[Dixielandjazz] The Boys In The Band Are In AARP

[Steve Barbone]

You know you are getting REAL OLD when the old boys are practicing Rock &
Roll in garages all over the USA.

Move over Trad Jazz Garage Bands it's Deja Vu all over again. (Yogi Berra)

Omigod, what's next? The formation of R & R Societies for the preservation
of R & R and the resultant festivals? :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

The Boys in the Band Are in AARP

Large Color Photo of and Old Boy band practicing in a Garage

THOSE CRAZY GROWN-UPS Gloria O¹Connell listens to Wall Street, the band that
includes her husband, Bob, as it practices at the O¹Connells¹ home in
Metuchen, N.J. 

NY TIMES - By KATIE HAFNER - June 17, 2007

DARREN REIS isn¹t opposed to the band practice that takes place in his house
every Tuesday night. But there¹s only so much loud rock music he is willing
to tolerate. So when the umpteenth rendition of the Monkees¹ ³Last Train to
Clarksville² starts rattling the windows, he goes downstairs, knocks on the
door and makes his entreaty: ³Dad, do you think you guys could keep it down?
I¹m trying to study.²

The classic American midlife crisis has found a new outlet: garage-band rock
¹n¹ roll. Baby boomers across the country ‹ mostly middle-aged dads who
never quite outgrew an obsession with the music of their youth ‹ are
cranking up their amps and living their rock ¹n¹ roll fantasies.

The Tennyson Seven in Palo Alto, Calif., is typical. The two-year-old band
includes Darren¹s dad, Rob Reis, 53, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who gets
together once a week with five other amateur rock ¹n¹ rollers ‹ some
more-experienced musicians than others ‹ to play the musical comfort food of
their generation: the Beatles, Van Morrison, the Monkees and the Romantics.

The band won¹t be signing with Virgin Records any time soon. But that¹s
beside the point. With one son at college and Darren, 17, finishing high
school next year, Mr. Reis said he can think of no better way to spend
middle age. ³What do other people do?² he asked, as if only vaguely aware of
his other options, none of which appeal to him in the least. ³A fancy car?
An affair?²

Mr. Reis has plenty of company. In his town alone, there is a profusion of
such bands. The Tennyson Seven recently sent out e-mail messages to several
Palo Alto schools offering to play free of charge at some fund-raising
events. The reply, Mr. Reis said, was, ³No thanks, we have our own dad band
that plays for us.²

Mike Lynd, 55, who lives just north of Palo Alto in Redwood City, plays
bass, drums and guitar in a six-person band called Space Available. Mr.
Lynd, who has a day job as a marketing writer at Deloitte & Touche, said
nothing quite compares to the therapeutic aspects of practicing riffs with a
group of like-minded rock aficionados.

³I don¹t know what has done me more good ‹ Lexapro or Thursday nights
jamming with the band,² Mr. Lynd said. ³You¹re working out a whole lot more
than chord patterns when you¹re playing music together.²

NAMM, a trade group that represents music retailers and equipment
manufacturers, has noticed the increasing numbers of middle-aged rockers,
and now oversees what it calls the Weekend Warriors program, a six-weekend
series designed specifically for baby boomers to get back into playing in a
band ‹ or start playing in one. The program brings would-be rockers into
music stores around the country and provides gear, rehearsal space, coaches
and, for those in need, additional band members.

Joe Lamond, the chief executive of NAMM, started the program when he was
working in a music store in Sacramento and began noticing a change in the
store¹s clientele. ³I started seeing customers coming in who you¹d think
would have been shopping for their kids,² he said. ³But they were shopping
for themselves.² 

Mr. Lamond said the program has burgeoned in recent years, as the rock ¹n¹
rollers of the ¹60s and ¹70s become empty nesters with time and disposable
income on their hands.

Nostalgia provides the backbeat for this movement. ³The music we carry
through our lifetimes is music we listen to in our late teens and early 20s,
because it was such an emotional time,² Mr. Lamond said. ³That music is
literally locked into your system ‹ your brain, your body, your emotions.²

For those now in their 50s wanting to turn back the clock, that means
playing ³Brown Eyed Girl² and ³I Saw Her Standing There.² And ³Mustang
Sally,² in the key of C.

³We recommend ŒMustang Sally¹ as a good starter song,² Mr. Lamond said. ³A
bad starter song is anything by Steely Dan, or Frank Zappa. Or Yes.²

Part of recapturing lost innocence means laboring under an illusion or two.
Mr. Lamond recommends that the practice rooms be free of mirrors. ³You don¹t
want to be playing your guitar, feeling like you¹re 20 all over again, then
look in a mirror and see some paunchy balding guy,² Mr. Lamond said.

Not only do many spouses approve of the bands, some even participate. Rob
Reis¹s wife, Julie, 54, is a singer in the Tennyson Seven.

