Robert Beck, June 2014

Robert Beck maintains the Gallery of Robert Beck at 204 No. Union St., Lambertville, NJ

www.robertbeck.net (215) 982-0074

Telecaster

    When I think of Jamie Rounds I remember three things, all from more than twenty years ago. One was how we would sit on his front steps, or mine, and jam with guitars. He was a very good guitar player, songwriter, performer, and a joy to mess around with. Another memory is our freestyle Frisbee-golf games through the streets of Bristol on Sunday mornings; winner calls the next hole. We bonked parked cars and retrieved discs from backyards while the locals peered through their window blinds. The third recollection is the farewell party we threw when Jamie decided to go all-in on his dream of being a professional songwriter.

    We held the party at my place, a row house in the Italian section of town, on a Monday night to accommodate all the musicians. Someone made a wood frame the size of a pizza box that we filled with cement and had Jamie press his hands into it. A gold-painted star with his name was added above his prints. Then we adjourned to the front porch for an evening of musical merriment.

    Sometime after midnight a police car came up the street. The porch party got quiet—or maybe not quite as loud. The car stopped in front of the house. It was Sam, a good cop with a touch of both Norman Rockwell and Wyatt Earp in him. He was also a friend who lived three doors away. We applauded. Sam leaned out the car window and said, “I got a report of a disturbance at this address. Have you seen anything?” We assured Sam we’d keep our eyes out for anything unusual, and shut down the party. The guitars, harmonicas and tambourines were put back in their cases and the guest of honor was on his way, appropriately feted.

    Jamie went to Los Angeles and then settled in Nashville. Seven or eight years later he was back for a reunion of his high school band, The Sonic Falcons, at John & Peters in New Hope. I did a painting of them practicing in someone’s basement. For the next fifteen years the news was spotty. I was supposed to go down to Nashville and paint him performing at the Bluebird but something got in the way. I heard him acknowledged on a Mountain Stage performance of the Jordanairs. I saw clips on YouTube of him playing with other Nashville musicians. Every now and then we would make contact by email or Facebook.

    Then last summer came the news that Jamie took his own life. It was so out of the blue. So many questions, so much pain. In every picture of him I‘d ever seen he had a guitar in his lap and was leaning forward with a radiant look on his face, sharing the joy of making music with everyone else in the room. He so loved music. It must have been the hours between songs that he couldn’t bear.

    Plans were made for some of the musicians from his high school and college to get together in a studio not far from where Jamie grew up and record an album of his music. I asked if I could paint it.

    Nine of us crammed into a very small practice room along with instruments, music stands, microphones, amps, and a French easel. Four people had to move before you could open the door. If I dropped a brush I’d have to do without it. There were no complaints. All suggestions were seriously evaluated. Everyone worked to make the songs as good as they could be. The musicians talked with familiarity and humor but nobody joked around much, nobody got loud. The gathering—the sessions and the going out afterward at night—was tempered by absence and finality.

    I don’t duplicate, I describe. I surrender to things that draw my attention, things that resonate, things that make the moment and place personal to me. My subject was more than a too-small room full of musicians. It was that roiling ache that everyone in the room was feeling. For all of us, it wasn’t about the result as much as the doing.

    I noticed that one of the musicians had stuck a large postcard next to the door. It was a promo piece that showed a smiling Jamie and his guitar leaning against a Corvette. I put the card in the painting, on the back wall, center top of the image. For a moment I thought of the party on the porch, and wondered where the cement panel with Jamie’s handprints and gold-painted star had ended up.