SJU “Johnnie” Anthem
*commissioned by the St. John's University athletic department, May 2008
Co-written by George Maurer and Brent Daniels.
Composed by George Maurer.
Programming by Brent Daniels.
- George Maurer, SJU '88 - 1957 Hammond B3 organ, keys
- Paul "Stretch" Diethelm - lead, rhythm guitars
- Noah Kolb - rhythm guitar
- Nick Syman, SJU '00 - trombone
- Anna Maurer - trombone
- Ken Vork - bass trombone
- Lauren Vork - trombone
- Jeff Engholm - trombone
- Rich Witteman, SJU '89 - trumpet
- Pat Thorn - trumpet
- Dale White - trumpet
- Erin Vor k- French horn
- Gretchen Vork - French horn
The phone in the Abbey vocation office rang. "Brother Bartholomew speaking.”
"Hey, Brother Bart, it's George Maurer!"
"Brother Maurer, God bless you, what can I do for you?"
"Well...who would I talk to to gain access to the roof of the Abbey Church to record the bells?"
"That would be me."
"Great! Um, do I need to be chaperoned by an old monk or something?"
"Only as long as you make it look like an accident when you shove him over the edge. These Abbey health care costs are killing us..."
Monastic humor!
In April, 2008, Ass't Coach Jim Gagliardi of the legendary St. John's University football team asked me to compose a rock anthem for them, which would play over the Clemens Stadium sound system when the Johnnies tore onto the field at home games. They wanted to punctuate the arrival of the team with something that would whip up the fans.
A rock anthem makes sense, as Wikipedia notes, the tying of performance of music to sporting events has long been a tradition ever since the ancient Greeks had music play a prominent role at Pan-Hellenic games, and in the Olympics.
I asked Jim what kind of theme the Johnnies were looking for, and his reply was “something like the Chicago Bulls song (Alan Parson's Project's Sirius), or the New England Patriots (Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train) or the Seattle Seahawks' Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve” (“It's a repetitive me-lo-deee.”) By the way, the Seattle Seahawks were 4-12 last season. I'm just sayin...rock anthems are supposed to help teams win, right?
“What we probably don't want,” said Gagliardi, “is something like the Minnesota Wild's The State of Hockey Anthem:”
We were raised
With the stick
And a pair of blades
On the ice we cut our teeth
We took our knocks
In the penalty box
Our mother was the referee
For a moment, I considered it...
We were raised
In the woods
on Johnnie bread
and 3.2 beer by the glass
We took no knocks
cause Gagliardi rocks
And we kicked some Tommie ass
Writing an industrial rock anthem was like trying to write simultaneously for ballet, the theater, and a movie soundtrack: I had to consider motion, distance, timing, mood, energy, history, consult the Rule of Benedict, and write for an audience from age 1-99. Easy? Not so easy! Johnnie Anthem took about 6 months to create.
I was going to need some big guns to make it happen, so I called one of my best friends to help co-write the Anthem, the talented Minneapolis native Brent Daniels (aka Free), who had spent a good number of years in L.A. writing extensively for TV shows such as "The Real World" and "Road Rules (MTV)," "La Femme Nikita (USA)," and for feature films such as Charlie's Angels, Scary Movie 2, 3000 Miles To Graceland, and Homegrown.
I spent the first few weeks in my studio on Nicollet Island fleshing out a road map, and then in June 2008 flew to Grants Pass, OR, to spend a week in Free's Dark Matters Studio to hash out the rest of it. (Up until then, I 'd never quite had a taste for tequila, but by the end of that week, I was golden.) We worked feverishly, non-stop, Brent pulled a few all- nighters, he got electronic drums programmed, we layed down synth bass lines, added rhythm guitars resonating with the right kind of dirt and noise, got the string section fleshed out, and even grew our beards out (which I blame on the tequila.)
It was a long, fun, stressful week, but by the time it was over, we had the beginnings of a rockin' song!
