The doctor-patient relationship is a special, intimate and complex one and though I do not know what you talk to your doctor about, I know that when schoolteacher Matt Baron first visited dermatologist Dr. Meyer Horn they talked about music.
“I hadn’t been playing much,” said Horn, who is also a drummer. “I was eager to find a local project that involved original, independent music. I wanted to be part of a creative process.”
Said Baron, who is also a guitarist, singer and songwriter, “We found ourselves on the same musical page, knew a lot of the same people. We almost always talked music when I came in for an appointment. We hit it off musically and eventually decided to get together one weekend and play music for fun.”
It was fun and so they met and played again and again and will be playing with cellist-social worker Teddy Rankin-Parker and singer-bass player-delivery service manager Nick Harris in a new band called Young Man in a Hurry, Saturday night at Schubas.
The band’s name was inspired by the title of a biography of William Rainey Harper, who was the first president of the University of Chicago. It is a book that Baron found when he moved into a new apartment three years ago. “Those words just hit me between the eyes,” he said. He thought it might make a good name for a band and so will that band be making its third public performance, having debuted at the Hideout in September and played the Hungry Brain in November.
“We had a lot of friends in the audience,” Horn said. “But it was such a joy to be on stage and I think we made some good music and new fans who weren’t family members.”
Horn is originally from Memphis and has been playing music since his parents kindly allowed him to start drumming at nine. The reason for this parental indulgence becomes clear when he tells you that his mother (Janis) played violin and piano and his father (Howard) was a doctor who, expressing his own musical past, often referred to his frequent professional lectures as ‘gigs’.”
Horn went to school and played music in many parts of the country before coming to Chicago for his internship in 1999. He met and married another doctor named Keren and together they started their practice (chicagoderm1765.com) and a family, which now includes three daughters (teenager Gefen and younger twins Harper and Libi) He never gave up music, playing when able in a number of bands and practicing diligently and enjoyably.
He and some pals had formed a band and made a demo CD in 1995 in Los Angeles. Nothing much came of that but nearly a decade later they reunited for 2004’s “Sam Winch: The Lullabadeer.” It got great reviews. One of its songs, “I Got Some Moves,” became part of the soundtrack for TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” The band played a few shows around town. A second CD was planned but life and work got in the way.
“Still, no regrets,” said Horn. “That was a wonderful musical experience for me.”
Baron’s father Jack was playing the saxophone in a 1970s road company production of “Grease” and moonlighting at a Rush Street club he met a woman named Rhonda. He fell in love, decided to stay, marry and began domestic life in Skokie as a music teacher and father.
Matt Baron came to music through the guitar given him by his parents when he was six. By seventh grade, he was writing songs and has ever since. He went to college and worked, soul-crushingly but beneficially he will tell you, in sales for some years before deciding to become a teacher in 2010. Teaching English as Second Language and Spanish he began brightening CPS classes with music, performing his original songs written to embellish teachers’ lesson plans and meet state requirements for language arts.
This grew into Future Hits (futurehits.org), a band that uses music for the academic-social-emotional benefit of students. With Emma Hospelhorn, Ben Sutherland and Nick Kabat, the band has released three albums, performed in hundreds of classrooms here, across the United States and as far afield as China and the Galapagos Islands. It does workshops and makes CDs (three and counting) and there is also a 2017 book, “Songs for Learning! Playbook.” And a series of live public shows for what the Chicago Reader has called an “educational rock powerhouse” — afternoon performances on Jan. 27 at Beat Kitchen and Feb. 2 at the Hideout.
“With all we are doing, time is very valuable and when Meyer and I started playing together, fun was the goal, no great ambitions,” said Baron. “But the more we played it was obvious we were going someplace musically and so we decided to get Nick and Teddy and keep going.”
Working with and refining and embellishing Baron’s original tunes, the band quickly decided that it needed to record. “Meyer was the spark for that,” says Baron. It did so in June at VSOP Studios in West Town. That so-be-be-released album is titled “Jarvis,” was produced by Brian Deck and features a large number of guest musicians, including Matt’s father Jack.
In talking to the band’s busy founding members one night at the close of last year at an Old Town tavern, they were not inclined to make any 2019 predictions.
“We are having a great time,” said Baron.
“What we are doing now really serves my artistic concept,” said Horn.
They were passionate about their music but not pragmatic. They are well aware of the increasingly precarious nature of the music business. So of-the-moment satisfied were they that I almost expected one of them to echo something William Rainey Harper, that bygone “young man in a hurry,” once said: “Set your sights not just on the next few weeks … set your sights on the years ahead — because our vision will look that far ahead.”
Instead, Baron smiled and said, “2019? Well, I did just get engaged so maybe a wedding? Her name’s Whitney.”
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
@rickkogan
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