Doreen Ketchins
speaker
125 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Doreen Ketchins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Stuff like that, which was great in its own respect, you know, but just not, I mean, it's like taboo, you know, for somebody who, you know, played classical clarinet, you know. But, you know, by the grace of God, I figured out a way to combine the two because I wanted to hang with this tuba player, you know, this gorgeous tuba player. So I'd go something like...
Thank you.
Yep. I mean, I don't want to get haunted for the rest of my life, you know. That's what he'd do. He used to always tell me, you know, you got to play no matter what. So that's what I'm doing. And it's working. It's working. I get strength from just thinking about the times he's been in the audience, you know. And giving me a nod, you know, one way or the other.
They call the rising sun It's been the run of many a line And now I know who I want
We had drummer problems. And the drummer didn't show up, and he was tired of it. And we were on the street. He said he wasn't that good anyway. I bet you I could play just as good as him and play the tuba. And so he sat behind the drums, and he took one stick in his left hand, and he just started to do it. I mean, just like that. And it was there.
He can't play rolls and stuff like that, so he does the inflections. You know what I mean? So... If you're just listening to the drummer, you know, there's a lot of space in there. But if you're listening to the group, then he fills in all of these spaces that you would normally hear the drummer do. It's just amazing, you know.
But Necessity is the mother of invention, and he invented the tuba drummer.
People have asked me about that growl a lot. So I did it actually. I did some videos on it on YouTube during the pandemic when I was going absolutely crazy because I couldn't go out and play. But there are two ways of doing a growl. There's one with the throat, you know, like that, like you're gargling. And there's another one with a tongue, like a Spanish R, you know.
And both of them basically sound the same when I do them. But you pick one, you know, and I picked the Spanish R because I thought the transition to and from was smoother. So, and that's how I do it. I just, that's how I do it. That's it.
Well, we were away in Connecticut. We met at Loyola, and we had really good scholarships, but when you get to be a junior, well, tuition continuously goes up, whereas your scholarship stays the same. So my junior year, you know, our junior year, we asked for more money. And, you know, universities, they don't really invest in, you know, student juniors that are already there, you know.
And it hurt my feelings. So I started applying to different places and got accepted into a few. But the University of Hartford, the Hart School of Music, you know, had the most money. And... I didn't realize the cost of living in Hartford was a whole lot more, but it still worked out okay. And I went there and I stayed on campus for the first semester, didn't like it.
So I found me a nice apartment off campus for the following semester. And I stayed there, and it was good until they stole my car. I stopped in to take a nap, and when I came out, there was nothing there. My car was gone. My clarinet was in my car because I was taking a nap. I thought I'd just hop on back.
But anyway, they eventually found my car, and they took everything out of there except the clarinet because the latch on the case came loose, and there were two clarinets in there. And so when they picked it up, all of the pieces just sprawled all over the trunk, and so they didn't bother picking them up or nothing.
And so my clarinets were intact, which was cool because that was the biggest thing that was in the car. But once they stole my car, and Lawrence was still here. He was going to Xavier at the time, and he said, man, she can't be out there by herself. She's too far and she's alone. I got to go. And while we were there, he got us some work with this company called Landerman Agency.
And they threw parties, you know, corporate events and stuff like that. And, you know, it was nice that they had this exclusive New Orleans band. And so, you know, we worked that way. And That's how I started practicing, basically, you know, just playing the music. I just played melodies in the beginning. But after a while, you know, I started, you know, improvising just a tiny bit.
And so we're in Connecticut and we're doing pretty good. And then Lawrence's father dies. And actually, his father was sick and we went down and we got married there because, you know, he wanted his father to see him married. I mean, we were going to get married anyway, but we pushed it forward at that point. And then his father died. And a month and a day later, my father died.
And, you know, well, you don't know, but I'm the youngest of three and he's the youngest of three. He had two sisters and I had two brothers. And we were caretakers, you know what I mean? We're the ones that took care of our parents and stuff like that. So we didn't want to be so far away.
We wanted to try and be here for as long as we could with our mothers, you know, as they transitioned from having...
partners to not having any at all and so we came down and we started doing whatever we could you know to make ends meet um and we were walking in the french quarter one day and we saw some people playing on the street and laurence said hey look we could do that i'm like man you must be crazy i've been to college i'm not playing on the street yeah but love makes you do crazy things and
You know, we went out there and we played, and I was okay because we were together, you know, and got a little following. You know, people liked us. We were young, cute, and all that stuff. I mean, three decades. Actually, yeah, it's approaching four. You know, yeah.
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