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newlenoxpatriot.com Life & Arts
the New Lenox Patriot | February 1, 2018 | 23
‘The world is just full of musical potential’
LW alum finds
creative inspiration
in household items
that carry a tune
Bill Jones, Contributing Editor
It all started with a homemade
banjo.
“It wasn’t even meant to
be anything, but I saw this
frame drum in a shop,” Joe
Rauen recalled. “I said,
‘That thing right there is already
50 percent of a banjo.
If you just made a neck, that
would be a banjo.’”
A friend encouraged him
to follow the whim. Rauen
built a neck and figured
out a way to fasten it to the
drum.
“I built this thing without
any knowledge,” he
said. “When I finally got the
strings on it. ‘Oh!’ It’s not
great, but the eureka moment
is, like, you don’t need
to have the knowledge first
and then build; you can start
with no knowledge.”
That was seven or eight
years ago. A year later,
Rauen built two more instruments,
and the year after
that: four. Today, a small
space in the basement of his
home in Munster, Indiana,
is jam-packed with instruments
of all shapes, sizes,
colors and, of most importance,
materials. Rauen’s
music shop of choice is not
Guitar Center; it is Home
Depot.
“The world is just full of
musical potential, everywhere,”
said Rauen, a product
of the Lincoln-Way system
who works as registrar
for a local school. “When
you’re not tuned into it,
you can be blind to it. Once
you’re hip to it, it’s everywhere.
“Spill a silverware drawer.
It’s amazing. If you have
the luxury of doing so,
If you go: Cabaret -
Experimental Musical
Instruments
Who: Joe Rauen, creator
and performer of
experimental instruments
When: 2 p.m. Thursday,
Feb. 8
Where: Orland Park Public
Library, 14921 S. Ravinia
Ave., Room 104
Official Description: Artist
and musician Joe Rauen
will spend the afternoon
demonstrating and
performing music for his
experimental musical
instruments. Some
of these are shovels,
suitcases and household
plumbing turned into
strange and beautiful
musical instruments.
Others are guitars and
banjos taken apart and
recombined in other
worldly shapes.
Selling Point: “Joe appeals
to all different age groups,”
said Jackie Boyd, public
information officer for the
library. “He can make an
instrument seemingly out
of anything.”
Learn More: Visit www.
joerauen.com for more
information or photos of
Rauen’s work.
Joe Rauen fiddles around with a bow and custom tennis racquet banjo in his basement
workshop. Bill Jones/22nd Century Media
chuck your silverware down
your driveway sometime.
It’s just amazing, when you
think about it as music, what
kind of sounds happen. Or
take a bow and bow something
you wouldn’t think
should be bowed. Bow a
shovel sometime. It’s shocking
what kind of sounds are
all around us.”
Rauen studied at the
Berklee College of Music.
He has a background focused
on stringed instruments
and woodwinds, but
he has dabbled in brass, as
well. The custom creations
in his basement reflect that,
skewing roughly 60 percent
strings, mostly rounded out
by clarinets and flutes but
with some other oddities in
the mix. Rauen often sticks
to traditional tuning pegs
and strings when creating,
as they are designed to do
specific jobs difficult to replicate,
but the instruments
otherwise are made with
items such as shovels and
brooms and hockey sticks,
and a workshop bench has
more ideas in the works.
The instruments also are
incredibly intricate in decoration
and color.
“Some of [the colors] have
a purpose, too,” Rauen said.
“All of the flutes have what
key they are, color coded.
So, the color coding starts
with red in C. Red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo,
violet for CDEFGABC.
Flutes that have their complementary
color are minor.
Flutes that have white are
major. If the flute plays in
the same key as some instrument
— like, that green one
plays in the same key as that
multi-neck ukulele. They’re
fun because they’re colorful,
but they also help me
when I’m onstage.”
Rauen is set to take the
stage at 2 p.m. Thursday,
Feb. 8, at the Orland Park
Public Library, putting both
his instruments and his performance
talents on display.
His overriding mandate is to
be the antithesis of the guy
at the bar with a guitar on
a Saturday night; he rather
would give people something
they have never before
seen.
“It’s a one-man show
where I play maybe 10
original tunes that use different
combinations of the
instruments,” he said. “I
use a looping pedal, so that
I can lay down a bass line
with one, play chords with
another. I’ll improvise with
one of the flutes or cellos, or
do some kind of noisescapes
with the others. I’ll talk a little
bit about what the instruments
are and why I made
certain choices, and a little
bit about how they’re built.”
Rauen said he is more
than happy to adapt his
show to the whims of his audiences.
Sometimes, people
just want to listen and vibe,
and the musician is happy to
just play around for the afternoon.
Other times, people
want to get into the “nittygritty”
of how the instruments
are made, and he is
more than willing to discuss
that and point people in the
right direction to make their
own devices. Occasionally,
the conversations even drift
into more philosophical
questions of what defines a
certain type of instrument,
and whether or not those
definitions truly matter.
“These things don’t have
definite answers,” Rauen
said. “It’s hard to say sometimes,
‘Is this a banjo or
not?’ because all the guides
that tell you what a banjo
is are missing when you’re
talking about a tennis racquet.”
As innovative as Rauen’s
work may seem, he is more
than willing to acknowledge
and discuss a picture
on his wall of his biggest
influence, Rahsaan Roland
Kirk.
“This is pretty much my
musical idol,” Rauen said.
“I think I’m working in
his tradition now. He was
a blind jazz saxophonist,
active starting in the late
1950s, and especially in
the ’60s and ’70s, known
for playing a large collection
of instruments, sometimes
simultaneously. ....
He usually came onstage
with three saxophones, and
they were weird ones, ones
that weren’t commonly
played.
“His whole performance
was full of humor and surreal
song titles and surreal imagery.
The whole thing was
totally about him. It had to
do with him, his personality,
his instruments, the things
he pioneered.
“If I really get down to
why was that important to
me … it’s nothing against
the guy at the bar playing
mandolin. The thing that
doesn’t interest me about
that is pluck that guy out of
the band and drop some other
guy in, and things mostly
proceed as usual, right?
But Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s
shows counted 100 percent
on Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
There was not a version
of the show without Rahsaan
Roland Kirk. He built
this whole thing around the
whole himness of it. That’s
what interests me.
“When I do this show,
you get me and all this crazy
junk I made. You get the fact
that I’m a banjo and bass
player first and a flutist and
clarinetist second. All those
things combine around me
and with me, and it doesn’t
work without me.”