Like the country doctors of yore who made house calls, Steve Duncan made piano calls and witnessed history through the tines of a tuning fork.
Behind the Scenes reads more like an autobiography than a memoir, but Duncan manages to create harmony in his notes from being a piano player, piano mover, piano repairman and piano tuner for forty years in Atlanta. Between stories of encounters with just about every famous musician from the 1960s to the today, Duncan sprinkles personal tidbits about his upbringing, education, love life, children and mother.
Behind the Scenes is conversational and fast-paced, especially in the beginning and end (definitely worth hanging in there for the jokes towards the end). In the middle, Duncan gets a little inside baseball with descriptions of the Charles-Louis Hanon piano method by which he learned to play, the metronome, piano history, several different piano brands and their construction, the science A-440 (standard pitch for an American piano) and even how to move a piano (and how not to).
His career in piano tuning begins when he lands a job a Jim’s Piano Shop, owned by his mentor Jim Scaglion, for whom Duncan’s affection shows throughout his storytelling. “Upon stepping inside the large one-room shop on North Highland Avenue, I knew that I wanted to work there – the smell of sawdust and lacquer paint was somehow strangely intoxicating!” Thus began an engagement where he learned to play the piano in the morning and how to work on them in the afternoon.
“There are two primary factors in being a piano tuner,” Duncan writes. “First, one must learn how to listen. To listen, one must be silent. … The other vital ingredient? Patience!”
The patient reader will delight in Duncan’s stories of various venues around Atlanta and the musicians who played them: rock bands, country singers, jazz keyboardists, including Yul Brynner, ping-pong player Bob Seger, the “Far Out” John Denver, “What’s Your Name” Lyle Lovett, “Princess and the Pea” Fiona Apple and more. Among interesting details, Duncan says he taught Kerry Livgren of Kansas how to finger-pick a guitar.
Naturally, since a piano can’t be dropped off at the store for tuning, Duncan was exposed to a lot of different piano owners including a butcher, an entitled socialite and a naked woman. He also reveals some interesting stuff found inside pianos and shares a few harrowing stories of driving around Atlanta, which might sound familiar to anyone who’s done it.
Behind the Scenes captures a bit of history we won’t see again, thanks to the modern synthesizer, which does not require tuning, but anyone who has ever owned or played a piano will appreciate Duncan’s obvious appreciation for the instrument.
I was fortunate to have received an Advanced Review Copy of Behind the Scenes on Reedsy Discovery, where I review independently published books, especially memoirs and biographies. Check it out.
Monica Lee 