Revisiting Roxy's Waltz
From 2012-2018, I built ukuleles for Mya-Moe. The owners of the company, Gordon and Char Mayer, were the other luthiers. We had Ben Bonham and Kerry Williams doing rough milling and making parts, jigs and templates. Nicole and Ben’s wife Heather helped out as well. The last member of the staff was the Mayer’s dog Roxy, a Vizsla and Rhodesian Ridgeback mix who was a great companion.
Our shop schedules were a little out of the ordinary. Gordon and Char got up really early and did their shop work before I got there, saving all the book keeping, emails, website work and phone calls for the “business hours.” I worked four days a week, usually 8-6. I often had my whole shop day alone, with only occasional time with 2-3 of us in the shop. Sometimes when they would let Roxy out of the house, I would see her trot the 100 or so yards to the shop around the little valley in between. She would scratch on the door to be let in and then settle under my workbench or in a patch of sun to take a snooze. The only thing that would wake her up or startle her was when you sprayed the air compressor. I would say out loud, “here’s a little squirt Roo,” which was enough warning so she wasn’t startled by the noise.
When Henry was a newborn, Nicole would sometimes come up to the Mayer’s with me, spending the day in the house while I got my shop work done. Gordon, Char and Roxy were really sweet with little Henry and it helped Nicole feel less isolated while we were in the sleep deprived newborn parent stage. Here she is keeping watch:
(Oh wow, I forgot about that little swing. There was a stretch where we traveled so much to play music, that Henry would only sleep in the swing. I remember trying to change the batteries in the middle of the night when we were staying at luthier Tony Graziano’s house in Santa Cruz. He cried so loud that I’m sure he woke up the whole block.)
One day I was playing an instrument that I just strung up when a little waltz started to come out of my hands. I wrote the whole piece and notated it in about a half hour. Looking around for inspiration on what to title it, I saw Roxy watching me from under the workbench and decided to call it Roxy’s Waltz. It is actually a duet, so Nicole and I put it into our set right away. After Nicole notated it in her fine hand, we started teaching it at music camps and posted the tab on the Mya-Moe website. In the almost 10 years since, many groups have learned it and performed it, often posting their versions on YouTube. It has proved popular for teachers to use in their classes and private lessons, giving folks their first experiences playing finger style and as an ensemble. It has done what everyone hopes their art/craft can do: live on outside of them, spreading organically and enriching people’s lives.
Here is the tab, if you have never learned it:
