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Written by Dan England
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Friday, 28 March 2008 |
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Doug Kershaw and Richard Fuchs
Richard Fuchs and Doug Kershaw have the kind of partnership that would have been golden in the late 1970s or early 80s, when shows like “The Facts of Life” ruled the airwaves.
Sitcoms were king, and Fuchs and Kershaw could easily star in a rip off the “Odd Couple” (we’d probably have to throw in a funny dog or something to avoid copyright issues).
But, in fact, the partnership between Fuchs, the professor of violin at the University of Northern Colorado, and Kershaw, the fiddle-playing Cajun who can’t read music but is in the Country Music Hall of Fame, is a reality show. And if you’re getting tired of the lame TV comparisons, we don’t blame you.
Let’s just call it a dream come true, then.
 That’s what Kershaw calls it.
Kershaw has worked with symphonies in the past, but he wanted his music, his tunes like “Louisiana Man,” the one he played on Johnny Cash’s television show, played by an orchestra. That’s what will happen April 5, when he joins forces with Fuchs and UNC’s orchestra, voted the best university orchestra in the country six of the last eight years by Downbeat Magazine.
Kershaw never wrote the music down. He never needed that. It was all in his head. He has thousands of the songs memorized. In fact, he said, once he plays a tune, it stays in his head forever.
“Now I can finally see it before me,” he said. “What this is really doing for me is they’re (the students and Fuchs) asking questions of me, and I’m having to dig in my head for the answer. I’ve taken all that for granted and I now I have to think about it. This is really blowing open my mind.”
It all started a year ago, when one of Fuchs’ students met Kershaw backstage to tell him how he inspired her to play. He asked her about her teacher, and Kershaw contacted Fuchs soon after to make an instructional DVD. Kershaw never knew how he played music, he just did it and was hoping Fuchs could spell it out for him.
 He learned how to play by listening to his family jam together when he was supposed to be in bed or while he was shining shoes on street corners and hearing the jukebox in a bar playing Glenn Miller or Cajun or country. He’s had his music in movies, including “Heaven’s Gate,” but he turned down countless other offers because he didn’t want to humiliate himself knowing he couldn’t put the music into scores. He taught himself how to play 20 instruments and yet couldn’t give one lesson on how to play them.
Fuchs, of course, was quite the opposite. He probably spent enough on violin lessons to afford a BMW (maybe a used one, but a BMW nonetheless) and taught hundreds, if not thousands, of others the proper way to play violin and classical music.
Fuchs knows today that, despite all that training, something was missing, and it was the magic of feel, of improvisation, of playing just to play without looking at thousands of black notes pieced together to form a melody.
“Sometimes I think we get too focused on this,” Fuchs said while pointing to his head, “and we have a hard time teaching the soul.”
Fuchs never had the time to delve into it, or at least he didn’t think he did, until he invited Kershaw to play with him, and as the two began to jam together, both began learning from each other. Fuchs began to appreciate all styles of music, which was easy because Kershaw can’t really be categorized, and he began to appreciate the way Kershaw plays as well.
“It’s so compelling the way he plays music,” he said. “He has an innate rhythmic ability and just knows where to place notes so they have the greatest emotional impact. You can’t ever learn all that from a book. That’s the beauty of this thing.”
Perhaps the most important thing out of the partnership, and now friendship, is both of them have had a breakthrough as a result. Kershaw’s inability to teach and see his own music, what he called his wall, is down. He’s taking to it and is finding it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as he thought.
“I’m thinking about writing something down just for this concert,” Kershaw said. “Even if it’s just a little squiggle, I think that would be cool.”
And Fuchs? Well, he’s learned more this year than he had in the past decade. He’s a changed man.
“My students have seen me grow,” Fuchs said. “They’ve seen someone who’s been at it for years and years, their teacher even, grow as a professional, and that’s an important lesson for anyone to learn.”
A CLASSICAL CAJUN GUMBO
Doug Kershaw and the University of Northern Colorado Symphony Orchestra will perform at 8 p.m. April 5 at the Union Colony Civic Center, 701 10th Ave., Greeley. Tickets range from $15-$32 and can be purchased at 351-2200 or by going to www.ucstars.com or www.arts.unco.edu/news/gumbo.
TO HELP
UNC is also looking for donations to raise enough money to host the concert. If you can help, send a check to:
UNC Foundation — Attn: Valerie Hunt
P.O. Box 30, Greeley, CO 80639
Make sure you put Cajun Gumbo on the check so officials know what it is for.
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