Band Back Together

Sometimes I entertain the notion of giving up the Baritone Horn. I've been playing since I was ten years old, and every year take a break through the Winter as most of my gigs are outdoors. When the time comes to get up early on a Saturday or Sunday, drive my father and another musician out East, to Brooklyn, or some other destination, I don't always look forward to it. It's not like I have better things to do on the weekend though, and there have been a few rare occasions in recent years that I've actually missed a job to do something fun like play paintball or hang out with my college friends whom I don't see as often as I'd like.

My father is 77 years old. Through a strict diet, regular exercise, artery-cleaning Chelation, and just the awesome stubbornness flowing through our family's blood, he proved doctors wrong who gave him a few years to live without heart bypass surgery. Exercise and music are good for him, though the older he gets the more trouble he gets into without supervision. A little over a week ago, for example, while I was at work and my mom was eating breakfast, he decided to trim some trees and fell off a ladder. For days his back hurt, and he wasn't sure he would make our first parade, an early St. Patrick's Day job out on the island. As the week went on, he felt better, and we went ahead as planned.

“Do you want to pack it in this year?” he asked me, out of the blue, as we were heading off to pick up our friend Bill, the trumpet player. He admitted that he was getting old, and thinking about giving it up. I was defensive, because in a recent argument with my mom about something else, I may have said something to the effect that I only play to keep my dad happy. He had been nagging me a lot last weekend about practicing. I worried that she told him what I'd said in a moment of anger. The truth is, while sometimes I do toy with the idea of quitting, my dad's not the only reason I do it. If, for some reason, I ever found myself unemployed for an extended period of time, it would be nice to have some income to supplement my savings while I looked for another job. And, while there are times I dread getting up and trekking out to a gig, once I'm on the street in front of a cheering crowd, I find it a little intoxicating.

Bill is an entertaining storyteller and a very smart guy, about all things save smoking. A few years older than my dad with a rasping cough, he's too old to quit and too stubborn to admit it's not good for him. “One thing I never did is chain smoke, like my uncle...” he boasted on the way to Saturday's engagement. He went on to say he doesn't smoke more than a pack a day, which led me to ask how many cigarettes are in pack; I didn't know. He didn't seem to think twenty cigarettes a day was a bad thing.

It was good to see the rest of the band and catch up. The bandleader's son, our snare drummer, was jubilant in the fact that his self-proclaimed “girlfriend-fiancée-whatever” officially became his fiancée this past Valentine's Day. The bandleader himself had other concerns, wanting to sell his house to keep up with expenses but unable to because his family didn't want him to, and because his son was planning on moving back in after he got married. He shared some of his other burdens, and I did my best to encourage him. A very wise woman told me the other day that there are many things in life that we can't control, but our attitude is the one thing we can always have control over. A positive attitude in the face of adversity is the strongest survival mechanism we have as human beings. Also, ever since I saw Barnyard this week I've been unable to get Tom Petty's ”I Won't Back Down”(as sung by Sam Elliot) out of my head. That song does wonders for one's attitude, especially in the context of that movie. Music has power.

The particular group I was with on Saturday is an Italian band, more ethnically diverse in its membership than its songs. Our bass drummer quipped about some bagpipers that “real men don't wear skirts”, a comment said from the safety of the van bringing us to the beginning of the parade. “Skirts” or not, he wasn't going to risk a reenactment of Braveheart. In a rare development, we were in the first division and didn't have long to wait as the second or third group in the parade. Our first number, an Italian standard, scared an enormous Great Dane who turned around, stood up, and put his front legs on his owner's shoulders like they were dancing while glancing nervously back at us and making his best Scooby-Doo face. I would say he was over six feet tall on his hind legs. I wished I had my camera with me, even though I wouldn't have been able to stop and photograph him anyway.

Amid Italian festival songs and American marches, we worked in McNamara's Band and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, the only Irish songs these guys had music for. I know a few others by ear, but not everyone in our group can play by memory. Those songs were a big hit, for some reason especially so when we passed crowds in front of bars.

The band is back together. When it was over, we got a list of dates for this year. The new season has begun. Soon, the phone will be ringing and other groups will be calling us. Every year, I have moments where I think about giving it all up. Every year, the music flows out of me and I know that I will never give it up. I won't back down.