you rehearse for Sunday masses?
Dan: At eight o’clock. [AM, Sunday]
Michael: Not a separate night?
Dan: Often I will have a meeting with a guest soloist. [and may include the band during Christmas or Easter] We’ll have one or two outside gatherings that often degenerate to socializing but mostly our rehearsals are at Sunday mornings at eight o’clock for better or for worse.
Michael: Do you always have a complete itinerary lined up?
Dan: Typically Anna and I have planned things in the week or weeks preceding. We’re coming in on Sunday with an established song list because the projectionist has to have everything ready to go.
Anna and Dan have shared years of selecting music together for Sunday masses.
Anna: I think what I’m gonna miss the most is: this is the theme for Sunday and these are the readings. I have my own ideas [about the music] but I have really valued Dan’s insight for what would be good and how he sees the music flowing. It always sparks something new.
Dan: I think that’s been facilitated by my long involvement at St. Joan’s. I know these songs from when I was ten years old.
Anna: And you know the feel of them and what it stirs in people.
Michael: What’s a favorite type of music you like to play at St. Joan’s masses?
Dan: Well, I am drawn to the old time-y, a cappella tunes, something as simple as “This Little Light of Mine” with people simply clapping. I love that old sound. I love the sound of the twangy, old kind of country stuff that we bring in and Lee Vague plays it so well. I get a lot of requests for this particular old time-y song “Only Remembered,” which is an old Appalachian song.
Michael: It must have changed “Only Remembered,” when Paul Wellstone passed on. It seemed like it had more immediacy for the public when you, Dan, would sing it.
Dan: That could be and it might have been right around then that I started singing it. I learned this tune from a group of singers that I hang out with once a month who are not professionals. They just love to sit in their living room with other people who like to sing and sing old time music and I was invited to join them.
Many songs from the St. Joan of Arc Sunday Mass canon have been retired.
Dan: We have retired a lot of tunes, partly because of bad theology. We don’t sing songs like “I’ll Fly Away” all that much—that veil of tears. We’ve weeded out that sort of ‘Lord, I’m not worthy” repertoire. It’s much more that creation-centered theology, that low Christology we talk so much about with that has been reflected in our song list. We’ve also weeded out, I think, some of that 60s-70s guitar mass sort of stuff that sounded too chirpy. I think you develop a hunger for more solid food and as you discover that old time stuff that has stood the test of time.
Anna: What do you say, Dan, when people say, “Why do you do that. That has nothing to do with God?” I’ve heard that. [For example], “All My Life’s a Circle, that’s so people centered. Has nothing to do with God.
Dan: I would ask: do people have nothing to do with God?
Michael: What are you going to miss about the Sunday Mass playing? It’s been in the rhythm of your life for so long.
Dan: That’s going to be an adjustment. I’ll be seeking some other sorts of Sabbath observance but St. Joan’s will continue to be one of them. But I know I sense a need for a special time set aside. But St. Joan’s is also about work for me. I guess I’m looking forward to experimenting with an observance of a Sabbath day, a day of rest that is not about work. I’ll miss, of course, the camaraderie with the band and the community there. I also missed all of those occasions when I heard something that will leave me changed—the way I view myself and the way I view the world. I will be looking for those things in other places for awhile. I’m with a partner now who is a writer and his Sunday activity has a lot to do with sitting and writing which I think is lovely and I think I would like to try that, too.
Anna: Dan, I know you get a lot of affirmation and are really fed by people who love you and want to be close to you, want to support you with your performances and maybe in this ongoing relationship that will not change.
Dan: For a lot of people, the beginning of a relationship where it moves in a more serious territory, it is also the creation for a new community and I feel that happening already with John [his partner] and also in my increasing work in new musical circles, people who have an involvement with Minnesota Public Radio and I have a feeling I will start finding new communities, new families in those circles. People there are starting to recognize my ability as a story teller as well as a musician. This has grown since I’ve had the opportunity to host concerts and interview people on stage. My involvement at MPR will be growing.
Anna: Is your spring show gonna be on MPR?
Dan: I’m doing a show at the Fitzgerald Theater on May 5th which is called “All Together Now: Standing Up For the Sing Along”. It’s really a celebration and a defense of social music making, of communal and dilettante music making for the fun of it. Not only that it’s fun and can be musically profound and beautiful, but also that it is so necessary in this day and age of people being separated from each other, sequestered in their electronic cocoons. Perhaps a lot of it will be without any instruments. I think this is a very important thing, not only for our souls but for our democracy or society.
Michael: Is there an agenda for you in 2007? Do you have it mapped out what your plans are?
Dan: I don’t. My schedule kind of happens to me month by month. I know there will be a lot of work with Prudence Johnson and Peter Ostroushko. John and I are going to go back to Quebec and maybe stay for a couple of months. I have work lined up but my father’s people are from Quebec and there’s a lot of family history that I would like to go digging around in, especially musical roots up there. There’s an accordion festival in the south of France in September. There’s the Cabaret in October. There might be a Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus in December. A lot of fun things and perhaps a lot of open time as well.
Michael: So much for not being mapped out! What would be the perfect musical dream for you that you would like to accomplish in your future?
Dan: I started to listen to Garrison Keillor when I was 15, when my family moved out to the farm and I have always envied him, his routine of doing a live show in front of a crowd of people with a lot of singing and story-telling and a lot of friends coming in to help you, and still think that is just a great routine. If I wound up with a lot of people singing and telling stories I wouldn’t mind that. Other than that, I also feel drawn to the community of the public square, the likes of which we really don’t have here in the United States, but which exists in Europe still, especially how music happens out in public. I’m drawn still as I was a few years ago to a public square as a place for community and music to happen.
Concluding his feelings about vacating his present position
Dan: It has nothing to do with these changes in the community. It has everything to do with changes in my own life. Work is among them, relationship is among them, and wanting to create more time for both of those things—time, which of necessity that has to come from the weekend. I will continue to consider myself a member of the St. Joan of Arc family and to turn up like a bad penny at family gatherings.
Michael: And you are planning to stay on with the concert series and the cabaret?
Dan:Yes.
Michael: That is all that we need to hear. Your presence will very much still be part of us in a most wonderful way.
Dan: And I’ll be back for the occasional Sunday and will continue to have an involvement with the band and the Sunday musicians.
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Look for Dan Chouinard to continue hosting and playing for our SJA Concert Series:
| Next week, Jeanne Schaum will have a feature on our new pianist, George Maurer. Check back! |