Onward and Upward with the Musical Arts

Last Saturday night the band passed the first--and hardest--milestone. In this business a variety band is either making nothing (or close to it) or it’s making quite a bit. Saturday was our first outing into the latter territory, the lowest rung on that ladder, but still rich territiry for us.

We played at the Hyatt Regency on the south side of the Colorado River in Austin. We had about two-fifths of the Texas Ballroom. We hired a PA guy. (That didn’t stop me from using most of my own PA equipment and schlepping it--with help from Jim, his son and HIS girfriend--besides.) We had a nice stage, big enough--though just barely--to accommodate us.

We were: Chris on bari, John VdG on trumpet, Matt Walker on trombone, Jimmy on drums, Leroy on piano, Javier on guitar, Marty on bass, Janice singing. We didn’t quite synch to the tastes of the audience, a multi-campus string of nursery schools. They had it in mind to do lots of disco where the numerous unattached and attached females would dominate the dance floor in a company-wide dance ritual. We had the firepower though, although there was an odd moment when one of the partygoers (well along in the drinking) told me we were required to do a song by the Beastie Boys. All it should have talken was one look at the middle-aged band members to confirm that no Beastie Boys would be played that evening, no matter how drunk she got.

I’d forgotten how strange the role of bandleader was. Last time I was “It” for an extended period of time Brendan was just born (He’s 21 now.) I was leading a smallish big band in LA. Believe me, nothing’s changed. You still find the drunk and the abusive, pushing their musical agenda, which is something inevitably shaped by social forces rather than musical taste. Taste they no longer teach in school. YMCA they teach in school.

So we shrug our shoulders to each other, roll our eyes heavanward and stomp off a slightly more commercial subset of the musical universe. After all, that’s why we’re there, and if we can sneak in an occasional Sinatra number in the dinner set or a new chart on Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack,” well, we’ll be doing alright. The grins on our faces indicate that we have pulled down a good deal of money for this evening, elevated the music slightly in the process (like how incredibly great my new chart of “Last Dance” sounds), kept the dance floor reasonably full notwithstanding the open bar and the very long hours. The PA was reasonably well behaved. The band sounded great. It would be unreasonable to ask for more. Like the bandleader in "Young Man with a Horn" says, "This is a dance orchestra. No blues or low-down jive."

This is a milestone a band only goes through once. We made it. Next barrier is probably an out of town wedding where we gain cachet simply from being from Austin. It may take several months because so many people will be in holiday party mode for the rest of the year.

But we’re headed there.

Meanwhile, back in the music business . . .

Last Saturday night The Original Recipe Horns and my one-and-only brother played a show in Dallas with Mary Wilson and The Supremes. It was a hastilly assembled gig, but we were up to the job. The book was clean, the MD (Don, who used to play with Tower of Power!) knew his stuff.

Actually, John VdG and I were the only steady ORB horns on the gig, but Matt Walker played trombone--a guy I've been trying to work into the rotation for some time now. The tenor player, Stan Killian, is a frequent collaborator too. They needed a name for the horn section, so, looking around and counting noses, I found that we were pretty damn close to the ORB Horns. So be it. And so it was announced on the stage.

Jimmy played percussion, and he did a great job locking grooves with The Supremes' great touring drummer and bass player. This is the first time Jimmy's done work like this -- there was a lot of reading -- but he was more than equal to the task. He's got a long history of less than fulfilling gigs which usually are based on the blues, especially when the evening's pay is distributed. Now he's got a whole new standard by which to judge a gig, and that involves how well the band was treated, how much fun the gig was, what the pay turned out to be, what the "hang" was, and a lot of other subtleties. This gig for him was long overdue and richly deserved. Of course he KNEW ALL THE TUNES and that helps too! His encyclopediac knowlege of pop tunes astounds me. There's not been a gig I've been on with him that he hasn't saved at least one tune by dragging the rhythm section through a break they're unfamiliar with or saving a singer's bacon when a brain lock results in a dropped lyric.