Faith

Greg Istock, musician, artist, friend, neighbor and musical partner in 3hattrio

recent painting by Greg Istock

Solstice afternoon, December 21, 2021

I showed up late, parking at a pull-out and a path down to a minor wash meandering up towards Hurricane Mesa. This wash is where you don’t want to find yourself in a flash flood. And yet, most days it’s a great place to hike with my dog, Chaco.  

Greg Istock, director of the shoot, first cameraman, and composer of the song, “Faith,” was already shouting orders. The stars of the show, the lovely Val Wenz, Greg’s mate, and the precocious Theda Torgerson, aged seven, were both dressed in white with matching white tulle skirts flowing over their dresses. The first image that came to mind was of angels, one older, one young.

Greg immediately assigned me the role of second cameraman. He is a natural-born director, efficient and direct. And he always knows what he wants. This was to be a one- shot music video to accompany the new remix of his song, “Faith.” It was a high-grade production, two iPhones and a boom box to play the recording. I could overhear him giving instructions to Val and Theda. “You are fairies from another planet. You’ve never been here before, and you only have a few minutes of fun in the desert before you have to move on.”

Theda’s family waited on the sideline. Grandparents, Lyman and Debra; mom and dad, Hillary and Nate; and brothers, Everett and Finn.  Nate had fashioned a funky white guitar and added extra guitar necks that came out at all angles. Everette and Finn brought along their saxophones and when the shoot was over, they started honking away. I guess all were hoping to join this musical production, but Greg knew what he wanted: two fairies from outer space frolicking in the desert.  

Three takes and we were done. Packing up, Theda approached Greg with a bit of cloth that had ripped off her tulle skirt. She handed it to him and in all seriousness stated, “you can keep this to remember me by.”  Now that’s star power.

FAITH by Greg Istock ©2018 BMI

One more prank at the county fair,

One more toast to the friends we all cherish,

One more song from your favorite country singer,

Saying, “I hear that train a coming.”

One more ride in your Cadillac,

One more night that you would never give back,

One more day I would ask you to stay,

But I know you must be going.

You wanna just think, that the good times will just never end.

You wanna have faith, that it all is comin’ round again.

But you can’t believe that the life of the party has past,

Just like that, so fast, so fast.

One more plan to change the world, now.

One more pair of high heeled shoes for you to wear, now.

One more kiss as the camp fire blazes on us, now.

You’re the one to try anything, now.

You’re the one to say, don’t stop your dreaming.

Got to hit the road, now. you can hear that train a callin’.

You wanna just think, that the good times will just never end.

You wanna have faith, that it all is comin’ round again.

But you can’t believe that the life of the party has passed,

Just like that.

You never feel safe that you’ve given it all that you’ve got.

If you’re lookin’ for faith, go get it from someone who’s got it.

And you can’t believe the life of the party has past,

Just like that, so fast, so fast, so fast, so fast, so fast, so fast. so fast

Greg Istock

Greg gets up each day, goes for a run with his dog Buzz, then settles down for a day of making art. Today he might be composing music and practicing on his double bass or guitar. Or it might be the day where he selects a canvas or piece of wood, painted over a dozen times, to begin a new visual experiment.

For years he has been exploring primal figures, spirits who invite themselves into the studio. They manifest in different colors and at first glance seem like fanciful masks. They are dark and full of substance, but not scary. They are beings, abstract and spiritual. They are prayers of a sort.

Greg’s musical practice parallels his visual art in that it is exploratory, spiritual, abstract, and built up like layers of paint on a canvas. He lays down musical lines on the double bass, piano, or drums. He creates colors that come together in musical composition.

We live a mile apart in the little town of Virgin, Utah near Zion National Park. Sometimes I visit uninvited. Feeling like I’ve invaded his reverie, I watch as he mixes colors or applies paint, all the while half-listening to music that he recorded the day before. He tells me this is the best way to appraise music, keeping it in the background. He explains that when you sit down to judge music, it drastically changes the ability to assess what is worth keeping. By allowing music to sneak up, he can tell what should be kept, what should be erased or painted over.

This is what Greg does every day. There’s no show to it. He’s not constantly getting ready to work, not posturing or promoting. He makes art and music, every day, day in, day out.

3hattrio Remix

Greg is my musical partner. We compose together. We are two of the hats that make up the group 3hattrio. The third hat is Eli Wrankle, our wonderful violinist. Until the pandemic came, we were a performing group with numerous European tours under our belts and others that had to be cancelled. These days our music is more contemplative and holds the attributes of daily exploration of sound and spirit rather than getting ready for the next show.  

We measure how long we have been together by Eli’s age. He was sixteen when we started and now he is twenty-five so that is nine years since we discovered our musical kinship. Nine years ago, about this time of the year, we started recording our first album, YEAR ONE.

We still love those songs, all of them. But listening back it’s almost as though we were not quite prepared to render that music. Our next project is to take those old canvases and paint over them or set them up on the easel to adjust the levels, add a few colors and clean them up. We call this a remix. A lot of people in music do remixes these days and the idea intrigues us. So, watch for a new version of the old songs from our beginnings.

The original version of “Faith,” before Greg remixed it, came from our most popular album, “Lord of the Desert.” The underlying theme of this album was faith, all kinds of faith. But mostly it was about simple faith that things will work out. It takes a certain kind of faith to make music, both for the music makers and for the listeners. Tests of faith surround us. Faith is in our hands.

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