EDITORIAL: Government v. Noise, Part Two

Read Part One

First, a disclosure. I’ve been playing in rock bands here in Pagosa since the late 1990s. Typically, our venues have been bars and restaurants.

The Bear Creek Saloon, for example, was a prominent entertainment venue until it was destroyed by fire in 2016. That particular fire consumed the amplifiers and sound equipment owned by the musicians performing that evening: the Brooks-i Band.

My bandmates and I have had the privilege of playing at other Pagosa venues as well.

Shooters & Shenanigans, Pagosa Brewing, Coyote Moon, The Pink Coyote, Wolfe Brewing, JJ’s Riverfront, The Lift, Victoria’s Parlor, Kip’s Grill, The Buffalo Inn, Pagosa Brew Pub, Nello’s, La Taqueria de San Juan, Cafe Cuernavaca, On the Rocks, Bogey’s, Pagosa Baking Company, Rez Hill Grill, the Pagosa Lodge, the Springs Resort. To name a few.

Some of the above-named venues have since gone out of business, or changed their names, but many of the musicians are still here, and are still willing to play for audiences large and small.

We’ve also entertained people in Town Park, at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts, on Lewis Street under a tent, at the County Fair, at the Harman Art Museum, on the putting green at the Pagosa Golf Club, and on the football field at Pagosa Springs High School. We’ve played in private homes and on front lawns, and in bank parking lots.

One of Pagosa Springs’ most popular rock bands: Ragwater.

My current band — The Retro Cats — has played numerous times at one particular venue mentioned above: Shooters & Shenanigans. Shooters is an entertainment venue which includes a restaurant, a bar, and a mini-golf course. The bar and dance floor are in a semi-enclosed building with doors and walls that open to the outdoors during pleasant weather.

Shooters has one of the larger dance floors in the community, and a roomy stage to accommodate the performers. Presumably, people spend time at Shooters because they enjoy listening to, and dancing to, live music. I’ve personally witnessed Shooters patrons happily dancing to rock music while smiling and singing along. We’re not clear whether the patrons actually prefer very loud music, as opposed to relatively quiet music, but we do know that, generally speaking, rock musicians prefer to play loud music. Rock music has a long tradition of being performed at heightened volume levels, courtesy of electronic amplifiers that — if misused — are capable of causing permanent hearing loss in persons standing too close to the speakers.

Shooters is located within the Town boundaries — within a fairly narrow strip of commercial area along Highway 160 which the Town government annexed back in the 1990s. The Shooters entertainment venue is, meanwhile, surrounded by areas that were never annexed into the Town. Those neglected areas are primarily residential.

In 2018, the Pagosa Springs Police Department received complaints from residents who lived in the vicinity of Shooters & Shenanigans, but who — apparently — were not residents of the Town. According to a lawsuit filed by the owners of the restaurant, police would then approach Shooters’ managing partner, Chris Blas, and request that he ask the musicians to turn down their volume. The lawsuit claims that Mr. Blas consistently complied with those police requests.

Nevertheless, the Town police ultimately issued two ‘noise disturbance’ citations to Mr. Blas. The citations were reportedly based on Chapter 13 of the Town Municipal Code.

The lawsuit filed in District Court in early April, on behalf of Mr. Blas, summarizes pertinent sections of the Town’s Municipal Code:

a) The Town Council finds and determines that the making and creating of excessive, unnecessary or unusually loud noises within the Town limits that are prolonged, unusual or unreasonable in their time, place and use are a detriment to the public health, comfort, convenience, safety and welfare of the residents of the Town and may cause damage to property or business. (Sec. 13.1.1)

b) Excessively loud sound means any sound that injures, disturbs or endangers the health or safety of any person with normal sensitivities. (Sec. 13.1.2)

c) Unreasonable noise means any sound that disturbs, injures or endangers the peace or health of another or endangers the health, safety or welfare of the community. (Sec. 13.1.2)

d) Plainly audible means any sound produced by a live performance […], loudspeaker or any other mechanical or electronic sound making or sound amplifying device, or instrument, that can be clearly heard by a person using his or her normal hearing faculties. (Sec. 13.1.2)

We are going to take a moment to consider the concept of ‘unreasonable noise.’

I mentioned, in Part One, the Noise Control Act of 1972 which led to the initial efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess, analyze, and regulate the noise coming from airports large and small, as well as the noise coming from railroad trains and motor carriers engaged in interstate commerce.

There’s no doubt that planes and trains and interstate motor carriers create ‘noise’, and that the ‘noise’ created can be disturbing and even dangerous to US citizens.

But we can, if we care to be so thoughtful, easily draw a distinction between the sound of a jet engine — measurable at perhaps 110 decibels at a distance of 100 meters — and the sound of a local rock ‘n roll band playing ‘Born to Be Wild’ at perhaps 90 decibels when measured at 100 meters distance.

According to scientists who study psychoacoustics, the sound of the jet plane would be perceived by the average person as about “4 times” louder than the local rock band. (A increase of 10 decibels is perceived as about “twice as loud.” An increase of 20 decibels would thus be perceived as about “4 times louder.”)

But there’s another (potentially crucial?) difference between a jet plane and a rock band.

The sound from the jet plane is “noise.” The unpleasant sound is the unfortunate by-product of a jet engine, which is constructed — not to make loud sounds — but rather to provide forward momentum for the plane. The loud sound from a jet engine is “unwanted noise.”

The music from a local rock band, meanwhile, is extremely intentional. The rock band exists for the very purpose of making loud, musical sounds for the entertainment of their audience. The sounds from the rock band’s amplifiers are not the unfortunate by-products of some other process. The sounds are the product itself.

We can easily differentiate — if we so desire — between a sound that is “noise” and a sound that is “music.”

But can an elected government board tell the difference between “noise” and “music”?

More importantly: can the attorneys hired to draft the laws which are then approved by an elected government board, tell the difference? That’s the real question.

Read Part Three…

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can't seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.