Long forgotten piano books form new friendship decades later

It’s been said that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

But in the case of Harris Larson and Kevin Bertness, one man’s trash became the beginning of a friendship, a reunion with the past and a reminder that sometimes things have a way of finding their way back home.

Larson, who lives in Brandon, and Bertness, a former South Dakotan turned longtime San Francisco, Calif., resident, met for the first time last week, nearly 15 years after Larson rescued three boxes of music books tossed into the trash by Bertness.

As the story goes, Larson was working his route in Valley Springs for Marv’s Sanitation when he came across the books. He knew immediately they were something special.

“It was a dream to see all this music that I wanted to play someday,” Larson remembers.

Bertness had no idea who Larson was at the time. In fact, he had no idea anyone had rescued the books.

Bertness, a singer, songwriter and keyboard player, had moved to Minneapolis in the late 1970s with high hopes of making it big in the world of rock-n-roll music. When the band fell apart, he went to music school, studying piano and composition. Then came a call that lured him to the West Coast.

“My friends called me and said, ‘Come out to San Francisco. We have a rock band,’” Bertness shared. “So, I said, ‘OK,’ and I moved all of my stuff from Minneapolis to my parents’ closet in Valley Springs.”

That was in 1979.

More than three decades later, Bertness’ mother, Joyce, died in 2011 and his father Ken decided to sell their home in Valley Springs. It was then he was instructed to sort through his possessions he’d stored in the closet all those years ago.

“Everything in my closet had to either move to San Francisco, go to Goodwill or the trash,” Bertness said. 

Among the items he was willing to part with were three large boxes that contained his musical past.

“These were all of my music composition tests, my books, my analyticals, you know, all the crap that was in storage for 30 years,” he said.

So Bertness made a decision to let the past go.

“I piled all these books up, and then I left town the next day,” he said.

That might have been the end of the story, except for Larson.

As he worked his garbage route, Larson spotted the books and began pulling them from the trash.

“I had Tom (Wilford) pay me for 20 minutes while I sat on the cement,” Larson recalled. “I just sat there and said, ‘I can’t believe this was thrown away.’ It was like a dream.”

Larson had been playing piano for years. In fact, his love for the instrument dates back to the 1960s, when his father took him to a movie to see “Country Legends.”

“It was a movie about Hank Williams and George Hamilton played the part,” Larson recalled. “They had the Cadillacs, and I thought someday I’m going to play piano.”

Larson learned to play guitar and piano, but eventually decided he couldn’t devote himself to both instruments.

“I had this money stuck in pianos and I couldn’t be good at both, so I stayed with the pianos and put the guitars away,” he said.

Over the years, he’s accumulated four pianos. A Steinway grand piano now serves as the centerpiece of his living room.

“This is a musician’s haven,” Bertness said when he stepped inside Larson’s home last week. “This is a fantastic machine. You don’t see many like this around, and in people’s houses, much less.”

Larson’s passion for the instrument is obvious.

“I probably have 6,000, 7,000 hours on it,” he revealed.

He plays every day.

And when he found the music books in the trash, Larson knew they were worth saving. The books contained something else that made them unmistakably personal: Bertness’s handwritten notes and markings from his years studying music.

“You’ve got to see the writing in there and the way he studied,” Larson says admiringly.

The books came home with Larson that day, where they remained for years. Years later, Larson began his search for Kevin Bertness, and found his brother, Kirk, who works at Prostrollo’s in Madison. He offered his phone number to Kirk, asking to pass it on to Kevin.

Bertness still had no idea the books had survived. That was until his father, Ken, moved from Valley Springs to a Sioux Falls, and he found the note Larson had left after rescuing the music books. It was then he learned Larson was a piano player, too.

“When we put the stuff out in the trash, the guy who took it away – he’s a piano player. He kept the books and left a note,” Bertness said. “We’re like, ‘Who has a classical piano-playing trash man? This is crazy.’”

Last week, the two men met face to face for the first time while Bertness was visiting family.

Bertness, who now lives in San Francisco, continues to play with four different bands. His music these days is primarily jazz and pop, with some rock mixed in. When Larson’s invite to stop by his home was extended, Bertness took him up on the offer. But it was more curiosity than the books themselves that led him to Larson’s doorstep.

“I wasn’t necessarily super attached to them,” he said.

Larson, however, was, and determined to return them to their rightful owner. After all, these weren’t simply old music books. They were pieces of Bertness’s musical history – filled with the notes and markings from a younger musician learning the intricacies of composition.

Bertness explained that those markings represented the work he had done studying harmonic flow.

“When I studied composition, they would have you analyze the harmonic flow of the songs, and so you analyze what each chord is within that key that you’re currently in,” he said. “Then, as it drifts out of key, there are ways they transition out and transition back in.”

That kind of musical theory still occasionally finds its way into his playing, although perhaps not as much as it once did.

“To a limited degree. Very little music has that super long of a form,” Bertness said. “Pop music is 16 bars, so it’s not that complicated.”

But the older books remain a record of the musical education that helped shape him.

Bertness grew up with a piano in his family’s home and learned to read music by playing trumpet. Eventually, like many teenagers of his generation, he picked up a guitar.

“That was the thing when you were a teenage guy. You have to play rock guitar,” he said.

He graduated from Madison High School in 1976, and his family moved to Valley Springs shortly after.

His musical journey eventually took him to Minneapolis, music school and, finally, San Francisco, where he continues to perform.

Larson’s journey with music took a different path.

He played guitar and piano, but the piano ultimately won.

His wife, who died 12 years ago, was part of his musical life, too. Larson recalled playing at a cancer center where she was receiving treatment.

“Once, I went to a cancer unit where my wife was being treated, and sometimes in the evening I’d go up to play the piano and then they’d wheel her in a wheelchair after her treatments were done,” he said.

After her death, Larson returned to the cancer center and brought his music with him.

“There was a gentleman sitting back by the door,” Larson recalled. “And as soon as I played my second, third song, he put his back right next to the piano to feel the vibrations.”

For Larson, the piano has been much more than an instrument.

It has been a constant companion through the years.

And now, thanks to a garbage route in Valley Springs all those years ago, it’s provided him with a new friend.

When Larson and Bertness finally sat down together last week, they had plenty to talk about.

Music, naturally, was at the center of the conversation.

So were the books that had somehow traveled from a Valley Springs closet, into a trash pile, into a garbage truck and finally into Larson’s home.

And now, they’ve made their way back to the man whose name is written inside them.