22. Went Looking for Warren Zevon's Los Angeles - Lucero
A few years ago, before I merged my practice with my business partners, I’d grown a little disillusioned with things.
We’d been up and running for a while now and we’d gotten over that first few years and built a reasonable business.
But it was still a slog, and in hindsight, I wasn’t really getting much meaning from my work. Which led to procrastination, dissatisfaction and frustration.
Which couldn’t continue – just the idea of maintaining that approach for 30 years or more is frightening – so at the start of 2015, my TGNW and I sat down and tried to work out if it was feasible for me to work 4 days a week.
It was – with some adjustments, like working longer on those days – so then we turned to what I’d do on the day I’d freed up.
We set some guidelines to help pick an option. It had to be:
- Local;
- Inexpensive;
- Completely removed from my day job;
- Something new;
- Productive.
It was a matter of choosing an activity that met our guidelines.
And one activity that I’d always been interested in – but intimidated by - was woodworking.
Every aspect of it fascinated and enthralled me – especially the smell of cut timber - however the precision and patience required always deserted me.
But, I wanted to get better at it, so that’s what I decided to do: I’d take a day off every week (Friday’s) to learn more about woodworking.
An added benefit of this was that I’d try to learn off the best craftsman I know – my Dad.
I don’t want to tell other people’s stories on this blog, but some background is necessary here.
My Dad is a cabinetmaker by trade, but over time he shifted across to drafting for a large kitchen company in Australia. He always remained ‘on the tools’ to some extent.
In the 90s, he and my mother decided to renovate our home. The fact that it’s still not quite finished is testament to the difficulty in self-managing a renovation – and to his fastidious perfectionism.
That perfectionism stems from the precision required in cabinetmaking – an error measured in millimetres can compound and result in a large piece of furniture not fitting on site, which is an expensive and time-consuming mistake.
It means that details – millimetres, clearances, timber types, grain direction, etc – are terribly important.
And it was this precision that I found so intimidating.
I could measure something twice and get three results. I’d get tangled in the specifics of task and over-think it so much that it’d result in errors on errors on errors.
The plans I was used to writing were theoretical, mathematical exercises where the challenge came in translating those numbers to somebody’s life.
The plans I’d watched him draw for years were millimetre-perfect representations of a physical space, where mistakes just didn’t happen.
So – who better to learn from?
I asked him, and we arranged the specifics of where, when, etc. And I rolled up to his place on the first day to find out what we were going to do.
I had pictures in my mind of getting straight into some sort of timber work, or maybe learning the finer points of tools I’d used my whole life (when your Dad’s doing the renovation, as any kid in the same situation will tell you, there’s always plenty of work to be done, so I was comfortable enough with power tools, hammer, nails, hand saw, etc.).
Instead, he took me through the intricacies of setting and sharpening a handsaw.
I won’t go into it – if you’re not interested in the hobby, it’s a particularly boring part of a dull activity – but I remember thinking it was kind of a weird place to start.
Of course, looking at it now, it was his way of reinforcing the importance of respecting your tools, of how you can salvage superior tools from years of mistreatment and of what patiently working on something can mean.
Then we went upstairs and had a long lunch.
We have always been close but didn’t always have time to talk. So that 90 minutes lunch was wonderful.
His kitchen table is next to a wide, sliding door and the sun shines through the tall garden just outside. We’re sitting there making sandwiches in clear, country air with this dappled light filling the kitchen
And so we went on.
I’d go to his place every Friday and learn something about woodworking. Then we’d go and have a long lunch and talk.
About everything.
Sitting there, in that light, eating, talking and learning was a really, really wonderful part of my life.
Those conversations led, indirectly, to this series too. They made me realise that I know very little of my parent’s lives and history; we don’t have those family stories that I’ve heard so many others have.
Which is one of my motivations for capturing our stories for my son, so he doesn’t have to wonder about us the way I wonder about my parents.
Over those months I began to feel a little more comfortable with the process, a little less intimidated.
