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Duly noted — idea man and workhorses bring new attraction to David Grohl Alley
Photo
Warren artist Aaron Chine, left, poses with some of the 12 metal musical notes that were welded at the David Grohl Alley in Warren. With Chine are Joe O’Grady, center, who came up with the idea, and Tim Drummond, who helped with the project.
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Joe O’Grady is the ultimate “ideas” guy. It’s just a little difficult sometimes for the nuts-and-bolts guys who help him carry out his ideas to keep up.
Fortunately for O’Grady, he found people who could make another one of his ideas come to life when Warren artist Aaron Chine and his father, welder Lou Chine, volunteered to weld 12 metal musical notes into the newest attraction in David Grohl Alley.
The alley, an art-filled tribute to David Grohl, the Warren-born Foo Fighters singer and songwriter, is just south of Courthouse Square.
O’Grady persuaded his girlfriend to contact Kenny Greco, a Youngstown-area steel company owner and musician, a month ago, and Greco agreed to fabricate the notes at his H.R. Evans shop in East Palestine and deliver them to Warren.
On May 18, the Chines, O’Grady, Tim Drummond, a downtown silk-screen T-shirt business owner, and others worked all day to lift and weld the pieces into place.
Most of the pieces weighed about 160 pounds, taxing the men’s strength.
But before the third of 12 pieces was in place, O’Grady was already discussing how the pieces should be finished — painted or left natural and any other touches that should be added.
Aaron Chine, also a welder, said the difficult nature of assembling the entire project in one day was taxing enough, and that he wanted to wait to discuss the finishing touches.
Fortunately, Lou Chine provided much of the fuel to complete the job so quickly, Aaron said.
“This realistically should have taken a couple of weeks, but my dad’s an unbelievable workhorse,” Aaron said. “To do something like this with my dad — in 20 years, I’ll be able to walk through that alley and say, ‘I remember when me and my dad busted that out in one day,’” he said.
O’Grady says he appreciates the effort required to install the work because the lifting took its toll on his body as well. “It took me two days to recover,” the retired Warren police officer said.
Close to a week later, while posing for photos at the 50-foot-long and nearly 10-foot-high artwork, O’Grady and Aaron Chine had that discussion about what finishing touches will be used to complete the work.
The guardrail it is attached to will be painted black, and the side facing the Burger King drive-through also will be painted.
But the side facing the alley will remain raw and unfinished — symbolic of Warren.
“It’s steel city. It’s Warren, steel town, and I love the look of aged metal,” Aaron Chine said.
As for the arrangement of the musical notes, Drummond, also a musician, says he helped with that, but the arrangement is not a Foo Fighters song.
“That’s the first question people ask,” Aaron Chine said of whether the notes play a specific tune.
“It will play something, but it’s more for a visual effect,” Drummond added.