Merriman's Playhouse at Home to Play Jazz

By Cynthia Connell Davis

I'm sitting at a beautiful round antique oak table at Merrimans' Playhouse and Piano Store, listening to Stephen Merriman tell the story of how this unique place came into being. My note-taking is fast and furious because Stephen is eloquent. It seems to me that in each paragraph he speaks there is a title for this article -- even a poem!

I arrived a few minutes before the appointed time. Emily, Stephen's sister who works there, greeted me warmly and said that Stephen was with Mayor Pete right now and would be back shortly. She adds that many years ago Pete Buttigieg's mother had called over, to get someone to come and tune their piano. I remembered that Mayor Pete is a concert pianist.

"Oh yes," Emily says. "We've known their family for a long time."

Stephen came in from the back area wearing his signature black Tee-shirt with the Merrimans' Playhouse logo -- the elegant white lines that look like a drum, a piano (front view) and behind the piano, a string bass. Something about this image seems happy -- maybe the tilt of the drum and bass or the seemingly carefree way the lines have been drawn, as if the image itself is playing with my eyesight. There is fun here! And lot’s more.

"It's so difficult to find a place to play."

I ask Stephen how the Playhouse started.

He says, "It started when I broke my ankle and came back to South Bend." He points to a large picture on the wall -- the X-rays of broken bones. His eyes sparkle. "A badly shattered ankle was the birth of the playhouse," he says.

About 20 years ago Stephen was living in Oak Park, Illinois trying to break into the jazz scene as a player. "I was in Chicago, my second marriage was falling apart -- just the stress of living there. We had a child together. Then I broke my ankle.

And I came back to South Bend." All the while, the playhouse was gestating in his mind. "It's so difficult to find a place to play. Musicians have to share an environment -- a bar or Debartolo [at Notre Dame]. In a bar people want to talk; they don't want to be bothered with musicians playing. Playing at Debartolo is a fine thing to do. But not everyone can do it. The Playhouse is in between."

Stephen Merriman

"I knew I was a drummer. I drummed."

But first, he had to travel far and wide, discover jazz and later break his ankle. And only then return to the city of his birth. It sounds kind of mythic, doesn't it? -- the return, after 40 years?

The place that, for years, he had seen as a pile of manure had become a magnificently fertile "meeting place for creative collaboration" (from Merrimans' website).

It's as if his great gift hampered him for many years. That story begins with a very young boy whose search for who he is began as early as he could drum on something.

"I knew I was a drummer. I drummed". . .Stephen drums on the beautiful antique round oak table, a quick, complex rhythm. "I slept with the Sears catalogue and gazed on it -- the shiny stands, the drums. As far back as I can remember, like as far back as knowing your name or going to the bathroom or how to drink water. It wasn't something requiring education. I just wanted to play. I didn't want to get bogged down in theory." (He continues to "play" the table.) "And yet," he says, "I was unclear as to what I was."

It seems like he knew how to play the drums when he was born. "I wasn't trained. I was a livewire -- I made up my own rudiments. I did everything wrong. I sat too low. One teacher even told me I held the sticks wrong. I read books. But I would play with people and have a blast! I'd listen to what they were playing and figure it out. It was tons of fun.

"Like sandlot baseball -- you bat and catch and pitch and play the umpire -­(Stephen leans to one side of his chair and "catches a ball" and then leans the other way and "does" the umpire). Sometimes all that in one inning." He goes on, "I played sandlot baseball. But when I got into Little League it was structured. I stood in left field and the most that happened was that I went in my pants." We both laugh.

"When you have a group playing you must structure. It has to be organized. You'd better have this stuff scripted. It's an extravaganza to pull it all together.”

"I kept getting smaller, fewer musicians. I was seeking jazz music but I still hadn't found it. I thought that it was for old people. Louis Armstrong to me was --the same thing over and over."

"You don't even know what jazz is."

Stephen traveled to many cities, enjoyed some success for a while, but it never lasted. He lived in Los Angeles, Denver, Santa Fe, New York City. "I used to think it [no place to play; no appreciative audience] was exclusive to South Bend. I was never going to come back. NEVER! I crashed and burned enough times. I would do well for a little while and then find myself back in South Bend. My mother graciously took me in. The Playhouse was gestating in my mind. What I learned by living all over the country is that it is the same everywhere -- how difficult it is to find a place to play. Even in New York or Santa Fe it was the same."