We built a dovetailed keepsake box, a blackboard for my nieces and nephews, dovetailed storage trays, a large workbench and some chopping boards, cheese boards and workshop jigs.
I learnt a lot – so much – about timber, design, proportions, plans, patience, working methodically, safety and, most importantly, my father.
Towards the end of 2016, I’d started discussing merging my practice with my business partner’s.
It was an exciting development from a business perspective, but I was a little sad that it meant I’d have to start working five days a week again. (Little did I know that it was going to be six days for the first twelve months, but that’s a story for another day).
I’d been doing a lot of the finish work at home by then, taking that confidence from my ‘lessons’ and working on the projects between Friday’s.
I then had the bright idea of making some boxes of blocks for my nieces, nephews and the herd of children my friends had decided to form. I wanted them to have something permanent that they could maybe pass on to their kids; if the blocks survived the next twenty years.
And what better way to put these woodworking ‘skills’ to use.
We were also expecting, but for some idiotic reason I didn’t make one for us – something I’ll always regret.
My Dad and I finished the plan, collected the timber (second-hand floorboards this time), cleaned them up, ripped them down, cut them to length and worked on the joinery.
It was warm – November/December – so it was a pleasant way to spend a stack of hours, working in my covered-but-not-weathertight workshop, listening to music and podcasts.
One of my ‘discoveries’ during that period was a band out of Tennessee – Lucero. I would have listened to their entire back catalogue a few times that Spring.
Headphones in, sometimes with earmuffs over the top, while I routed the joinery or cut the ends or chiselled them square.
From memory there were eight boxes, made of Jarrah and Tasmanian Oak, each containing 15 pine blocks – five each of small, medium and large lengths.
Each of which had to have the corners broken on a sander, and the end corners rounded – to minimise the odds of splinters.
120 blocks. 480 lengths. 960 corners.
We then dyed them, using food dye, but the most laborious part was sanding them.
By god, the sanding.
But that kind of job can become meditative after a while. It was music on, sander on, and away we went.
And one song that I kept repeating during that job was Went Looking for Warren Zevon’s Los Angeles.
It’s a fantastic track, melancholy and calm, it captures the calm pressure of Los Angeles after hours, really after hours, when the city is taking a breath before the next day of hectic frenzy.
It’s a fun one to sing along to as well. Particularly because his is one of the few voices I can passably impersonate without too much effort.
It became a real favourite, that track.
So on it went.
Play, sand, sand, sand, corner, corner, repeat, sand, sand, sand, corner, corner, repeat.
For a few, dust-filled, days.
But I got all of those boxes finished, got all of the blocks sanded and dyed.
They ended up weighing a tonne, so hauling them to our family Christmas was interesting.
The kids didn’t really get the meaning in the boxes – they’re pretty boring in a time of iPads and PlayStations – but their parents did.
I’ve received photos and videos over the years since, of the kids playing with them, which is overwhelmingly sweet.
But, thanks to work, business, career and that whole thing, those were the last few Friday’s that we’d be work together.
And that was that, really.
I still work on projects but mainly restoring old, beaten up pieces of hardwood furniture. It’s easier and less time-intensive than building new stuff, with a disproportionate level of satisfaction.
My Dad and I still talk projects and the nitty-gritty details of joints and tools.
We’re planning a cubby for my son, which I’m hoping we can get built over this coming Christmas break. I want to try making a frame-and-panel door for it – but we’ll see where time and patience gets us on that one.
I’m no longer intimidated by a tape measure and can draw up a half-decent design plan.
I miss it – a lot. Every part of it, actually.
From drawing the design to sharpening the tools to running the power tools to putting band-aids on the cuts I always get to sanding it all down to sweeping up the dust at the end of the day.
But every time I hear this song – which is weirdly often – I’m reminded of that time.
That time where I was able to work with my Dad and learn a lot about something I only ever knew a little about.
It reminds me of that summer working on those toys for a group of kids I hadn’t met yet.
And it takes me back to those smells, of cut timber and sanding pine.
