I was sad to learn, just the other day, that my old band’s recording engineer, Dave Hackbarth, passed away about a year ago.

I owe a lot to Dave, both musically and personally.

When I started getting back into music, I was able to pick up the skills necessary for recording — even in its newfangled, digital incarnation — thanks entirely to Dave.

He was a busy guy; his Discogs artist page lists almost 150 projects that he’s credited on, and I’d bet that there’s a lot missing. Because he was busy, he could sometimes use some help. And, for a time, that was me.

I started filling in as a sort-of second engineer when he recorded The Reign (yes, I’m talking about Better Late than Neverland, the album that we just released, 35 years later). I guess I had enough of a knack that he invited me to join him on other projects, as well. Soon enough, I was running overdub sessions and, once I’d gotten that down pretty well, entire sessions. He worked a lot of 20-hour days — sometimes even longer, I’m sure — so handing an occasional session off to me made it possible for him to get a little extra sleep.

He let me keep the fee, too: a whopping $10 an hour! (Indie Christian labels weren’t rolling in it, if you know what I mean.) That is not sarcasm, though: most interns didn’t get paid anything. I got paid and got credits on some of the albums (there’s even an artist page for me on Discogs!).

It was great, and I learned a ton — enough, as I said, that my return to recording was much easier than it would have been.

Beyond music, Dave was a great friend. When I told him that I was planning on getting out of debt by living in my truck, he suggested I take one of the two upstairs rooms he’d been renting from a friend’s mother. Since it was a slightly smaller room, he gave me a lesser share of the rent. It was less than half of what I’d been paying, so I could make progress on my bills.

It was also a lot bigger than my truck.

I’m not the best at keeping in touch with people, so it’s no surprise that I lost track of him after I moved up north. I did look for him online, from time to time, but I only found references to his work. Apparently, he was one of the few who resisted our social media overlords.

The band was looking forward to getting a copy of our album to him, so it was with some sadness that we realized, despite the album title, that we had finished too late.

Joey Taylor, from the old band Undercover and the label Broken Records, posted on August 1 that he had just learned about the death. Apparently, Dave had become “a family man, and pretty private,” so — aside from my anti-social tendencies — it makes a certain amount of sense that I’d lost track of him.

Taylor’s post is worth reading, if you’re interested in hearing more about Dave. Short, but meaningful. The post also has a relatively recent photograph, as well as some blast-from-the-past concert photos in which Dave is playing keyboards with Undercover. You can find the post here on Facebook, or here on Instagram.

There’s also a funny anecdote about Dave from the late Tim Chandler, bass player in Daniel Amos and The Swirling Eddies, about a time when a wheel came off the tour bus that Dave was driving. You can find that in another Facebook post.

I suppose I’m at the age when people around me are more likely to die (myself included). It’s no less surprising when it happens, though.

Top photo by Caught In Joy on Unsplash