The next step was to line up a wall of brass to carry the main theme of the song. Since I wanted it to sound like Star Wars, I gathered 4 trombones (including my 12 year old niece, Anna), 3 trumpets, 2 French horns (and Danny Partridge in a pear tree) at Bobby Vee's Rock House Studios in downtown St. Joseph to record the main theme.
We had the ever talented Jeff Engholm at the helm, as our recording engineer:
and on trombone, along with Anna Maurer, Ken Vork, and Nick Syman:
The Power of Sauerkraut horn section poses after the deed is done!
A few days later, I listened to the amazing Paul "Stretch Rocker" Diethelm lay out rhythm guitar parts, with the help of St. John's Prep student Noah Kolb, son of my sophomore roomie, John Kolb '88. Then, he powered out an amazing lead guitar solo that launched the Johnnie Anthem into the realm of “jock rock!"
Then, with the aid of the internet, we dialed Free up from Dark Matters Studios via AIM video chat over my MacBook Pro, and he helped direct the rest of Stretch's lead guitar solo from his studio in Oregon. When that was done, I hopped on Paul's 1957 Hammond B3, laid down a rockin' organ solo. We were almost done!
The most difficult part of the song to actually figure out was the 20 seconds or so for the opening sequence for Johnnie Anthem. This intro needed to be choreographed carefully. We needed 20 seconds of set-up before the main theme hit, to get the team from Point A outside the athletic complex to Point B, the moment they charged onto the field at beginning of each game. To build some drama, we went to the archives of Johnnie network radio broadcasts and listened to dozens of some of the most infamous plays in Johnnie football history. We finally found announcer Mark Lewandowski's play by play of a key touchdown (accompanied by the frenzied roars of Johnnie fans) from the 2003 national championship against Mount Union, and decided to layer it in.
Not wanting to leave any monk unturned, a sample of monastic prayer from a 1957 midnight mass at the old Abbey church off of an old reel to reel tape from the archives was digitally cut up and layered in at the beginning of the Anthem. It sounds so fresh and recent, its hard to believe that it was recorded from the rickety old balcony overlooking the old Abbey church (now the Great Hall) in December of 1957.
But we were still missing something. We had techno bass lines. We had fans. We had brass. We had screaming rock guitars. And we had monks. But the Johnnie Anthem needed something else to capture the attention of every fan in the Clemens Stadium when the song played.
"So you need to record the bells for a project?" asked Br. Bart.
"Yes."
"Can't you just record them ringing while you’re on the ground, you know, from under the bell tower?"
"Nah," I lied, "we need to get up there. You know, get up close."
Silence. "Ok. Well, while you're up there, would you mind checking the roof for leaks?"
"Oh gladly, Brother."
"Bless you, Brother Maurer, and I do mean that...."
We did our best to not be disrespectful of carte blanche access to the monastic cloister just handed to us by the Abbey formation director. So, like any good Johnnie would do.....
...we snuck a girl in to the monastery (my 12 year old niece, Anna, accompanied by my camera-toting brother Patrick, SJU '89.)
Once inside, we headed up a dark interior ramp, and began the long ascent up a narrow, spiral staircase that climbed up past the immense abbey pipe organ pipes:
We soon found ourselves high above the sanctuary, stooping low through dim lit passageways as we lugged our recording gear, in search of a way up to the roof:
We found a rickety ladder that led through a trap door, and into the bright sunlight on the roof of the church:
where we started setting up recording gear:
We had a most spectacular view:
All of Collegeville was laid out before us in its summer glory; green fields dotted with lakes winding off into the low rise of the Avon hills, a view of Lake Sagatagan with tiny canoes on it. I was quite surprised I didn't see any lawn chairs on the roof, or even some broken golf tees ("hey, *Br. Aloisius, watch this one fly...aiming for the science center this time...keep an eye for the Abbot, will ya?”
We felt like Goonies.
When we were finished with the setup, I got on my cell to a monk who was patiently waiting for me at the controls for the bells in the innards of the church below us.
"Ring the first bell!" I intoned into the phone.
"First bell ringing, Br. Maurer."
