In Tune with Lance Lafargue
by Christina Rukavina
“Restore, rebuild, renew” has taken on a unique meaning for “piano man” Lance Lafargue. His skills at bringing treasured instruments back to life are being sought after more than ever throughout the north and south shores.
This Mandeville entrepreneur and craftsman has undergone an interesting journey in acquiring the requisite acumen to become so in demand in his field. After all, few people likely set their sights on such a career at a tender age. In his case, Lance didn’t give it a thought until he was 30. He watched and apprenticed and learned, and ultimately became not only a fine piano tuner, but also an accomplished restorer of pianos, in something of the same way he first became a musician earlier in life.
The Lafayette, La., native first picked up a family cast-off guitar during his sophomore year at Northside High School. He taught himself to play by ear, inspired by listening to artists such as James Taylor and Neil Young. Soon after, he was drafted by the school band director, Aaron Robin, who needed a bass player for a stage band festival. Within three days, he figured out the bass guitar well enough to help garner superior scores at the competition.
This was the early 1980s, when the drum and bugle corps—a hipper, more theatrical version of the traditional marching bands, complete with intricate choreography—was taking off across the country. Anyone who wanted to be in the stage (jazz) band had to play in the drum and bugle corps as well. That’s how Lance became immersed in music through the remainder of his high school career, all the while relying primarily on his steady ear rather than sight-reading to follow along. In fact, by the end of his sophomore year, he was tagged by a well-established local band of older and far more experienced musicians to fill a vacant spot.
After high school, he attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), where he wandered in and out of different degree programs, because he simply couldn’t decide what to do with his life. What he did know was what he didn’t want to do, and that was play music for a living. While making music in school had been great fun, Lance’s commercial experience evoked entirely different feelings. He sensed that many of the musicians he played with weren’t very happy with their lives. This perception was enhanced when he glimpsed into the world of even more recognized artists, such as when his band backed up big name acts, or when a musician who had played for headliners came off the road and joined their band for a time. Realizing that a life of looking for gigs or experiencing high times followed by sudden lows of unemployment was not for him, he finally decided on a business degree, just to finish up and have some potentially useful knowledge under his belt.
So much for practicality, as the completion of his degree in the mid-1980s coincided with hard times in his neck of the woods. “Lafayette was the oil center, and when the price of oil went into a slump, it affected the local economy,” he states, recalling that jobs were scarce.
That’s why he and his new bride, Brenda—together footloose, young and free—decided to break away from Louisiana and relocate in the Englewood, Colo., area, where the two had previously visited. Once again, however, he only found something that he didn’t want to do, and that was sales. He peddled computers, as they first assimilated into American life, via telemarketing and door-to-door sales. The pleasant-mannered craftsman muses, “I was a real flop at that. I really hated the selling game.” After a couple of years, he and Brenda returned to Louisiana, settling in New Orleans, where she easily landed a job as a computer programmer, and they began their family, which now includes Alec, Denis and Madeline, who are 17, 15 and 12, respectively.
Meanwhile, Lance floundered around, trying to find work in a weak economy. And then he found his calling in the oddest of ways. He was at the home of an old high school classmate, a musician who also did piano tuning for the now defunct Mitchell’s in New Orleans. During that visit, Lance fixed a plumbing problem for his friend, who said, only half seriously, about Lance’s penchant for troubleshooting, “You know, you’d be good at working with pianos.”
Lance recalls, “I had nothing else to do, so I rode around with him. Here I was, 30 years old, working for free for the first three months.” During this initial introduction to the craft of tuning, Lance’s latent business sense kicked in. “I went to the library, researched the field, looked into the training required and began to work some numbers.”
His next step was to join the Piano Technicians Guild, which provides literature, holds conventions and afforded him opportunities “to interact with and learn the trade from successful tuners who are not hobbyists,” he explains. Lance took a series of tests regarding piano tuning, technology and repair through the Guild, and in 1990 became a Registered Piano Technician. All the while that Lance was finding and devoting himself to his new calling, he still zeroed in on something else he didn’t want to do, and that was to be a poor businessman. Without naming names, he recalls making mental notes of how not to deal with customers, how not to cut corners and how not to approach the craft casually. During his modest beginnings, while earning minimum wage, he cleaned up and organized Mitchell’s rundown workshop, hung lights, built benches and created a viable place to work, while doing a little tuning. Within two years, he was deemed sufficiently skilled to go out of the store and tune, earning 60 percent of what he generated until the business closed in the early 1990s.
That closure coincided with Lance’s decision to become independent. And once more, Lance decided on something else he didn’t want to be, and that was a city person. “I wanted more trees and space, less cement,” he says. And so, he moved his family to the northshore, where he eventually built up an impressive business of selling, tuning and restoring pianos.
But once again, he still had some apprenticing to do, which he did for an extended period with Ken Eschete, an expert in restoration work, who is now at Northwestern University, and whose clients included Tulane University, the local symphony orchestra, and the Smithsonian. And once again, Lance worked nearly for free, selling the jobs and assisting Eschete in rebuilding the instruments, with Eschete receiving the profits in exchange for training Lance. “What he was teaching, no one else knew, so it was an invaluable opportunity to learn,” Lance reasons.
