Second Line

[August 29th, 2007]

As New Orleans marks the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s Category 3 landfall on Aug. 29, native Oregonian Peter Spring, a musician and piano tuner, remains in the still-mending city on his own mission: helping the city that gave the world jazz recover its cherished musical heritage.

“Two years ago I was watching all the Katrina coverage on TV and knew another family coming down to do construction for the relief effort,” says Spring, who is from Ashland. “I thought I’d join them, then thought about what I could offer with my own special skills and tools.”

Now living by the Mississippi River in a warehouse that he turned into a workshop and performance space, Spring, 57, has donated hundreds of musical instruments to musicians, schools and churches in New Orleans, while teaching a new generation of artists how to play. He’s been doing it since October 2005. And in 2006, Spring’s efforts won him a “Newsmaker of the Year” award from Portland’s Royal Rosarians, a civic group that gives the title to “local people who have performed exceptional acts of heroism and benevolence without regard for personal safety, public recognition, or economic gain.”

His mission is personal. In 2002, Spring’s 22-year-old son, Steven, a talented musician in his own right, died of a rare form of bone cancer. “The most amazing thing about my son is that not once through all the pain of his cancer did he complain or waste any time,” Spring says. “He just played as hard as he could right up to the end. That’s what I had to live up to.”

Spring’s daughter Amanda is a drummer and singer with Portland indie-pop band Point Juncture, WA. In 2006, she accepted the Rosarian award for her father, who was unable to return to Oregon. “My dad is one of the greatest teachers I know—young musicians in Louisiana have gained a lot, and I know my dad truly loves what he’s doing,” she says.

Crushed by the loss of his son three years earlier, Spring was adrift when the floodwaters of Katrina began washing over the birthplace of jazz. Inspired to help, he founded the nonprofit Steven Spring Foundation, which he named after his son. Well connected in Ashland, Spring held a fundraiser in his hometown and began collecting instruments. By the end of September 2005 he had collected over 60 instruments—from pianos to flutes—loaded them all in a trailer, and started his first 2,800-mile road trip to Louisiana.

“I feel a huge debt to this city—particularly the African-American people—for inventing jazz, which I think is the best thing that’s come out of America,” says Spring, who plans to stay in the city for three more years. “I have absolutely no doubt that I am in the right place doing the right thing.”

Spring arrived in New Orleans soon after the city reopened, at a time when most of New Orleans remained uninhabitable. On his first night, Spring repaired the piano at Donna’s Bar and Grill, a well-known jazz club on Rampart Street that had flooded after the hurricane. The next day he joined New Orleans’ first post-Katrina second line parade on Bourbon Street, marking the passing of the storm and the start of the city’s rebirth. “At every point after deciding to do this, fortuitous things have happened that make it seem like its all been planned,” Spring says. “Of course, that’s the essence of jazz.”