Tony Schaffer, assistant director of the UCM Writing Center, is also an accomplished musician who travels the world with The Auctioneers. He also performs with UCM art professor Mick Leurhman and music professor John Check, who played during the Smithsonian's "New Harmonies" exhibit last Friday.

WARRENSBURG, Mo.--When Tony Shaffer was in high school, his academic advisor asked him what he wanted to do with his life. Shaffer said he didn’t know, so the advisor asked him what he liked to do for fun.

Shaffer answered, “Fishing.” You can’t make a living doing that, the advisor said. So Shaffer tried a different answer.

“Writing,” he said. “You can’t make a living doing that, either,” the advisor responded.

Shaffer offered another answer, “Music.” His advisor told him he couldn’t make a living doing that, either, and that he’d have to come up with something else.

Turns out, though, that Shaffer has been making a living-- doing all three of those things-- ever since.

Today, Shaffer is assistant director of the Writing Center and instructor of two Academic Enrichment writing courses at the University of Central Missouri.

He doubles as a musician, who travels the globe playing gigs, most often with the band of, famous Missouri artist, Leroy Van Dyke. He still makes time to fish, and – get this – he’s even written a book about fishing.

Shaffer joined his first band when he was 15, and he’s never stopped playing. Primarily, he plays guitar – acoustic, base and electric 12-string – but he can also play pedal steel, dobro, harp and mandolin.

He had his own band for more than 10 years, but for the past 17 years, he’s played bass and guitar with Leroy Van Dyke’s band, The Auctioneers. Van Dyke is known internationally for songs such as “Auctioneer” and “Walk on By”--which has been certified by Billboard magazine as the most-played country song ever, based on sales and airplay.

With The Auctioneers, Shaffer has played with “well over 100 bands,” backing up Country Gold Tour shows at fairs and festivals. Leroy and his wife Gladys arrange the trademarked Country Gold Tour, which includes anywhere from two to 12 classic country performers per show, and The Auctioneers provide the music for all the acts.

Shaffer has gotten to play at the famed Grand Ole Opry in Nashville with The Auctioneers three or four times now. They have also provided music for package artists on the Rural Free Delivery television network.

Shaffer and Van Dyke are both from Sedalia, Mo., but the two didn’t meet until a mutual booking-agent friend introduced them at a state fair convention, telling Van Dyke that if he ever needed a fill-in musician, Shaffer could play any instrument.

Shaffer toured Canada and Germany with Van Dyke in the early ‘90s as a fill-in on bass, then kept playing shows with the band after returning to the States, until he was just named an official band member.

“He’s one of the most diverse, dedicated, qualified professionals that has ever worked with us,” Van Dyke said about Shaffer. “He’s very versatile, and he will do whatever it takes to make a show successful.”

Van Dyke said Shaffer is an integral part of The Auctioneers. He writes all the chord charts for the Country Gold Tour. A chord chart is the “road map of a song” that shows the performers the structure of a song’s chords, Van Dyke said.

The classic country artists Shaffer has played for over the years include Bobby Bare, Mo Bandy and T.G. Sheppard, to name a few. He also toured Europe with the blues band King Alex and the Untouchables in 2002. He’s been to Europe a half-dozen times to play shows, he said, and he’s also toured in Australia.

He also went to England once as a visiting teacher. Shaffer began his career in academia when he took his job at the UCM Writing Center in 1994. He said his job there is a natural fit, because it’s similar to what he did, giving private music lessons in the ‘80s and ‘90s, helping students build technique, except this time it’s in writing, not music.

Besides his job at the Writing Center, Shaffer teaches two classes at UCM, the Academic Enrichment class “Ways of Thinking,” and a new Intro to Graduate Writing class that he helped develop. The graduate writing class will focus on individual areas of study each semester; this debut semester is for nursing grad students.

Shaffer also co-teaches a Peer Tutoring class that students must take before they start working as Writing Center tutors.

Writing Center adjunct faculty member Adrianne Freeman took the peer tutoring class six years ago as an undergrad, and has been working with Shaffer at the center ever since, through grad school and now as a faculty member.

As a writing instructor, Shaffer is “really relaxed and fun,” Freeman said. “You learn a lot from him, without even realizing it. It’s like you’re just having a conversation with him, but he’s teaching you all these things.” Shaffer’s casual, personable style has proved very efficient at the Writing Center, where students drop in for help writing and revising their academic papers.

Freeman also goes to see Shaffer play once or twice every semester. He plays now and then at some Warrensburg establishments, including Players and Bottomfeeders Bay, plus he plays at campus events sometimes in a trio with UCM art professor Mick Luehrman and music professor John Check.

Shaffer has quite a time juggling his career in music with his career in academia. He does both year-round, sometimes driving all night to make it back to Warrensburg in time for work after playing a distant gig. He takes off on weekends and plays multiple shows all over the Midwest.

Once, maybe twice a year, something goes wrong transportation-wise that strands him somewhere, he said. He’s had to play handyman a few times to get his truck, van, RV, etc., moving again.

“There are certain things you’ve got to do to make the things you want to do work,” Shaffer said.

He takes his laptop with him out on the road to keep up with his classes and help students with their writing via email. “I’ve answered emails in airports, hotels, you name it,” he said. “The tricky thing is trying to make sure there’s Internet access everywhere I go.”

Schaffer (left), Check (center), and Luehrman (right), make up the trio that performed during the exhibit at the Old Courthouse.

“I never take my laptop fishing, though,” Shaffer said with a laugh.

Shaffer has recorded two CDs in his musical career. His book, The Spring Branch: a long poem about fly fishing, life, a good dog, and form," was published in 2004. It’s a book about Shaffer’s life, written in free verse. There are no page numbers -that’s sort of how Shaffer does things.

On top of the music, teaching, fishing and traveling, Shaffer has also built musical instruments – guitars, banjos, etc. – for himself and for other people. He also makes fly rods, and bakes his own bread -when he has time. There’s a bread machine in the Writing Center, although it hasn’t been used much lately. After all, Shaffer’s a busy man.

“I haven’t had a vacation since 1976,” he commented wryly. “But what would I do on vacation, other than the things I do anyway?”