That's because the Marion native has spent the better part of the last four decades practicing an art form that cannot be rushed- creating and perfecting sound with pipes as a professional organist and organ- builder.

While Tidwell moved back to Marion 10 years ago with plans to take a break from the organ business, now he's more devoted to his work than ever.

"As most people in the business will tell you, it's rather a disease," he said. "Once you have the bug, once you have the passion for it, you can't run away from it."

A developing passion

Tidwell's journey toward the organ began with a more conventional step.

"I started piano lessons, like most kids did, when I was 7," he said. "I took to music very well, although like most kids, I didn't like to practice."

Meanwhile, Tidwell became fascinated with the mechanical and musical workings of the pipe organ at his church in Caldwell, where his family had moved from Marion when Tidwell was 31/2.

"You can't take organ lessons until you have a pretty good piano background," he said.

So at 14, Tidwell began lessons with Grace Lowe in Caldwell.

"I practiced like I had never practiced on the piano," he said. "She taught me for about nine months and then said, 'I can't teach you anymore.'"

So Tidwell finished his high-school organ instruction with James Strand of Southwestern College in Winfield.

After a year of classes and lessons with the legendary Mildred Andrews at the University of Oklahoma, Tidwell transferred to the University of Kansas, where he majored in organ performance and studied with James Moeser.

As a sophomore, Tidwell enrolled in an upper-level organbuilding class with the artistic director of Lawrence's Reuter Organ Co., a major name in the organ-building industry.

"The artistic director of this company just took a shining to me," he said. "When I wasn't in class, I was at the company learning how to work on the pipes and make the sound. So by the time I graduated, I was hook, line and sinker."

A fine-tuned process

For Tidwell, there's nothing better than being able to create and control sound in an organ, which he said is not one instrument but actually "an organized collection of musical instruments-the pipes being the musical instruments."

Each pipe has a specific sound, pitch and tone quality-and it takes a lot of those pipes to make the vast variety of sounds that can come from one organ.

"Most organ keyboards have 61 notes, and it takes 61 pipes of graduated length and diameter to make just one sound," Tidwell said.

While 61 pipes makes one set, or rank, each organ possesses anywhere from a few sets of pipes to more than a hundred of them, making for thousands of individual pipes on just one large organ.

It's Tidwell's job to design the mechanical, visual and tonal aspects of the pipes and their casework so as to create both unity and harmony within the pipes.

"What I'm a specialist in doing is designing how those pipes are going to be built," he said, "not only so they make a consistent sound within themselves, but also within the various groups of pipes that you put together.

"They're all individual, but they all must work together just as a choral conductor would bring voices together."

How the organ is designed depends largely on the room in which it will be installed-usually a church sanctuary.

"I have to see every church I work in and sit in the room and determine how I will design the pipes for that room," Tidwell said.

"I've never done two organs that are even remotely similar in my career. Each one's different, each one reacts differently to the room it's in."

Each of the pipes, however, is made by the same method that's been used for hundreds of years.

"Various alloys of metal are poured in a flat sheet," he said. "And then the pipes are cut out of those in pieces, rounded up by hand and hand soldered."

After the pipes are constructed, an individual "voices" the pipes-listens to their sound and makes subtle adjustments to their shape to make them play the proper tone and pitch.

The voicer will also perform what is called tonal finishing to the pipes once they've been installed in their wooden casework in the building.

The voicing process is Tidwell's other specialty-and he continues to perform tonal finishing as part of supervising various projects.

A coast-to-coast career

Tidwell began his organbuilding career right out of college at Reuter Organ Co. He distinctly remembers his first big project-spending a week adjusting all the pipes on a new organ at a church in Arkansas City.

"That was my first step in the water," Tidwell said. "I had worked on pipes in the shop individually, but not in the church bringing it all together, except as a helper."

His subsequent career moves included graduate studies at the University of Colorado and nine years as tonal director of Schantz Organ Co. in Orrville, Ohio.

His work there culminated in the design, scaling and tonal finishing of a 100-rank organ at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

In 1996, Tidwell chose to leave his position at Schantz-and for a while, the field of organbuilding.

"I decided I was kind of burned out, and I wanted to get away from it," he said.

So Tidwell bought a house in Marion, where he has lived off and on for the past 10 years, and then decided to pursue graduate studies in journalism at KU.

Tidwell didn't finish the degree but instead got a job at the Salina Journal, where he worked for a year-and-a-half as a copyeditor.

"Music and writing are both matters of communication-they go hand-in-hand," he said. "What I didn't like about the newspaper was that it was a daily and it was too quick. I couldn't perfect.

"And I didn't have the passion," he added. "So I just slowly slipped right back into organbuilding."