In Boulder, Colorado, he met Peter Knauer. Peter was originally from Hamburg, Germany. "He was about 30 years older than me. He was trying to get to New York. He felt he needed to be in New York. After the War [WW II], there were ambassadors of culture, and he was heavily influenced by Duke Ellington. Of course he knew Bach and Beethoven, too. He composed, and his music was quite dynamic."

"Boulder was such a beautiful place. It's diverse and cosmopolitan. A beautiful place to be confused, frustrated and hopeless. You could walk out into the foothills, gain perspective, and come back."

Stephen had a friend who was going to buy a piano, and Peter was selling pianos. Peter played an excerpt from one of his pieces, for this friend. Stephen was enchanted. Peter let Stephen bring his drum set into the store. "We played. It was rich with the agony and the ecstasy. It was complex and erratic. The signatures kept shifting. Most of it I was improvising. Peter's work defied description, defied labeling. I played with him, I learned some parts of his compositions, improvised some, and left open areas for improvising.

Stephen continued to think jazz was what Louis Armstrong played, which was too predictable. He still had not found jazz. He didn't know that jazz is not a style but a process. He was looking for polyrhythmic stuff.  Then he met a guy in Boulder who said, "You don't even know what jazz is." He introduced Stephen to Monk, Miles, Mingus. Stephen took Bebop classes and learned that jazz is a collaborative process. "I pursued that."

Steve says, "Playing together is a social thing. I didn't want to have any boundaries. Have you ever read The Chronicles of Narnia? It's like the wardrobe, I mean, the song structure. You go into the song and you find Narnia. You get into the flow. As long as you're with friends and you can trust them, you'll get back through the wardrobe."

"All these things were gestating in our [his and Peter's] minds. We went to New York. But it doesn't work in New York, either. People there recognized the genius but they said it [Peter's music] didn't fit their audience; they couldn't make it work in their place."

So it was gestating -- "a place for the misfits" establishment.

"The Playhouse is our child."

None of this really hit home until he broke his ankle. He was 40 years old. "There were now kids half my age who could play much better than I could. I wasn't ever going to be the greatest in the world. I was feeling helpless. You can't play a bass drum with a broken ankle. I had believed the origin of it [the problem of a place to play] was South Bend. I traveled around. I found LOTS of people like me who felt the same way. They were looking for a place to play. They were trying to break into the music world. This is how a place like this pops up -- out of frustration, hopelessness. "

Stephen and Mary Merriman

Back in South Bend he met Mary. Mary plays the bass. "My wife -- third actually -- we've been together 17 years, maybe a little longer even. We have Merrimans' Playhouse. I came with the pianos and the music. She's a biologist and occupational therapist. She came with the music. The element, the ingredient, the merging created the opportunity for this to be our child.”

For 40 years he had asked, Who am I? Where do I fit in? "And then," he says, "something switched. I didn't put myself in the front of the art -- I put the art in front of me. I was suddenly a regular person but I would create a home where they could play.

"Suddenly South Bend went from this pile of manure to this rich, fertile soil. It was mine! I knew where I needed to be. I was home."

Steve has created his own version of the Sisyphus myth. Sisyphus rolls the rock up the hill and it rolls back down, over and over again. When he finally makes the rock balance on the hilltop, Sisyphus looks up and lo! There's another hill beyond that one.

I take a step back from his recitation and see "the myth of the hero's return." It's as if Steve, together with Mary, found the answer to his burning question, "Who am I? Where do I fit in?" He balanced the rock. And then another hill loomed up, in the distance: "Okay, now what does it mean to be me?"

"And that is why jazz is our national anthem."

Stephen returns to talking about the Playhouse. "The playhouse is artist-driven. You have to be sincere with your art.  That's the ticket you need to get in, to play."

And then he becomes expansive about jazz and America -- the meaning. "This country is like jazz -- a great experiment. So many different ideas -- all making them happen. Jazz allows each individual as an individual to play, no one player is a prima donna. Each player plays in connection with the whole, with the others, and also individually.

"And that is why jazz is our national anthem. And why musicians from other nations are fascinated with it."

Merrimans' Playhouse, Inc.
www.MerrimansPlayhouse.org
Merrimans' PLAYHOUSE Business Phone: 574-310-9977

Merrimans' Complete Piano Service
www.MerrimansPiano.com
PIANO Business Phone: 574-329-3430
merrimanspiano@gmail.com

(Please watch for the article "Merriman's Piano Store -- the Whole Other Critter Here" in the next issue of PAN-O-PLY Story & Art Michiana .)