Kenny Budowsky

Before we begin, I must emphasize that this is the most special of issues and will surely remain to be the feature I hold closest to my heart. It is always an honor to be trusted to tell a piece of someones story but it is indescribable to tell a piece of someone's story who opened the door for mine to exist. Without a father I of course wouldn't have my life, but without MY father; my life would not be so rich with love, creativity, curiosity, art, and of course, music.

What I always knew to be true is that Kenny Budowsky and music are two inseparable things. My dad was always in a band, was always playing guitar and singing for us, playing piano in the foyer as he waited for us to be ready to go somewhere, and was writing songs about my sister and I, my mother, even our dogs; he would play them for us while we cooked dinner or sat outside by the fire. Music was always around. When my sister and I were toddlers we would sit on his lap and watch the music videos for The Beatles 'Paperback Writer' and Guided by Voices' 'Glad Girls' over and over, and every Sunday we would make breakfast and listen to Joe Johnson's Beatle Brunch radio. In short, by the time we were conscious enough to retain information, my sister and I had a vast musical knowledge heavily thanks to my father. There is so much more I could say on the matter, but I will spare you and get on with what I came here to do. Join me on this deep dive into one of the coolest, most prolific and talented people I know, the man who gave me the music, my father, Kenny Budowsky.

Every artist can recall the moment their eyes widened and their pupils dilated and they fully saw and understood their great creative love.  I asked my Dad about that moment and he immediately traced back to was five and got his tonsils removed. Not exactly to his moment of revelation, but to his first moment of music ownership, a pivotal moment in the life of a music lover. In his recovery, he was gifted a Show N' Tell record player; this essentially was a player with a film strip viewer, so you could play a record and put in a film strip which would move upwards and create this sort of audio/visual experience. He would listen to the first record he owned, 'Catch Us If You Can' by the Dave Clark Five on his Show N' Tell and sometimes my Grandparents would let him play it on their nicer family record player; he remarked that he always loved that song.

However, the eye widening, transformative moment for my father was a bit later in 1969. He was in the car on the way home with his parents and a song came on the radio, and he was "taken by it", moved for the first time by music, the song was "Make Me Smile" by Chicago. Chicago II was the first record he then purchased on his own. The way he speaks about that album and about that memory is with endearment and transcendent adoration. He told me, smiling, that he would put it on the record player in the room at my grandparents house we all know as "the black and white room" (but really its basically a media room), and he would conduct the band and sit with this idea that somehow there might be a formula to writing a song. From there, his love began. 

That same year, aged 9, he began to take piano lessons, but didn't keep up with practice and it was soon noted by his teacher that he wasn't interested in classical music, so he started learning popular music and chord theory. But, what he really wanted to play was the drums. He heard 'Wipeout' by The Surfaris and that was it for him. Always wanting to play, but without a kit, my Dad would play with his hands wherever and whenever he could. A glorious and momentous moment of his life came when he was on a trip to see family friends, their son had a kit, and my Dad played drums for the first time when he was 10; I can only imagine the way he lit up. "I didn't know what I was doing but I remember it was like the coolest thing ever".

My father then jumped ahead a few years in his tale to when he was 12, the teenage son of a woman my grandmother was in a charity event with would come over with his old drum set to rehearse and would let my Dad play. He remarked "I didn't know what I was doing but I was having fun" and he was soon allowed to borrow the kit. My father had a drum set in his own room for the first time, he didn't know how to set it up, but it mattered little to him, he would play along to records, mostly of course, to Chicago. Lessons began soon after.

Around the same time, his best friend who lived next door began taking guitar lessons, he taught my dad a few chords, didn't end up playing much and gave the guitar to my dad. He learned more chords when his sister then started taking lessons. Throughout the entirety of our interview, my Dad had a guitar sat in his lap and when I think of my Dad, a guitar is almost an extension of him, but at the time he said, he hadn't developed an affection for guitar as he has now until later in life. That seed was planted, but drums were still everything.

In the fashion of the musically obsessed and entranced, my Dad would come home from school throughout middle and high school and put on his headphones and play along to rock songs, his teachers being Danny Seraphine of Chicago, Sib Hashian of Boston, and Michael Shrieve of Santana. With a smile and soft affection, he told me that despite the fact that he would practice for hours at a time, my grandmother and grandfather never complained. 

