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I never met my grandma Ramona -- she died before I was born -- so I was very excited to move her piano out of storage and into my garage studio. This is the piano I first took lessons on at age 6, so its tone is dependable and comforting to me. I spent many late nights with the piano’s lid popped open, letting my voice sit right there in the wood with the 4-foot strings, as my grandmother must have done many years ago... singing the old songs, people songs, the songs I’m sure my grandma knew.
One night my housemates and I (a bunch of poor musicians) threw a party which, after consumption of much alcohol, morphed into something like a speakeasy. Into the early morning, a dozen of us banged out pub songs in joyous revelry, so drunk we were screaming like werewolves and pulling out our hair. After all the guests had gone, and only my close friends remained, I told Ezra, Laura, and Emily how I believe that my grandmother’s spirit resonates in my piano, and that F-sharp below middle C is her soul tone (that note has a broken damper, any time you touch the key it sustains indefinitely). At the exact moment the words had come out of my mouth and I played the F-sharp to demonstrate, we heard the same tone fill the entire house, coming from the living room. Ezra said that he had left his mp3 player shuffling randomly, and the piece we were hearing was an electronic composition he had made some years ago, which coincidentally would drone for more than twenty minutes... on my grandmother’s note: F-sharp.

"Speak Easy" is dedicated to Ramona Brummel; available now at www.copticrecords.com.