This brings Tidwell to his current post-living in Marion and working independently as a consultant, designer and supervisor for organbuilding projects from coast to coast.

"I don't have a shop per se," he said. "At this point in my career it makes more sense, because I can use my talents to oversee projects rather than actually being involved in the day-to-day nitty gritty."

While he travels quite a bit for his work, he makes it a point not to be gone from Marion more than a week or two at a time-even though he may have to make multiple trips to complete a project.

One such long-running project-more than a decade now-is the Shaffer Memorial Organ at Westwood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, Calif.

"It's now the third largest pipe organ on the West Coast," Tidwell said. "Collectively in the last number of years, I've spent probably the equivalent of a year out there."

Frequent trips to places like Los Angeles afford him little time or energy to sightsee, especially when he's there to finish pipes.

"Part of what I do involves intense listening, and it's very tiring," he said. "I see the inside of a hotel and the inside of a church."

The Shaffer organ is one of several Tidwell has worked on that possesses both pipe and digital components-a growing trend.

"As prices have gone sky high and people have less money, there are more and more digital organs being built," he said.

Either way, it's not uncommon for a large organ to cost more than $2 million, Tidwell said.

But he believes the instrument is worth the price, as is the larger artistic industry that produces it.

"Sure, if you look at the pocketbook, the arts aren't very practical," he said. "But that's not what life's about. Life's not very practical."

While Tidwell knows that artistic preferences change with the times, most of his clients-largely mainline churches like Episcopal, United Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran-still value the timeless quality of his organs.

"A lot is changing in worship-more and more churches are getting way from the organ or they want it to blend in with more things," he said.

"But I don't run into a lot of that, because most of the churches I work in really want a pipe organ or a high-quality digital organ."

Tidwell is in the midst of several such projects, and with the exception of the Shaffer organ, most will take about a year of work from design to finish.

Tidwell recently designed an organ for the chapel at Coleridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Diane Bish of television's "The Joy of Music" does much of her taping.

Other recent projects have kept Tidwell much closer to home.

When Hyde Park Methodist Church of Wichita closed in 1999, Tidwell had the church's pipe organ moved to Eastmoor United Methodist Church in Marion.

"It fit perfectly," he said. "And it just so happened that it had been an instrument that I had been involved in originally in 1980."

And he's done several enlargements on the pipe organ at his own Valley United Methodist Church.

"That's been mainly a labor of love, because I play there," he said.

Tidwell would like to do more work in area churches to enhance old organs and build new ones.

"There are a number of fine instruments in this part of the country," he added. "I'm working on several projects in the state and working to expand what I do in this area."

In one way or another, Tidwell has been involved in the construction of about 300 organs in his career. In about half of those projects he's been "totally immersed," he said.

But Tidwell is hard pressed to pick favorites, he said.

"They're all like my children, scattered all over the country," he said. "And unfortunately, I don't get to enjoy them-usually you do all the work and then you leave."

Whenever he gets the chance, he returns to an instrument he's worked on, to play it and to tweak the pipes just one more time.

"It's like an artist's palette-it never quite dries," he said. "Being a perfectionist in an art that can't be perfect, there's not a project that I do that I could admit that I'm completely satisfied," he added. "And I don't think anybody really could be that's an artist-but there are practical limitations."

A place to call home

Out of his home in Marion, Tidwell's freelance work includes much more than his various organbuilding projects.

A frequent contributor to organ journals, Tidwell received in 1999 a grant that he's using to write a book about the late Lawrence Phelps, a pivotal figure in North American organbuilding during the last half of the 20th century.

"I'm documenting work of an organ builder that I studied with years ago," he said. "Now it's just a matter of finding the time to clean it up."

Tidwell also makes time to play his own pipe organ, whether he's learning new organ literature for his own enjoyment or to prepare for one of the many recitals he's given across the country.

"There are organists who do a lot more performing than I do, but I like to continually be learning new literature," he said. "And any given piece I might do in a concert might take a year or more to really learn and perfect."

Tidwell said he's got many hours of practice ahead for his upcoming March recital on the Shaffer organ in Los Angeles.

"Especially, it's satisfying to go do it in a place where you've actually been involved in the construction of the instrument," he said.

"That's a really big thrill, and it doesn't always happen."

Tidwell said eventually he'd also like to make another recording of his music to add to the one he produced nearly a decade ago.

People are surprised to find out Tidwell does not compose any organ music of his own, he said.

"I don't play by ear-I have to have the notes," he said. "On the other hand, I read very well and I can learn very quickly.

"I don't have anything near perfect pitch," he added. "What I have is very sensitive listening skills."