Leaving a legacy: Efforts underway to recover late Rotterdam native's lost music

“This was his life's work,” said Richard Allen, a longtime friend of Vernum’s and the vice president of engineering and client technology at Logic Technology in Schenectady.

“This was the music he was creating for the world and wanted to present to the world,” said Allen, who is leading an effort to recover Vernum’s unreleased music.

A 1987 Mohonasen High School graduate, Vernum played local venues in the 1990s with his bands including Is, Sense, The Infidels and Dr. D. The charismatic artist later ventured to the music scene in Austin, Texas, where he taught music and recorded original songs — though most went unreleased. Allen believes they were stored in Vernum’s Google and DropBox accounts.

After Vernum died of a heart attack in December 2020, Allen began working with Walter Vernum, Darrell’s father, to get the artist’s music out to the world.

“You can't go to a record store . . . and go buy a Darrell Vernum record. Now, I want to change that,” Allen said.

The project hit roadblocks when the pair couldn’t log in to Vernum’s Dropbox or Google accounts. Then, Walter — Vernum’s only close surviving family member — died in 2022. The following year, shortly before what would have been Vernum’s 54th birthday, Google changed its policy so that accounts that weren’t accessed after two years would be deleted.

Allen fears that the recordings and files Vernum stored there are gone. He still has hope for the artist’s DropBox account though and plans to try to sway the company into letting him access it via a court order.

With those recordings — and others that Allen has been able to access — he aims to release Vernum’s music, creating an archive of the late artist’s work. A small group of musicians is assisting with the effort, including Pam Kirschner, a former girlfriend of Vernum’s and a member of Sense.

“I do believe he had messages to send people,” Kirschner said of Vernum’s music.

She met him in 1998 when her car broke down in Guilderland. He helped get her back on the road but she felt a connection to the musician, who was also a visual artist. At the time, Kirschner had recently moved to the Capital Region for an art conservation fellowship and the two hit it off.

“He just had this giant heart . . . It was so easy to connect to him,” Kirschner said.

Vernum invited her to play the keys in Sense.

“I was just so grateful for that,” Kirschner said. While she didn’t play out as much at local venues with Sense, she did get into the studio to record some of Vernum’s music and remembers the singularity of his vision for each song.

“I really loved being part of the project and he brought his musicians in to record parts, but he could play everything,” Kirschner said. “It's amazing that [he had] such a huge range in his voice and he had this confidence.”

Even after she moved out of the Capital Region to Washington D.C., she remained friends with Vernum and was happy that he continued to pursue music, later founding a studio he called Cathedral 54.

“I was so pleased that he could really focus on what he felt his mission was in life,” Kirschner said.

Allen believes Vernum’s music was partly inspired by the late David Bournazian, who taught music at Mohonasen for more than 40 years and fostered the school’s music and marching band program.

“[Darrell] was very serious about music and I'm 99.9% sure that he got that aspect of his personality from David Bournazian,” Allen said. “That old-school jazz approach to music [was] highly influenced by David Bournazian.”

Vernum’s music leaned toward rock but was informed by the jazz music he’d grown up playing in school. In 1986, Vernum was the Mohonasen Marching Band drum major and he went on to study music at SUNY Fredonia’s School of Music.

While Vernum’s music wasn’t commercially successful and he had some financially lean times, “he never did it to make money. He was in it to write great songs, and he did,” Allen said.

Since Vernum’s death, Allen, who played trumpet at Mohonasen, has started performing renditions of Vernum’s songs around the Capital Region.

“His music is that good. It needs to be heard and I just can't sit around and not do something about it,” Allen said.

Recently, a group of musicians, including Kirschner and Allen, performed Vernum’s music at the Moon & River Cafe in Schenectady. The show was part of an opening reception for an exhibit of Vernum’s visual art on view at the cafe throughout March.

“Darrell Vernum was loaded with talent, loaded with charisma and boundless energy,” said Richard Genest, the owner of Moon & River. He knew Vernum from the artist’s days of performing at Mother Earth's Cafe, Genest’s former Albany coffeehouse.

“His life burnt out too soon,” Genest added.

Allen recently started a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the recordings and the legal fees. He aims to raise $2,345 by April 8. In the future, should the recordings garner any money, Allen said he plans to give it to the local arts community and will create a nonprofit organization.

“I honor Darrell by giving it back to the community,” Allen said. “Anything to do with Darrell’s music will do good things.”

Beyond getting Vernum’s music out into the world, he wants to encourage other artists to plan for what they want done with their work once they die. Whether that means giving loved ones access to their accounts or leaving instructions for them, Allen urges artists to make a plan so their legacies won’t be lost.