Hi everyone!

Here is your weekly post about The Ties we’ve Tied:

BILL’S NOTE:

After Spencer was “invited” not to return to Interlochen for the second semester of his sophomore year, he enrolled in Lahser High School and was reunited with many old friends.
However, Spencer’s life gained more meaning after he met the guys who’d form “Sheer Funk & Misery” – Spencer’s first band.
Peter Klein is a musician and the father of Sheer Funk’s bass player, Alex, and shared his memory for the email book:

PETER KLEIN:

I remember first meeting Spencer at a Lahser High School talent show that took place his senior year. My son Alex was playing bass at the time with Pierce Codina and Ryan Hagelman. There was not a regular singer in their band but I know they were looking for a front man. This event turned out to be the catalyst for Sheer Funk and Misery. I had the opportunity to see Spencer perform for the first time at this event; his was an acoustic solo act. I thought at the time this kid was different. He seemed beyond his years, he had a creative edge and he came off as very self-confident.

Well the rest of the story is history. The boys really were looking for a singer to round out their musical efforts and Spencer was a great find for them. I don’t know what exactly the deal was but it seemed to be an audition of sorts that night for both of them. I was glad to see the guys made an impact on each other. The audience really loved both acts.
In the months that followed the talent show, SF&M would rehearse in my basement often. During the next year or so they got increasingly better and more creative in their effort to carve out a musical style. I would meander down in the basement, to listen and observe the jam sessions and practice. Occasionally I would offer advice. I don’t know if it was ever really appreciated, being that I was the bass player’s dad and several generations out of their league as far as hipness. They did have a definite style and personality that was greatly due to this artsy and talented singer, Spencer.

Over the next couple of months I witnessed a real bonding taking place and the band kind of moved as a group. I loved that particularly for my son Alex. I thought that this kind of bonding friendship was a once in a lifetime experience. It was great.

SF&M decided to record some of their work at a professional recording studio as the result of Karen Hagelman’s prompting. I thought well, that’s cool, but I didn’t believe at the time anything amazing was going to come of it, after all these we scrubby faced kids just learning to make music. Well I have been wrong about some thing in my life and this was certainly one. Not only did the recording come off as impressively tight and creative, but the Morning Hours CD was well liked by a good many friends who knew nothing of their band project. I remember having the boys over for a band photo session at a studio where I was shooting a commercial. These guys were into it. They posed and strutted for the camera just like pros. I didn’t need to do much directing, they each had something in mind for their image. I had a great time doing these portraits which eventually ended up inside their Morning Hours CD cover.

I was even more impressed the day Spencer and the guys set up on stage at the Dream Cruise one day in August. They were honored, thanks to Cisco Codina, who at the time was a marketing director with Ford and in charge of the sponsored music event that day.

SF&M was to perform on the same stage as Mitch Ryder and his band. I brought my camcorder and recorded the entire event that sunny August morning. It was again amazing to see Spencer the lead singer play to a sparse crowd of mostly friends and family, with all the confidence and drama of a real rock star vocalist. You couldn’t help but fixate on the singer in SF & M because he had the juice and the charisma beyond his years.
I can’t remember how long after this concert it was that the band eventually went separate ways. I had heard that it was time for Spencer to follow his dream in NYC after graduation. It was going to be impossible for the band to find his replacement. I don’t know that it ever went very far. I remember that Alex was doing some guitar playing and lead vocals with a different mix of SF&M for a while. It really never was quite the same and it made me a little sad. I knew however that Spencer was really on to bigger and better things.

I only saw Spencer one more time after he left for NYC. He came to the house with a girl friend to visit with Alex. He looked very different to me. He had closely cropped hair and he seemed more settled. He was extremely polite and soft spoken when he came to visit. I thought, wow Spencer has really changed. He seemed really happy.

I will always have a clear picture of him on stage at a Woodward Dream Cruise event one sunny August morning, wind blowing his long hair over his eyes and his voice carrying impressively over the microphone and into our hearts.

SF&M bassist Alex Klein (Peter Klein’s son) shares some insight into the “mischievous” Spencer:

My name is Alex Klein and I played bass in a band with Spencer in high school called Sheer Funk and Misery. One of my favorite stories about Spence was from the group’s first trip to Godrich.
It was late in the summer of 2002 and the four of us planned to go up to the Whalen’s cottage in Canada for a weekend. I volunteered to drive for the trip because I had the biggest car and I knew where we were going. A few months before the trip a friend of mine was expelled from U of D Jesuit for taking pot across the border to Canada for a school retreat. The kid was the school’s quarterback so the administration made an example of him to try to scare kids away from trouble with drugs and alcohol. My girlfriend at the time lived in Canada as well, so if we ran into any trouble at the border that would have made my life very difficult.
I don’t think it’s a secret that Spence enjoyed “herbal supplements”, and I was absolutely paranoid that Spence would bring pot with him for the trip. So for two weeks before we left I begged Spence not to bring pot with him when we left, and every time he would reply, “You won’t know if I have weed with me ‘til we get there.” I figured he was just messing with me so I didn’t really do anything about it. So when it was time to leave we all piled our stuff into my car and Spence jumped shotgun with a flashlight that didn’t work in hand. While we were driving I again asked Spence if he brought pot with him and again he replied, “You won’t know if I have weed with me ‘til we get there.” With the border and hour away, I slammed on the breaks, pulled the car over, and started yelling at Spence until he finally assured me that he didn’t bring any pot with him.
We finally arrived at the border at the Blue Water Bridge and, big surprise, the border patrol pulled our car of four 16-year old boys over for a “random” search. Again I talked to Spence, and again he assured me that he didn’t bring any weed with him. We pulled into the appropriate space, stepped out of the car, and the officers began searching my car. They went through all of our bags, all of the car’s compartments, and they picked up Spence’s flashlight from under the seat. They tried to turn the flashlight on with no success, shook it, and then dropped back in the car and sent us on our way.
About a mile from the border Spence picked up his flashlight opened up the cap and, wouldn’t you know it, pulled out a bag of weed. I was so pissed that I punched Spence in the arm and nearly drove off the road in the process. I was so angry I didn’t know what to do with myself, but at the same time I kind of expected it of him. We had so much fun on that car ride and on that trip that I got over the incident maybe twenty minutes later. That trip is still one of my fondest memories from that period of my life, and this story still makes me laugh even though it wasn’t very funny to me at the time.
Spence was always testing limitations, and that was the fun of hanging out with him. No matter how angry he would make people, they would always have a few laughs afterwards and forget why they were ever mad at him. He always had a bizarre positive energy about him that sometimes led to trouble but always led to a good time. It’s a shame his life was cut so short, but I feel privileged to have known Spence during his short but dynamic life.

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This entry was posted by Angie on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at %I:%M %p and is filed under The Ties We've Tied. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.