About five years ago, Lance also began selling pianos, with much the same patience and ingenuity he displayed in acquiring his technician skills. He started out by buying, fixing and cleaning uprights, then selling them for a few hundred dollars on the side. At one point, he had five pianos in his dining room. He then made a trade with Loyola University—his labor for 11 pianos, which he also fixed, cleaned and sold. Around that time, he got together with his children’s piano teacher, Jo Morris, and they decided to lease space at Azalea Square on Highway 22 in Mandeville. From the very beginning, Lance ran what he terms “a showroom without a salesman.” He doesn’t dicker or “sell” pianos. Instead, he places a price on the instruments, answers questions and encourages interested customers to refer to “The Piano Book” by Larry Fine, a bible of sorts for piano buyers. Lance was one of some 40 technicians who contributed information for the most recent edition. People have responded so positively to this approach that they often forego independent research and rely solely on Lance’s word.
After about a year of sharing space, the co-lessees realized they both needed more room, but this posed a potential problem for Lance. “This next step was big. If I got a real space, I’d need to be in the store and that would kill my service business.” But Lance quickly answered his own questions. “I thought, ‘Why don’t I get some apprentices? I’ll train them the way I was trained. While they’re in the store learning and working, I can go out and do tuning.’”
This worked out well for Lance, so well that he quickly outgrew his 1,500 square feet of space. In January 2006, after some preliminary scraping, painting, toilet scrubbing and changing out 150 light bulbs, he moved his business into 4,100 square feet of space, still in Azalea Square.
Although he was already backed up for years with orders to rebuild instruments, requests for restoration of storm-damaged pianos poured in from throughout the area after Katrina. He recalls how, as he went from home to home, he tried to describe on his cell phone, as a guest on a radio talk show out of Boston, what he witnessed in the immediate aftermath. “I’ll never forget that smell,” Lance shakes his head, recalling how he stood in water a quarter of an inch deep, holding a flashlight in homes without power, as he assessed what the “Katrina Gumbo” did to treasured family heirlooms. Damage included ferrules (brass portions of legs) blackened by sewage, delamination (separation of the frame), splitting boards, peeling wood cabinetry, rusted strings and plates and glue joint failure.
The outlook for some 200 storm-damaged pianos Lance inspected was grim except for about 50, which he believed to be salvageable. The prime factor for consideration was whether the instrument had been submerged beyond the keybed. If not, most of those were repairable. Lance notes, however, that some manufacturers, perhaps due in part to overzealous sales practices, insist that if there is any humidity in the room in which the piano is kept, you need to buy a new instrument—from them, of course.
While Lance’s determination that some instruments could be restored was music to the ears of their owners, there were those who were unable to accept less hopeful news. He particularly recalls one instance when he felt like a doctor delivering a painful prognosis. He was trying to convince, as sympathetically as possible, a sobbing Lakeview resident that he would be acting disreputably if he allowed her to hire him to restore her beloved piano, which had eventually landed upside down in her flooded living room. Although he has been able in some instances to restore the worth of a 100-year-old piano to $60,000 for a fraction of that price, no amount of money can resurrect a completely submerged piano.
As for those approximately 50 pianos that could be restored, there remained another great obstacle, and that was time. With each piano requiring up to 300 hours of painstaking work to bring it back to life, Lance was initially able to rebuild perhaps just six to 12 per year since Katrina. The most challenging aspect of each restoration project, he emphasizes, is finishing it to where everything is flawless, because the process itself generates a great mess. “You need to sand and clean and refine the entire piano without destroying what you’ve just achieved after the hundreds of hours you’ve put into it. You want to be careful not to bump the action, or, when you put the strings in, not to scratch the gold plate.”
The good news for area residents is that, while the task of restoring a piano remains one that requires time and skill, the prospect of achieving this is no longer daunting. Lance has been fortunate to find a gifted associate, John Bruce, who, like him, also wanted “more space and trees, less cement.” John, who has relocated with his wife and daughter to Mandeville from New York City, says piano restoration is in his blood, as he, his father and uncle all worked in piano factories. “He’s a great craftsman,” praises Lance, adding, “There are only a handful of guys like him in the entire country.” Bringing John into the business, Lance is now able to state, “No one in this part of the country does soundboards except for us.” He adds, “People always think the experts are from out of town, and we’re trying to dispel that notion.”
The teamwork of these two craftsmen has resulted in the increase of piano restorations to one every one to three weeks. For those piano owners who are fortunate not to have sustained storm damage to their instruments, Lance still offers some stern advice. “The most common negligence involves humidity. You’ve got to control the climate around your piano. Get it away from anything that changes the temperature of the piano, such as a window, fireplace, wood stove or air vents in floors and ceilings.” If you do these things and schedule regular tunings, particularly during changes of season, you and your piano should enjoy a harmonious life together.