After a moment of silence, the mechanism cradling the first bell cranked to life, and the smallest of the five bells slowly started swinging, building up speed, until the clapper inside made its first light contact with its polished inner interior. "Ding" went the bell, lightly, and for a moment, I thought "oh, this isn't going to be as thrilling as I thought it would be," but on the next stroke, there was a solid connection, and the bell named Trinity gave a sharp tenor peal that spread itself out over the lazy summer afternoon campus. Theology students, passing below on the college green were unaware of anything unusual, let alone 2 Johnnies, a hippie, and a girl hanging out on the roof of the Abbey church. We let Trinity ring for a good minute, Jeff all the while adjusting his recording levels, and then I spoke into the phone
"O.K., you can stop the first bell."
"Stopping the first bell." The mechanism slowly tempered it's movement, and the bell fell silent.
I stared at the next bell, a bigger one, nicknamed "the Virgin Mary." The virgin, petulant and silent, stared right back at me.
"Ok, ring the second bell!"
"Second bell ringing!"
We were going to be there for some time...
We saved the best for last. After *Brother Bell-Ringer had rung all four small bells (collectively named "Holy Trinity," "Blessed Virgin Mary," "Guardian Angels," and "Saint Benedict") we were left with one last bell, a gargantuan behemoth and center-piece known as "Saint John the Baptist". This monster weighed a mere 8,030 pounds without its clothes on.
Jeff repositioned the mic as close to the edge of the roof as he dared, while I stood and stared directly across the 30 or so feet at St. John the Baptist. The bell sat at eye-level, silent and puzzled why we would even dare interrupt its slumber. "Minions," it must have been thinking "I only ring for holy days and funerals. Keep this up, and I may be tolling for you."
My hands trembled as I got back on the phone with Br. Bell.
"Ring the biggest bell!" I whimpered.
"Not the biggest bell!" cried the monk, with mock monastic horror.
"Yes! Yes! Ring it, I say, ring it!!"
After a moment of silence, the mechanism rumbled to life. We were about to get baptized.
Did you ever see that scene from the first Back To the Future movie, where Michael J. Fox (as Ridgedale high school student Marty McFly) straps on his guitar, powers up a rack of Marshall amps, steps, goggled, in front of a ginormous speaker and plays one single chord on his guitar? The resulting sound wave from that chord blasts him clear off his feet and into the wall behind him. This is what the power of that first resounding clap from ole St. John the Baptist felt like, as its first sound wave pulsed through our bodies. This was better than any death tower thrill ride at Disney Land! It was so loud that farmers out in the fields as far away as Freeport could hear the sound over the sound of their John Deeres. This was like being directly in front of a pounding freight train, only without the accompanying pee stains. A total thrill. We let it ring for at least two minutes, although we felt like we could have let it ring forever. We now possessed the missing element for the Johnnie Anthem.
As St. John the Baptist slowly coasted back into slumber, we all turned to look at each other, like in that final scene of the disaster movie Twister, you know, where the sun is breaking through the clouds and lighting up the disheveled (and still living) wild-haired wide-eyed lead-characters who have just experienced nera death, and had survived. We had survived!
"Wow!' breathed my niece, reaching into a bag of cookies, "that was cool!"
"Yeah," I muttered, passing the cookies to my brother, "I don't think anything could top that."
"Except..." I heard my brother say.
We all turned and looked back at Patrick, who raised a cookie to his lips absently and, attempting a bite, missed the cookie altogether. Still, he continued gazing fixedly at the tower.
Then we all turned to each other.
"Jeff," I said "do you think we should..."
"Well, we are here, aren't we?" said Jeff, laughing.
I got back on the phone.
"Brother Bell Ringer? Ring all of 'em!" I barked, triumphantly.
A moment of silence.
And then, all five mechanisms started up. We plugged our ears.
All I could think over the ensuing cacophony was, "and people actually choose to go to **St. Thomas instead?"
*name changed to protect the not-so-innocent
**University of St Thomas is St. John's arch-rival and, notes Wikipedia, has a football team that has no anthem.....
