Every June for the past five years I’ve made the 325-mile
trip from The Morrissey Compound in Madison to my friend Tom Plummer’s house in
Lake City, Iowa. It’s a place similar to Hortonville, the small Wisconsin
village where I grew up. I chuckle every time I turn off Iowa Highway 4 at
Highway 175 and hit the city limits. The sign says “Lake City: Everything But A
Lake”. Iowa humor, I guess.
Tom is the music man of Lake City; once again this year, his
high school Jazz Band won the Iowa State Jazz Championships. Tom has more state
championships than just about anybody, with the possible exception of his
mentor, Larry “Boomer” Kisor, who established the kind of dynasty at Sioux City
North High School that Tom has at Southern Cal High School in Lake City.
For those who haven’t followed my annual reports on these
treks west through tall corn country, Tom is a fellow tuba player who grew up
listening to me (and a bunch of guys a lot better than me) play tuba with
various bands on LP albums. Remember vinyl LP albums? Big, flat, round black
discs that preceded CD’s.
Back around 2009 or so, Tom tracked me down via Facebook,
and after establishing via social media that we have a zillion other things in
common besides tuba playing, in 2011 our friendship changed from virtual to
actual, when I made the first trip to his house for a weekend of watching
baseball and having a few beers and playing tuba.
In the seven years that we’ve been friends, we’ve both gone
through a number of life changes. Tom met a wonderful woman, Wilma, a couple
years ago, and got remarried. Both my kids got married and both have given my
long-suffering wife and me grandchildren. Tom's son, Lee, married his girlfriend Rachel last December. Two great "kids" and both fine musicians. Life moves along.
Tom and I are both dog-lovers, and one of the first things that
happens when I arrive at Tom and Wilma’s house is the annual tug-of-war with
Tom’s dog Hank. That’s little Tiger looking on. We watch Cubs baseball and do
some catch-up visiting after I arrive early Friday afternoon.
A lot of people who know me now have no idea that for years,
I was a musician, and did hundreds of TV shows, dozens of recording sessions,
and toured domestically and internationally with various groups. My mentor,
Ernie Broeniman, another tuba player, opened the musical doors for me when he
took me under his wing at Hortonville High School in 1962, and for more than 20
years I performed regularly. Then, broadcasting became my sole focus.
I sold my “axe”, as musicians call their instrument, and
broadcasting took me all around the country – again. When I met Tom, he
inspired me to buy a horn, practice, and Tom has even made it possible for me
to do some playing again.
This time, it was once again with Malek’s Fishermen Band, a
first-rate territory band that books out of Garner, Iowa. Syl Malek founded the
band with his brother Ed in the 1930’s; and two generations of Maleks still
play with the band: Bob and his son Eric, and frequently, Eric’s wife Kimberly.
The gig was at the famous Hessen Haus in downtown Des Moines.
Tom and I loaded up a tuba, a trumpet, and a bunch of other
stuff in my venerable Road Warrior SUV in the middle of the afternoon Saturday
and we headed southeast for a two-hour trip from Lake City to Des Moines. Since
my regular gig-playing days are long gone – the last regular gig I had was a
marathon recording session in 1984 where I laid down about 28 tracks for two LP
albums – a lot of what I do now consists mainly of playing along with CD’s in
my music room at home.
Tom and I talked on our way to Des Moines about “the gig
experience”, and how it’s really impossible to recreate that experience when
you’re sitting behind your horn in your music room, playing along with CD’s.
There’s a whole gestalt surrounding the gig experience, from the trip to the
venue, the load-in, to the setup, the mike checks, to the actual gig itself and
the camaraderie and musicianship involved, to the load-out and the trip home.
Above is a nice shot Tom took of me at the gig, sitting behind
Tom’s horn. Tuba guys are used to photos like this – try as you might, that big
horn usually hides us. But you can see Charlie, the keyboard man, that’s Dale
Baker behind the drum kit; Bob Malek is the distinguished gentleman in the
center, and at the right, that’s Eric Malek, strapping on a classic concertina
which once belonged to Elmer Scheid.
For those not familiar with old-time music, the drummer,
keyboard player, and tuba guy often do not have sheet music to guide them. Like
the concertina player, they know the tunes from memory. For some of the
ensemble tunes, there’s often a “chord sheet” for the bass player, and you
improvise a bass line based on the chord structure and progressions of the
melody.
I have now had to face the hard fact that my playing these
days will never be near as good as it was back in the 60’s through the 80’s. I
took way too many years off, not touching a horn from 1988 to 2011, and that
23-year break – along with a life-threatening bout with pneumonia in 1995 – has
taken a steep toll. My “road chops” are long gone, and my lungs just don’t move
as much air as they used to.
