A Story Of Music

In the early 1980s, Paul Glanz walked away from his life in Manhattan and moved to a small town on the East End where he could be a stranger.

There, he shed his last name. And, with it, his identity. He wanted to escape his past. He wanted to forget everything he knew. He wanted to start over.

As Paul Gene, he did. Living in East Hampton, he was no longer a quasi-famous musician with a horribly tragic history—living in the public eye, with its sight set on the death of both his wife and young son.

Now, he had a new life. He had begun to heal. No one looked at him with sympathy. No one knew who he really was.

Videographer Bryan Downey did. And, three decades later, he found him.

But, at first, all Mr. Gene wanted to talk about was his latest hobby.

“He really didn’t want to get his gold- and platinum albums out,” Mr. Downey said of Mr. Gene last week inside Bulldog Studios, a modest recording studio behind his house in Sag Harbor that has seen the likes of Jay-Z, Richard Gere and Blythe Danner as clients. “He wanted to show me his train set. And that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, Paul, you’re such a sweetheart.’”

As Mr. Gene sat on the floor, playing with his toy, Mr. Downey kept his camera fixated on the musician—who, at one time, shared stages with Carly Simon, Meat Loaf and Roy Buchanan. He realized, with every passing moment, that this man would star in his most recent project: a documentary about music on Long Island. And only when Mr. Gene was in the studio, formally, did he finally tell his story.

When he was finished, Mr. Downey asked, “How did you find the strength to go on?”

He replied, “Life is not determined by your past.”

The year was 1980. Mr. Gene’s music career was taking off. His band was on the verge of a record deal. And, while on tour, he learned that his 6-year-old son, Alexander, had been kidnapped.

“We had a huge show booked, a concert in Manhattan, and it was one of those, ‘This is gonna be our big night.’ All of the record companies are represented,” Mr. Gene said during an audiotape session with Mr. Downey. “We had been searching for a deal for quite some time, and it just came closer and closer. And this was a major night for that.

“At this point, my son had been missing for a few weeks. I was already,” he choked up. “I don’t think I can talk about this.”

He took a breath and shakily continued, “Anyway, he was found. And he had been killed. I found that out between the sound check and the show.”

“Oh my God,” Mr. Downey said. “How did you deal with that show?”

“Um, it was an out-of-body experience,” he said. “I don’t remember a thing about it.”

“But you went through that whole concert.”

“Yes, I did,” he said. “Yes I did. There was nothing more I could do. I couldn’t let the other guys down. This was a huge night for them. So I decided I wouldn’t mention it to them until after the show.”

As soon as the concert was over, Mr. Gene collapsed on the floor, Mr. Downey said. Then, a few years later, his wife died of lung cancer and he moved to the Hamptons.

“So, how come he can smile?” Mr. Downey asked. “He survives on music.”

That is the power of song, Mr. Downey said. It gives people the courage to face the unknown. To move forward. To persevere.

“To just sit down and say, ‘This film is gonna be about music,’ that’s easy,” the musician, who was born in England and also runs a carpentry business, said while sitting at his computer, clicking his mouse through a number of film stills with a paint-stained hand.

He stopped abruptly on one photo and continued, “It’s branched out. It occurred to me that it’s going to be about the power of music to heal, especially after death, and the power of music to help with addiction. And the power of music, in this case,” he nodded toward the photo, “to help people with mental and physical disabilities.”

About three years ago, shortly after building his studio, a Southampton High School class paid him a visit in Sag Harbor. Mr. Downey was expecting four or five kids, he recalled. Instead, he got 16—and two teachers per student, because they were all in the special education program.

The kids spent the entire day in the studio, recording a rap with background vocals provided by Dylan Jenet Collins—who was recently signed by Universal Republic Records in Los Angeles, California, under executive producer Stevie Wonder.

Last December, the kids were finally able to listen to their completed song.

“I went back to the school. And it was incredible,” Mr. Downey said. “I have it all on film. When you see those clips of them, your heart just warms up. Music seems to be the one thing that everyone can relate to. You don’t have to speak English to dance, you know?”

Over the course of a year, Mr. Downey has interviewed 50 musicians, narrowing his subjects down to 16, the producer explained. During his research, he’s made stops at various sets around the East End, including the Monday night drum circle at Sagg Main Beach in Sagaponack, catching a few of the most radiant sunsets he’s ever seen.

And a number of outspoken performers—all under the age of 10.

“I found these little kids and they’d all brought their own drums,” he said. “They had their own drum circle, their own little agenda. They’re all telling me how much they love the drums, but they don’t like the drum circle. They just like playing their own drums.”

To date, Mr. Downey has collected 2,000 minutes of audio, he said, and is still capturing more before the editing process begins. He does know that the film will center around five performers: from Blues Hall of Famer Kerry Kearney—who has used music to not only rebuild his own home in Queens post-Hurricane Sandy, but to help his community do the same—to Joe Delia in Montauk, who recalled his debut at age 12 on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966 as the voice of the very first Muppet. The puppet grows from a seedling into three-monster band that returns to its original form, which is then gobbled up by a bird.

“It’s so funny that this happened so long ago, when I was really a kid,” Mr. Delia said during his interview with Mr. Downey. “I wrote the song with my brothers—or my brothers wrote the song with me—and I actually sang it ... The whole thing was so long ago that I had basically forgotten about it.”

Attorney Glenn Feit Sr., whom Mr. Downey interviewed and plans to feature, remembers his musical start like it was yesterday, considering it was just five years ago. And he was 79 years old.

“Well, I always wanted to play guitar, but my workload just didn’t permit it,” he said during his interview. “Because I learned very early, if you want to be proficient at something, you really have to practice. Unless you’re some other kind of talent, which I didn’t think I was.

“What happened was, is that my wife had had a bad accident and I became her caretaker,” he continued. “And rather than sit around reading magazines and taking care of her, she encouraged me to go down to the Crossroads Music Store, where they were having Sunday jams, and see what that was like. And that’s what I did. And I was encouraged to stay there.”

“So, basically, Barberi was your inspiration,” Mr. Downey said of Mr. Feit’s wife, who was a piano prodigy at age 5 and a songwriter in her own right.

“Oh, absolutely,” Mr. Feit agreed.

For Mr. Feit, music meant the beginning of a new chapter. For the late Roy Scheider, it marked the end of one.

It was Sunday, February 10, 2008. A few friends stood outside the door of the actor’s room at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Hospital while his son, Christian, set up a sound system inside.

If his father was to die, it would be to the sound of “Danny Boy” by pianist Bill Evans. Christian stood on one side of Mr. Scheider’s bed and his mother, Brenda Seimer, stood on the other. They each took one of his hands.

The doctor switched off the respirator and they turned up the song—filling the room with music that poured into the hall.

And, miraculously, Mr. Scheider kept breathing.

“You know, you’re supposed to be very quiet when everybody’s dying. But, no, it turns out that it’s much better to fill the space with the sound of death,” Ms. Seimer said during her interview. “And the sound of his death—his coming, his going—was this. It was Bill Evans ... I was seeing Roy disappear and lose color, lose sound. But there he was, with Bill Evans, taking his trip.”

On the last measure, Mr. Scheider took his final breath—“in such an appropriate way,” Ms. Seimer said, “that he was dead to us but alive to himself.”