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In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a music lover, and I have a somewhat varied catalog of things I like. I was raised by parents who dated and danced to the Big Band era. Their music was essentially the soundtrack of World War II. Growing up in our home, we were baptized in thorough collections of what has become known as the “American Songbook,” and I grew to love that sound. My dad was all about Glen Miller. When I hear “Moonlight Serenade,” an inexplainable sentimentality still stops me in my tracks and I picture the local boys at Wert’s on the ocean, home on leave and wondering if this will be their last dance with the girl back home. My mom was a bobby-soxer, partial to the Dorsey Brothers, and instilled in me my respect and admiration for Sinatra. I have a greatest hits CD of Frank’s in the top tackle drawer in my boat that I put on for weekend maintenance and spit and polish. It’s the perfect combination of vocal and instrumental excellence for taking care of an old boat. I know it’s cliché, but they just don’t make music like that anymore. Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Nelson Riddle, Count Basie. Frank sang with the best bands on earth. No auto-tune, no multi tracking, no click track, no phoning in the solo from a remote location. Recordings were live in the studio, full band and the pop of the snare drum in those tight arrangements is signature Sinatra. Pure, great music from real talent and hard work. Excellence. Nothing less was acceptable.

In those innocent days of youth, in addition to my fascination with the Big Bands and a new infatuation with Beatlemania, my best neighborhood buddy’s dad, Dave Ebersold, introduced me to country music. I’m talking about country music. Not this pop, hip-hop, exaggerated fake southern accent, glamour hybrid crap that I hear today. I’m talking about Jones, Haggard, Owens, Cline, Lynn, Wynette. I’m talking about, in later years, Jackson, Strait and Loveless. I’m talking about what Harlan Howard so eloquently described as “three chords and the truth.” When Buck sang “Together Again” in 1964, it perfectly defined the joy of a rekindled romance. Emmylou Harris recorded it 11 years later. If you have a pulse, her voice, James Burton’s Telecaster, Glen Hardin’s piano and Brian Ahern’s arrangement can still make the strongest among us weep. Check out her live performance of the song on YouTube with Albert Lee on lead and Rodney Crowell on acoustic and harmonies. That’s real country music. It’s personal. Today’s country charts are full of insultingly awful pop, steered by slick coastal management and tone-deaf record executives who wouldn’t know a good song if it bit them in the ass. The soul is gone and has been replaced with a plastic sincerity, crossing over to maximize profit. Alan Jackson saw this fake for what it was: “She’s gone country, look at them boots!” God bless him for trying to keep a broken heart beating in the emaciated body of country music.

Boatbuilding and music are sister callings. Both are math-based endeavors with rules that define the methods. Naval architecture incorporates time honored formulas such as Simpson’s rules for calculating area, volume and their derivatives, the hydrostatics. There are equations for calculating material strength and loads, and ratios to explain mechanical and electrical relationships. Music theory incorporates ancient mathematical rules as well, such as key signatures, time signatures, scales, the circle of fifths, sharps and flats, mode, etc. Most folks are unaware or choose to ignore the mathematical foundation of each and focus solely on the art of it all. That’s O.K. There is an authenticity in working with your hands and one can navigate through boatbuilding or songwriting without the math but if sensors were attached to your hands while playing a piano, guitar, or carving a stem, the numbers would astound you. In boatbuilding and music, good numbers are the key to beauty and performance, long term. Quality is defined by how far one takes that numerical artistry, whether one is aware of it or not. Ugly doesn’t add up and has an expiration date. Beauty is a balanced equation and is timeless. The point I’m trying to make with all of this is that as time goes on, we, as a culture, settle for less. We’re so caught up in staying hip and current, we don’t even realize our tendency to compromise the numbers. With each generation, it takes less talent to get and hold our attention. We rely less on human calculations and creativity and increasingly on technology to design a boat or write a song. In our service yard, we witness this decline daily on boats coming in for help. Bad numbers = bad work. Turn on the radio. Bad numbers = bad work. Boat shows, the Grammy awards and Super Bowl halftime shows have become comparable pools of sludge these days and beg the question: “What in the hell happened?” Bad numbers = bad work.

My wife and I own a 24-foot inboard center console that my brother Marty and I built 37 years ago. In 1988, our shop had all but closed down, due to the stupidity and virtue signaling of politicians creating the “Luxury Tax,” yet another example of bad numbers. We needed to stay busy while we waited for common sense to prevail in the legislature so we lofted a small boat and planked her up with the hope that someone would buy her and keep our paychecks coming for our young families at home. In short, someone did, and I had the opportunity to buy her back, many years later. Whenever Julia and I venture out in Julie Mac, we are congratulated by folks with thumbs-ups, high fives and ridiculous offers for purchase. The reason for all this hullabaloo is not that we managed to build the perfect boat. Hell, we’ve never come close. She just has a clean, simple, uncluttered line compared to equivalent boats of today. People are still capable of recognizing good numbers. They just don’t have time to insist on them or they are afraid that quality might be culturally offensive, so they settle for less. The market takes full advantage of that, providing us with instantly attainable junk.

There are still good numbers out there. The East Coast custom sportfishing boat boys continue to provide the world with solid sums and quotients. There is still some “give a damn” left in our little corner of the world and it is on full, spectacular display at the Custom Shootout each year in Marsh Harbor. Builders put their heart, soul and good numbers into these one-off prototypes and insistence on quality and aesthetics is paramount. The brotherhood of builders is fully aware of the temptation to give in to bad work for profit. Doing so can be cause for immediate excommunication and there have been a few. This is a proud bunch, always eager to help each other and forever loyal to the cause.

Good music is still being recorded and performed. Lauren Daigle and Trombone Shorty performed a wonderful, jazzed-up NOLA version of America the Beautiful prior to the big game last month. Stefani Germanotta is a talented musician and vocalist, despite her regrettable stage name and her cheap, “Hey, everybody please look at me!” wardrobe theatrics. Bluegrass music has become one of the only genres left in entertainment that still relies solely on pure talent. The “Newgrassers” climbing the charts are perfectionists, even more so than their ancestral idols and their bands rival the Big Bands of the forties in their artistry and tight arrangements. These guys and gals can crush it in straightforward numbers. 1-4-5 and down 1 ½ to the relative minor is a beautiful thing.

When doing good work, the numbers will always add up, whether it’s boats, music, sports, nature or life in general. The best things in this world have always come from good numbers, even when one is oblivious to the math. When something stinks, it’s because the numbers don’t add up. Good work is the common denominator in a good life, and you can damn sure count on that. Good music and good work go together like rise and shine. Crank up that Alison Krauss, boys, and let’s run that LCB calculation again. 5.7 aft of station 0? Yeah, man. Those are good numbers.

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.