Pounder

In the studio we play together. Then after a while the 'basic tracks' are recorded and we add extra sounds - a solo, a vocal harmony. So, while these weeks were passing, we noticed a noise from the woods. Record until the wee hours, then awake to a mechanical banging. One day, I walked across the street and noticed the sound source: a well being drilled the old fashioned way. A big machine was bashing its shaft into the ground over and over, burrowing for water an inch at a time.

I remembered needing some industrial sounds for a dream sequence in my movie. It was a few more days before I had a chance to grab Page's DAT machine and walk down to record the sound. When I got there, I couldn't figure out how to use Page's microphone - only silence came through, so I aborted mission. I had to leave for the weekend, but I thought, "I can get the sound next week." Once I have an idea, I get pretty obsessed, and the only thing that could stop me from capturing that sound is Murphy's Law of Recording: whenever I decide to grab the microphone again, the sound will stop.

The next week I found myself walking down the road with a new improved knowledge of Page's stereo microphone. But from 200 feet away I heard the machine stop. The man said he hit water five minutes ago and he already dismantled the machine. Refusing my bribes to fire it up again, he said his brother would be up on a hilltop the next day with an even bigger and better machine.

Next day came. I found the road alright, and my car bumped and slipped when gravel turned to rocks. At the final turn I heard that familiar sound. There was the brother - sitting and watching his machine do its thing. Someone in this country, I thought, had really figured out the meditation thing. Just a chair on a hilltop and a regular, rhythmic pounding. Who would have thought that ultimate catharsis would grace a man in dirty green work clothes? Unfortunately this drill, though gigantic, was too smooth compared to the other. He admitted it had new bearings and a lube job. If I wanted, I could find his brother with the original raunchier machine on another hillside in a town half an hour away.

No one out there had heard of any wells being drilled. It started to seem like a waste of time. Why don't I just call for better instructions? I remembered the time I told John Popper I had Sugar Blue's number. He had searched for Sugar, but refused the number, saying that the "cowboys wouldn't have done it that way." I made no calls, but I did glance at a map and relocated myself, a few days later, to the right town. I talked to an elderly woman in her run-down yet elegant sloping gardens. She reported seeing a well drilling truck drive by earlier that week. So I looked but couldn't find the site.

Came: another day. I swallowed my pride and reclimbed the hilltop to ask the brother with the overly smooth machine for better directions. When I drove back, past the elderly woman, I found the well-driller in his rig stopped in the road. "Are you done? I wanted to record the sound - remember me?"

"Oh yeah, I'm done, but if you follow me now I'll show you where the machine'll be tomorrow. Then you can drive me to my pick-up truck." Later, in my car, he said he drilled all the wells in town. He was the provider of life's liquid for an entire community.

Came: today. My birthday. I grabbed the DAT machine and headed out to the new location. I had no gas, but I was too excited to fill up. Somehow, I made it to the site and there it was, the old clunky hunk of metal in action. The DAT machine worked like a charm as I started recording, just 20 feet away. The man encouraged me to walk right up and stick my head inside the machine. Metal crashed into the earth like waves against a rocky shore. I panned the microphone back and forth with every hit; the noise in my headphones pounded my brain. It was ecstasy; the best sound I had ever heard. Bang, bang, bang, bang. "This has to be used on our album." Bang, Bang. It was so loud and so pure. The inventiveness of man merging with the beauty of nature right before me: a union sealed with each explosive plummet. "Yes!" I cried. "Yes!"

He gave me his card: "Bill Scheffel; Pounder" as I walked off. With this info, I'll mail him our new album so he can listen carefully for the quiet ghost of his drill. Running on fumes, I hurried back. I passed Trey in the road and played him the sound: needless to say, he smiled. Now I'm back in the studio and Cilla will be here soon to help celebrate one of the best birthdays ever.