As I’ve said to Tom many times, it’s a blast to be able to
play again, but the frustrating part is not being able to do it anywhere near
as well as I used to be able to. Tom was kind enough to make some videos, and
here’s one on which I’m playing almost passably. There’s another video Tom made
– which I will NOT link to – of me attempting to play “Echoes In The Hills”
with Eric Malek, and resorting to the dreaded “search bass” mode, where the
tuba player just can’t figure out the chord changes and clumsily plays various
notes looking for the dominant chord (or even the tonic or sub-dominant chord)
with no success.
On the other end of the performance spectrum, my friend Tom
plays every tune flawlessly, with tremendous tone and range and really
interesting improvised bass lines. And Bob and Eric Malek, whether they’re
playing trumpet or trombone, blend perfectly. They have mastered many styles of
performance, and it’s a real treat to hear those two perform perfectly together
on song after song.
A big part of the gig experience is the crowd. At the Hessen
Haus on this particular Saturday night, there are a small core of dancers who
are there to start the night, but then an hour or so into the gig, a bunch of
college kids – from Drake University, or Iowa State, or the U of Iowa, I’m not
sure which – come in to drink boots of German beer and they really liven the
place up. They hoot and holler and dance, and that really fuels the band.
Eric, who fronts the band, has fun with the crowd by making
outrageously false statements after some of the tunes. For example, the band
will play a Dixieland standard like “When The Saints Go Marchin’ In” and Eric
will say “another great tune from the fabulous Broadway musical ‘Guys and Dolls’”.
Once he followed a classic old-time waltz with the announcement that it was
from “South Pacific”. He turns to me afterward and says “they have no idea!” and
we share a laugh. That’s another part of the gig experience that just can’t be
duplicated!
It makes no difference what kind or style of music you’re
playing at a live gig – rock, country, old-time, whatever – a good crowd
absolutely makes the band sound better. You feel the energy and your playing
goes up a notch. After the college kids move on to their next adventure for the
night, a bridal party comes in, and merriment ensues. They get right into the
spirit and sing and dance along with the band.
Another part of the gig experience is the repartee among the
musicians during the engagement. Stories are told during the short breaks
between sets, observations are made, jokes are told, pranks are played. During
one of the breaks, Eric and Tom are talking about how musicians speak of each
other. Eric says “you know you can’t play for squat when people say ‘oh, he’s a
really great guy’ or something like that.” Tom agrees heartily, saying unless
the first words to describe a musician are about his or her skill, they’re not
that good a player.
The four-hour gig comes to a close, and the drudgery of
packing up and loading out begins. Eric takes some pictures for the band’s
Facebook page, and he took the picture above of “the tuba guys”, Tim and Tom.
The van is loaded, good-bye’s are said, and another gig is in the books.
Since my night vision is so crappy the last few years, Tom
gets behind the wheel of my venerable Road Warrior SUV and we start the two-hour
journey back to Lake City. It’s a long, desolate drive through miles and miles
of flat land with only a few towns to break the vistas of corn and soybeans, but Tom and I talk
non-stop through the Iowa night. A clear sky and a nearly full moon are our
companions.
We talk about life, our kids, our wonderful spouses, and, of
course, about music. About how in the world of old-time, like many other
idioms, artful performance depends on the “feel” of the musicians playing the
tune, and how it’s really impossible to notate that feel. We talk about how Bob
and Eric Malek play the old Blossom Waltz with an “eastern Wisconsin”
interpretation, like the old Bernie Roberts band or the Don Schleis Band played
it. You simply cannot put notes on manuscript paper that reflect the way they
interpret the melody.
Whether it’s jazz, Dixieland, big-band, or old-time, so much
of the performance depends on the stylistic nuances – the rhythmic feel – which
simply cannot be put into musical notes on paper. Sometimes it’s just ahead of,
or just slightly behind the beat, that gives the feel; sometimes it’s bending a
note a certain way, as in blues; but that’s the kind of thing that separates “he’s
a great player” from “he’s a great guy”.
Finally we arrive in Lake City and pull into the parking lot behind Tom’s new band room at
Southern Cal High School and put the tuba and trumpet and the other stuff away. Then it’s back to Tom and Wilma’s house, where I’ll grab a few hours of
sleep and start the six hour trip back to Madison as soon as the sun comes
up. This year, I’ll have to miss the Sunday noon tradition of beef roast and
veggies in the crock pot.
Next year, perhaps.
But one thing’s certain: it’ll be fun,
and we’ll make more great memories.