By Megha Lakha
It’s only fitting that when I walked into Honors Amstud this morning with Dr. Turner, he announced that we were singing our last song this year as an Amstud class. “Well, unless we have an impromptu sing-along,” he added.
It’s common knowledge for anyone who has Dr. Turner as a teacher that he is a big music fanatic. Every class day, without fail, Dr. Turner screens his Spotify and plays a new song whenever his students walk in. He also loves to play his guitar for the class to help teach us some material.
When I spoke to Dr. Turner right after class, he explained that he had his musical debut when he was put in piano lessons as a kid. Then, he said that his “interest kind of branched to other instruments.” Perhaps you could argue that his true debut was in high school when he, along with some friends, started a band called Clam Juice. (It sort of gives off Pearl Jam vibes!)
Dr. Turner also briefly dabbled in drumming. “I just like music and playing around with instruments but have never been really good at any of them,” he said. A lot of my fellow Amstudders would beg to differ after singing along to Which Side Are You On?
It took time and effort for Dr. Turner to become the expert he is now. He took me back to his youth and reminded me that “this was pre-YouTube, but I had friends show me different things.” Dr. Turner also recalled a concept that feels foreign to us living in the Spotify and Apple Music age. “I would drop the needle on the album back over and over again,” he said. “It was just to see if I could figure out a particular chord progression or figure out how guitarist was playing a song.”
As for the number of songs Dr. Turner can play, he can’t give an accurate number. But he’s very humble. “I don’t mean to be too self-deprecating, but this is never going to be my plan B for making money,” he said.
Dr. Turner says he is a big fan “of those 1960s and seventies folk and what we would call classic rock performers.” He also noted that “Bob Dylan is a huge favorite.”
Although Dr. Turner doesn’t cover Bob Dylan for us in class, he does sing some historical songs. Dr. Turner says that he “always tries to set aside at least a few minutes to analyze [the song] and to see how you can use the song as a window into a topic.” For Dr. Turner, “American Studies is not just about learning history, but it’s about culture and using arts, visual arts and music and all kinds of things as evidence to analyze songs.”
Aside from being beneficial to our learning, Dr. Turner also views these sing-alongs as “a nice sort of community-building time.” He thinks it’s “fun to do something different and to feel a little goofy.”
Dr. Turner came to Lovett in 2019 but has been teaching for 26 years. He’s been playing guitar in class for the past fifteen. .
When I asked Dr. Turner about his favorite song to sing for us he told me it was actually the one we heard this morning: Which Side Are You On? He also said he enjoys starting the school year off with This Land is Your Land.
Dr. Turner also recounted some exciting musical endeavors he had back in the day. “The goofy band that I played in high school though, we were the main attraction at the Senior Luau for Rin High School when I was a senior, and that was pretty fun,” he said. “It was kind of ridiculous; we were all wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis, and we weren’t very good.”
He also told me that his old band, Claim Juice, serenaded the Pizza Pronto delivery staff in Athens, Georgia. “So that’s probably the Apex of my career,” he said.
I was also curious about how the name Clam Juice came to be. Dr. Turner simply said they were “goofballs” and followed up by saying, “I think one of the guys in the band had a bottle of clam juice in his refrigerator.” Dr. Turner said the whole thing was “kind of absurd,” but he also told me that their band was previously called ‘Polyester Communists’ before the stellar name change.
After hearing about Dr. Turner’s adventures in music, I wondered if he ever struggled with stage fright. He told me that he used to feel a little bit uncomfortable, but not as much anymore. “My goal is always for other people to sing along with me,” he said. “I’m not real confident in my singing ability, so it always makes me feel better when other people are singing along.”
So moral of the story- rising juniors who have Dr. Turner for Amstud in the fall, be sure to sing along because it’s actually fun!
