I first picked up a bassoon, that double-reeded glory, when I was in eighth grade. My middle-school bully had jokingly mentioned he wanted to play it. I learned it out of spite.
The jump to the bassoon from saxophone—which I loved, and kept up for jazz boy purposes—was a little harder than the one I’d made a couple years earlier, from clarinet, but not that much. The embouchure was different, sure, but the fingerings were pretty similar to the clarinet.
Does this all sound familiar? Well, if you’re an Over the Garden Wall fan, it definitely should:
I’m not particularly shy about my love for Over the Garden Wall, the first miniseries Cartoon Network has ever produced. Helmed by Pat McHale, Pendleton Ward’s right-hand man on Adventure Time, the 10-episode fairytale-meets-vaudeville fantasy adventure story neatly walks the line between twee comedy and terrifyingly dark exploration of death in the vein of Dante’s Inferno. It’s silly brilliant. I’ve pushed it on all my friends and re-watched it, like, eight times.
It also loves woodwinds, a family of instruments near and dear to my heart.
The elder of the series’ two brother-protagonists, young Wirt (Elijah Wood! also, Tim Curry, Melanie Lynskey, John Cleese, and Christopher Lloyd are in it! seriously, this show’s voice talent is off the charts) is embarrassed about everything in his life. He has a crush on a girl! He plays clarinet! He secretly whispers poetry to himself in his room at night! (I feel ya, kid.) Adolescence truly sucks, and Wirt knows it.
Naturally, he thinks he sucks too—at everything. And believe me, he has his moments, including a penchant for throwing his sweet younger brother, Greg, under the bus whenever the duo find themselves in any kind of trouble.
But Wirt doesn’t suck at everything. Just listen to this gorgeous bassoon playing:
Even if the legendary jazz and pop vocalist Jack Jones didn’t lend his signature baritone to the tune, this ragtime waltz, anchored by the dulcet bassoon tones Wirt wrangles out of an instrument a high school band conductor of mine once hilariously dismissed as a “farting bedpost,” would have been spectacularly evocative. It’s almost enough to make the bassoon as cool as it was back in Mozart’s day.
And that’s par for the course for Over the Garden Wall. Filled with lush arrangements ranging from saloon ditty to folk ballad—just listen to that delicate clarinet intro in “Patient Is the Night”—this show treated its wind instruments with the same love and care as it did its lovely autumnal color palette, wide-ranging historical influences, and tenderly grim storyline.
Now, kids, it’s up to you to do the same. Get your asses to band class. And play on, Wirt. Play on.
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