Stoutonia

Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Ileah Midthun David Tank rocks out on his 12-string guitar at Open Mic night at The Underground.

When class is in session, the professors are supposed to be there; that’s their job. But what do professors do in their free time? They do have lives outside of the classroom, which is sometimes hard to believe.

The final Open Mic Night of the school year took place on April 23. There were many different genres of music performed that night, including alternative rock, a keyboardist, a rapper and a rock group. One of the many acts was David Tank, an English professor here at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Knowing Tank from class I would have thought that he would be playing something a little mellower, something like the acoustic guitar and singing softer music. He blew my expectations out of the water.

He played a wide variety of songs including Hard Day’s Night by the Beatles, Gloria by Shadows of the Night, Eight Miles High, Tambourine Man and Mr. Spaceman by the Byrds and I’m Not Your Stepping Stone by the Monkeys. A couple of these songs were played for the first time ever on the guitar that he has only had for five weeks.

The guitar that he played was a Rickenbacker electric 12-string. This has been Tank’s dream guitar since he was 14 years old and he finally has gotten it. He plays the acoustic guitar, the bass guitar (his favorite) and the trombone throughout high school and college. He has been involved with music his whole life.

Tank has been in a multitude of different kinds of bands. Some of these include the first band he was in when he was in ninth grade (a rock band), Herb Albert and Taiwana Brass Band, where he played the bass, rock and Motown band, and a country rock band named the Hey Lofters. The Hey Lofters mainly played in bars and stockyards, but also played the grand opening of a CB radio store where they played in the parking lot and the owner of the store broadcasted them over the CB waves to the truckers.

More recently, Tank has been a guitarist for the past four years for the Valley Gospel Choir in Eau Claire and has also played in the pit orchestra for different musical theaters. He has played in the pit orchestra for the Musical Theatre Guild in Chippewa Valley three different times. He also has a video on YouTube entitled “Hope is like a River.” This is the most recent thing that he wrote and talked about his wife’s struggles with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He also wrote a book to accompany the song, entitled “River of Hope: My Journey with Kathy in Search of Healing from Lou Gehrig’s disease.” In addition to this song he has written about 35 or 40 original songs.

Tank said that ever since he saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show as a young child, he knew he would be in a rock band. He has certainly achieved that goal, and quite a few times. He also said that teaching is a lot like being up on stage. “You get stage fright for both of them. The only difference between a classroom and being on stage is that when you’re on stage it is a lot easier because your audience does not have a laptop open in front of them.”

I would have never thought that Tank would have had such a background in music. It was fun and interesting to see the other side of the person that lectures to me three hours a week. It just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover.
   

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