And when such bands get the occasional gig, the faces in the audience tend
to skew to the band¹s own demographic, a fact that helps determine song
choice. Mike Brown, who was trained as a classical pianist and came to rock
¹n¹ roll a bit late in life as the keyboardist for the Palo Alto band the
Wildcats, said his band¹s repertory is easily recognizable, with a staple of
Beatles and Doobie Brothers. ³We want everyone to know the song in the first
couple of notes,² he said.

Playing together can also bring about some corporate bonding. Bryan Stapp,
44, the chief marketing officer for Quicken Loans, an online mortgage
company in Detroit, has been playing guitar since he was 15. A father of
four, Mr. Stapp is in a band called the Loaners with three of his
colleagues.

When the Loaners are playing at company events and they start in on a Led
Zeppelin song, or even Bruce Springsteen or AC/DC, sometimes the company¹s
chief executive, Bill Emerson, jumps in for the vocals. ³It¹s a great thing
when your chief executive is singing an AC/DC song,² Mr. Stapp said. The
Loaners were recently chosen to play at the Detroit International River Days
festival later this month, opening for Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers
Band. 

There are a few advantages to being an aging rocker. For all its attendant
angst, midlife can be a surprisingly stable platform from which to play out.
Instead of smashing a guitar onstage, you¹re more likely to forget your
reading glasses. 

³There¹s no drama,² said Carol Cheney, 43, a nurse who moonlights as a
singer in Alter Ego, a seven-piece band in the Boston area composed of
middle-aged parents. ³We¹re all at the crest of our life. Everyone is
settled. We¹re just very comfortable with each other.²

And it¹s easier to afford decent equipment. Alter Ego, for instance,
practices at the large suburban home of one of the members, a successful
insurance executive whose spacious basement is outfitted with copious
amounts of professional-quality amps, mixing boards and mics.

³Credit cards and old stock options help make up for all the cool toys we
did without when we were young,² Mr. Lynd said. ³Tuners, effects pedals,
multiple axes, stands that cost more than my first car.²

Then there is the general improvement in the realm of logistical skills.
³When I was a teenager in a band, nobody had his act together,² Mr. Lynd
said. ³Bookings were always botched. You only realized the band stuff didn¹t
fit in the station wagon when you were already late.²

Now, he said, some of his fellow band members get as much therapeutic value
out of organizing their playing experience as they do from the actual
playing.

To skirt the problem of scrounging for paid gigs, some bands play only for
charity: the eight members in the Wildcats, perhaps the most popular Palo
Alto dad band, play only for fund-raising events. The group has raised close
to $100,000 over the past several years, to supplement the budget for Palo
Alto public schools.

Connections help, too. For one recent paid performance at a country club for
the Tennyson Seven, it didn¹t hurt that the resident golf pro plays bass in
the band. And the band isn¹t above paying to play. It recently rented a pool
and tennis club in Palo Alto for one night and invited a couple hundred
friends to come listen.

But sometimes being a low-demand band means putting up with performance
conditions that are not exactly the rock ¹n¹ roll ideal.

Mr. Lynd said that Space Available has become something of a fixture at
weekend schoolyard concerts around town. ³We¹ll be playing at the
Oktoberfest, alternately playing Jimi Hendrix and announcing that the bake
sale is going to be over in five minutes,² he said.

When Wall Street ‹ a New York-area band that often practices in Metuchen,
N.J., and gravitates to the Allman Brothers Band, Queen and Tom Petty ‹
played at a bar mitzvah recently, acoustics were a challenge: The musicians
stood underneath a tent, while the guests wandered across three acres of
land. Still, said Bob O¹Connell, 42, the art director at Ladies¹ Home
Journal who is a guitarist in Wall Street, ³we got an incredible response,²
and several requests for cards.

By and large, the children of the band members, some in bands of their own,
approach their parents¹ newfound passion with surprising equanimity. ³Every
single one of our kids thinks it¹s very cool,² said Ms. Cheney, whose band
plays many of its own compositions. ³They actually like the music we do.²

When Mr. O¹Connell¹s 13-year-old son, Robby, has friends over, they often
bring their guitars. ³It¹s great when your kid¹s friends know you as the dad
who can play all the licks to ŒBlack Dog,¹ ² Mr. O¹Connell said.

In spite of the occasional irritation that comes when the throb of a bass
interrupts his studying, Darren Reis is also open-minded about his parents¹
hobby. ³They¹re pretty good,² he said. ³It¹s not like they¹re in a bad band
or anything. The music they play isn¹t my music, but there¹s some cool
stuff.²

And Mr. Reis considers himself one of the luckiest aging boomers around.
³Every Tuesday I get live rock ¹n¹ roll in my house,² he said. ³Nothing can
beat that.²