He went on to tell me a story about one of the first gigs he had. He was 15 and through his drum teacher, was hired to play alongside a New Year's Eve band on South Beach for the old age hotels. Back in 1975, my Dad explained, "all those art deco hotels were full of old retiries, God's waiting room". The gig was alongside an 80 year piano player and 84 saxophone player. He made 25 bucks. His parents drove him down and he played all night for the retiries. He said they would never tell him what the song was, and wouldn't even say what the beat was, he would just figure it once the other players had started. I was shocked, but he said there was a fun in it and "a Jazz or Bosso Nova beat would work for most part". At 12 o'clock they played 'Auld Leng Syne' and the night ended and everyone went to sleep. The next year he was hired again and was promised a raise that he didn't receive so when they played 'Auld Leng Syne' at the end of the night, he used his mallets to piss off the promoter who didn't give him his raise.  In a very Miami Beach fashion, an old Jewish man with a Yiddish accent came up to my father and remarked to him "You know, I never heard it played like that before." My Dad successfully pissed off the promoter and naturally didn't play New Years show for old Miami Beach retiries again.

On two occasions he played in cafes with a sax and trumpet player which my Dad said was "bizarre", just sax, trumpet, and drums. They played for tips and he laughed and told me that they made a dollar and a quarter in 3 or 4 hours so their audience didn't seem to be fond of it but nonetheless, it was still cool as ever.

For a drummer, it is much more of an ordeal to bringing your instrument along with you than packing up a keyboard and guitar and taking that off to your next destination (though there is a hassle to that in itself). My father adapted by bringing a rubber mat that he cut in half so it was small enough to transport onto which he drew circles with writing in the center saying "Tom", "Snare", "Kick", etc. To pair with his rubber mat drum set up, he brought cassette tapes of Chicago and a tape recorder to plug his headphones into so he could still play along and practice without a kit. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

My father then revealed a tale I only wish I could claim as my own for the sheer legendary nature of it. He went to a party and after drinking beer from a 32oz glass prune juice bottle he was asked to play on a drum set that was there, so naturally he said, "put on Chicago", their second record was put on and he played so hard, that his hands blistered and popped and there was blood all over the sticks. 

At another party, a band was playing and a friend of my dad's noticed there wasn't a drummer and told him to go up and ask if he could play. He went up to the state and simply said "hey I play drums, do you guys need a drummer" and they said "Yeah, sure". He sat down and just started playing and it was "phenomenal", he said, "it was this great dream, all of a sudden I'm a rockstar, you know?". 

My Dad went home and told my grandparents that he was in a band and he wanted to bring his drums to school and he got his gold/orange sparkle kit shipped up to him and he played that for a school year. When he went home for the summer, his grandmother gave him money to buy a new kit which was a black Pearl brand kit (which has now wonderfully been passed down to me).

My father was now in his first of many bands, this first one being called "The End" which then, in a classic and minorly dramatic manner, transformed into Oz when my Dad's bandmates voted to kick out a member.  While The End performed original songs, Oz was a cover band. They played for peanuts and would put together renditions of songs that bordered between normal and funny. The year ended with a reunion of The End, Oz opened and they then reunited as The End. My dad recalled that people were ecstatic and it was "phenomenal".

The following year my dad got into a band with a guy who lived in the town he went to school who was gigging a lot, they would practice at his place so my dad had left his drums there. He got there one day and there was tape on his symbols. The conversation went as follows:

Kenny: "What's that?"

Band Guy: "I taped your symbols, that's the sound I want"

Kenny: "Those are my symbols man, you didn't ask me or anything"

In my dad's words, "It didn't last much longer than that". PSA: don't put tape on someone else's drum set; it never came off.

A while went by before my dad found himself in another band. Eventually he was asked to be in a band called Those Victims of Entropy as a percussionist (as they already had the "best drummer on campus" as their drummer). My dad played guitar, drums, and did background vocals on a few songs as well. He remembered at the end of their senior year, they were opening for this national act coming through and they covered "The Night Before" by The Beatles and he sang background vocals and played tambourine. During the instrumental part, he jumped off the stage, ran into the crowd, danced with his then girlfriend, and ran back on stage to finish the song. A very rock n' roll moment I must say.

The final band of his college years was a band called Ska-Ta. My father's great friend Steve knew more about music than anyone he knew and had always wanted to be in a band, so they put together a ska band because at the time, ska was huge.  The group was comprised of good friends of his (Steve and Randy), some roommates, a girl named Puff, a bass player they knew, a saxophonist biology major,  and a keyboardist that went to high school with my dad. Their big gig was the night after finals for the seniors. It went so well that they got an encore but they only had so many songs prepared, my Dad laughed, "so we played songs again, we had nothing else to do". A recording of this performance is somewhere and I am determined to see it. Displaying plainly the everlasting nature of a band, Ska-Ta made a reappearance at Steve's bachelor party, his best man organized everyone and they recreated the gig in a studio to surprise Steve. Immediately he knew what was going on and it was incredible. My Dad had a glimmer to him when he told me that part of the story.

