Alumna helps keep the unique sounds ringing

As a singer and writer of children’s music, Lois (Jordan) LaFond ’67 has traveled around the country performing her work and working in music education. One of her most unique accomplishments, however, didn’t come in front of an audience. It came on the outskirts of a tiny town in Colorado inside an old, steel water-treatment tank, now known as The Tank Center for Sonic Arts.

LaFond’s work with The Tank started shortly after her friend and fellow musician Bruce Odland was introduced to the structure.

Odland, LaFond relates, was working with the Colorado Council of the Arts in the 1970s when two oil workers told him they wanted to show him something. They drove him to Rangely, Colo., a tiny town with 2,000 residents, one stoplight, and this tank in middle of nowhere. They opened a small hatch door to an 18-inch portal and told Odland to shimmy his way inside.

“When he got inside the tank, they started smacking the side of the tank with two-by-fours and the rest is history,” said LaFond. The musician in Odland immediately recognized the tank was the perfect place to explore sound through his music. Since then, LaFond, Odland and group of friends has been working to preserve the space and create an environment where musicians would come to learn and record.

The tank, located on the edge of town, stands 67-feet tall and is 37-feet in diameter. The sounds and tones change based on many factors, including temperature inside and outside. An echo in the tank can last for 30 seconds and change as it reverberates.

“When the tank was built, it was set on pea gravel,” LaFond said. “As the weight settled into this spot, it bowed the steel floor of the tank. There are no straight lines. The sound is like nowhere else.”

In 2012, the tank was on the verge of being demolished for scrap. At that time, those associated with it decided it was the time to develop the structure into what they knew it could be. For several years, they raised funds to build a road, secure the property, run electricity and lights, build a recording studio and add ventilation and a door — all without compromising the integrity of the structure.

Forty years after Odland’s introduction to it, The Tank was formally opened on the summer solstice in 2016.

While The Tank draws people from around the world, the residents of Rangely have historically been a bit suspect of the new visitors it brings. The heavily conservative area is made up largely of oil and gas workers. LaFond serves as a community liaison and works with many of the townspeople to develop positive relationships.

“We are answering the question ‘How do we take these two cultures and help them work together?’” LaFond said. “We are figuring out in this world, and in this time, how we make use of each other’s talents and perspectives and make the world work better.”

The structural support and program funding for The Tank has been funded in the past primarily through campaigns on the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter. Now, however, the organization is seeking grants and other donations.

The Tank is becoming a place for the public to explore music, LaFond said. Tank outreach programs have brought in residents of an assisted living center and elementary school students to introduce them to the magic of The Tank’s acoustics. In the future, the coordinators hope to bring in those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and veterans as well as those on the Autism spectrum.

And, of course, it’s a place where artists gather.

“The Tank has attracted sonic artists, musicians and explorers from around the world who recognize it is an opportunity like no other,” LaFond said.

To read more about The Tank and to hear music recorded there, visit tanksounds.org