City Paper Story on Karl Hendricks

Following on last week's personal stories about Karl Hendricks, I wrote a piece for Pittsburgh City Paper, with memories from his bandmates, collaborators and dear friends. The article can be found here, though if you're in Pittsburgh, I strongly suggest getting the hard copy. That way, you get to see Wayno's cover art in all its big, tactile splendor.

I usually get wigged out when trying to write anyway. This story was particularly challenging to my head, as I wanted to make sure I produced a good, wide-ranging portrait of what Karl meant to people. There were several kudos online the morning it hit, so I suppose I did pretty well.

Last Saturday was the memorial for him. The comment I heard from a few people was that it was the most uplifting memorial that ever was. Brillobox was wall-to-wall people when I got there, around 4:00, two hours into the "friends and family" portion of the event. I don't see shows there often that are that jam-packed. People came from as far away as Portland for it. Actually, one guy was in from Finland, but he wasn't just in town for the memorial. His sister-in-law just had a baby.

While most of the folks that I saw might not have exactly been really tight friends with me, enough time had passed that we were just glad to see each other again, which kind of goes with my credo about the way to cope with the loss of a loved one - look around you at who's here and appreciate them. I think Karl would appreciate that.