After winding through the many lives that were my dad's college bands he ended with stating "college was really the first time I was really ever in bands" and I hadn't truly realized how many musical ventures my father had been involved in and that's just the beginning.

When my dad graduated college and went on to medical school, he of course found himself in a band. His freshman year he put together "Frank Netter and The Ciba Collection" inspired by medical artist Frank Netter and the Ciba Collection of medical illustrations. My father assumed the role of Frank Netter and the Ciba Collection was the band (which included his younger brother on the drums). They did a song they all wrote together called 'Do the 8' that became their medical school fight song of sorts. It was a bluesey song that consisted of all these words ending in -ate that applied to medical school: masticate, palpate, micturate, and littered in others, frustrate, I wanna date, and the hook line was "you gotta learn to do the 8".  

I must end this section by discussing my Dad's friend Steve a bit more. My Dad and Steve are friends to this day, and with the utmost sincerity and glint in his eye, my father shared with me that Steve "totally changed [his] life". Steve introduced my Dad to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, all these massively incredible bands by Dad had never indulged in before that became staples in his life. He remembered and told me of the vital night where he heard two songs that "shocked" him: 'Dear Prudence' by The Beatles and 'Can't You Hear Me Knockin'' by The Stones; that night started him thinking totally different about music.

After winding through the many lives that were my dad's college bands he ended by stating "college was really the first time I was really ever in bands" and I hadn't truly realized how many musical ventures my father had been involved in and that's just the beginning.

Something to consider, through all those bands, my father was studying to go to medical school and was in medical school; a truly prolific balance my dad has kept up with in different ways throughout his life. After graduating from medical school, my Dad went to do surgery in Chicago for residency and for the first time felt like something was just so beyond him so he left and moved to New York to explore music and to answer the question of "could he?" something he really never thought of as a possibility but he had always loved music and what else was he to do?  He said it was all of "sobering, liberating, and humiliating all at the same time" but to me its of the most inspired and inspiring things someone could do.

My Dad found himself in New York in 1987 and once again, in a number of bands throughout his time there. There was Conformerama (a band with a friend of his he is friends with to this day), The Westies (he tells me that there was little space to rehearse so he played drums on someones bed and the lead guy would get annoyed with the way he played but what was he to do? he was playing on a bed), and then he answered an ad and joined a band called The Disposable God Squad. I remarked to him at this point in the interview that he was in a shit ton of bands, and in a very matter of fact sort of way he just replied with, "yeah", like why wouldn't he be?

The Disposable God Squad was a band that I became familiar with throughout childhood, especially one song that was on many of my Dad's playlist and it took me years to realize that it not some famous from the past, but a song recorded by my Dad's band. It was always famous to us.

With The Disposable God Squad, he recorded an album and played a number of gigs including at the iconic and sadly now closed CBGB Club in New York City.

Eventually, my Dad found his way back to the medical field and is now a Doctor, but his time in New York was formative and a symbol of my Dad's ability to listen to himself. Just as Frank Netter was, my Dad is a man of the arts and the sciences.

In the time I've known my Dad, he not shockingly, was always in a band as long as I can remember. He plays now with one of his best friends Pete, and his brother, my Uncle Rob. Their band has taken many forms and shapes, The Impediments, The 33 & 1/3s, and are now The Done.  Rock n' Roll nights were a staple event of the week, most Thursdays they would all get together at my Dad's home studio and play music for hours.

They play shows around town, have accumulated local fans, and dish out some truly rocking performances. I have had the privilege to join them on stage a few times which make for some of my most fun performances, just knowing I can look to my right or left and my Dad is there doing what he loves while I do what I love; a rare and marvelous gift. Last time I played with The Done, my Dad and I played a song we wrote together, 'Back To You'; a magical and cherished memory I get to hold forever.

His years in this band brought forward a newness to his musical experience as well. I was surprised to hear that he never quite saw himself as a songwriter, as I have always seen him that way and he has such an understanding and sense surrounding a good song and good words. The Done and the many forms it took brought about a drive for my Dad to tap into the writer that he is beyond what he had thought of himself.

The writer in me strives to know "the writer" in others. I have always seen my father as a writer, he has a beautiful way with the words he writes and always has, he writes poems, songs, even his cards and texts he sends are wonderful.

Growing up, my Dad always liked to write and he was quite skilled at it, at one point having a teacher tell him she had "nothing she could teach him more about writing"; my dad laughed and remarked "that's great to hear but it's terrible to hear if you're a kid".He liked to write books and stories. When he was 14, for a school project he wrote a 49 page book called 'Til Death Do Us Part' about a man ridden with greed during the Alaskan gold rush to the point where it leads to his own death inspired by my dad having read a book by Jack London. He added that my grandmother typed all 49 pages on a manual typewriter a night or two before it was due because my father had only hand written it at that point. In high school, he wrote for the school paper, at one point was the editor of the creative writing magazine at school. He recalls an editorial piece he wrote questioning why men are conditioned to not show affection to one another.  He also wrote poetry but never thought of himself as one (though I believe now he is rightfully thinking himself a poet).

As I touched on earlier, my Dad revealed to me that "songwriter" it is a relatively new identifier he has for himself which was shocking to me and I needed to know more of that. He told me that when he was in college, he wrote his first song with a kid on his floor called 'Goin' Home' he wrote the guitar part and helped with the lyrics and sang the song with his band:

"There are times in my life when pressure is just too great, it won't abate

Perspective is clouded by the oncoming haze

My brain is phased

As I sift deep inside looking for the clue to end imprisonment

I find that the key to the cell to set me free is with you

I'm coming through

I'm goin' home"

He recited the words and started strumming some chords on his guitar that he was sitting with in his lap during our interview, "it was in a 1-2-4 progression... one of my favorite progressions, it's so uplifting." He said that song was the first time he thought about writing songs. He tried his hand throughout the years but never saw himself as one, saying he tried to be to clever at times, "now" he says "I like to use less."

He wrote poetry too but never saw himself as a poet. For someone who didn't think themselves a songwriter, a poet, or a writer, my father sure wrote a lot. But that just goes to show moreoever his humbleness and greatness.

Later on, he said is when he really began to see himself as a writer truly. After a change in their band, he and his brother decided that they should start writing their own songs. For anyone who knows The Done, they have great songs. One that we talked about was a song my Dad wrote called 'Diet Coke', a smashing ode to one of his favorite drinks and a song that has accumulated fans of it's own.

During the pandemic however, my Dad would sit outside with himself and his guitar almost every day and play and write; then, he said is when it really took off for him and he saw himself as a writer.

My Dad and I have a lot of discussion about music and songwriting (this is only the first documented conversation of that nature) and what it means and feels to be a part of it. A common topic is the feeling of looking around and comparing yourself to your peers and heroes and we always land on the same sentiment worded perfectly by my Dad during our interview, "I'm the only one of me for better or for worse" (I must say for better). 

The last thing I wanted to know to tie up this extensive interview with some sort of bow is what creativity means to my dad. The first thing he said was "something I could offer my daughters" and that he deeply did along with my mother.

On the matter he said, "Life is life, but... art is life. I do what I do, I'm a physician but I have the soul of an artist, the soul of somebody who somehow just wants to express himself. And it's weird, certainly I would love to express myself to the adulation of thousands of people all at the same time but I'm really happy now with one person in the audience and that's me. It's meditative, at the end of the day coming out here and playing, it's just centering and I feel like it just makes life beautiful."  He goes on to say that with paintings, sculpture, music, dance, all kinds of art, there is something transcendant.

When I asked about any closing remarks,  and with a deep love and appreciation in his voice, this is what my Dad had to say

"I love that fact that fathers and their kids have things to share, and I love to share music with you guys because when you were little I would introduce you to what I love, and now you introduce me to what you love and I have all these new loves. I just think it's wonderful and amazing. What other gift is there than that. That's what so important about it is that it's this language."

We then pattered on some more, talking about the greatness of a mixtape in the way that it is like a letter to someone, something my Dad is well versed in having made many for my mother and my sister and I through the years. "It's such a great way to share music and send a love note", he said.

Favorite Song - 'Rain' (The Beatles)

Favorite Artist - The Bealtes

Favorite Albums - Abbey Road (The Beatles), Ambulance LTD (Ambulance LTD), Chicago II (Chicago), The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Jimi Hendrix), and Give Em Enough Rope (The Clash)

I can't even begin to say everything I would want to, everything I would need to, but I will try. Thank you to my Dad, a true legend in my eyes, thoughtful and full-hearted in everything you do, your story and stories inspires me to no end. Talking to you, working with you, playing music with you, and being your kid is of the most incredible things to happen in the world.  Conversations with you are one of my favorite things and this one was of the most memorable and special. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are truly my favorite Rock Star.