| |
|
|
Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away… |
|
I
received a plastic toy trumpet for Christmas when I was six.
Little did I know how much this would shape my future. |
|
One
day a traveling salesman paid us a visit selling accordion lessons.
My interest in the piano (I would play melodies by ear on our old
upright at every opportunity) helped my parents decide to enroll my older
brother and me in this ten-week course.
I was no Lawrence Welk, but this was my first real experience
reading music and those early seeds planted years ago were starting to
take root. |
|
The
summer before entering the 8th grade, my older brother Dan
joined the Moeller band and so did I.
Dan chose sax and I decided to play trumpet, -
these were the same instruments we received that Christmas years before.
Our grade school, like so many other parochial schools, didn’t
have a music program to speak of. Enabling
younger brothers to enlist early better prepared those individuals for the
high school band. I was
excused 15 minutes early from grade school so I could attend band
practice. Being the
competitive sort, I practiced and progressed quickly and by my freshman
year, I was playing first trumpet and was invited to play in the Moeller
stage band. The stage band
opened my eyes and ears and I was immediately infected with the
performance “bug”. |
| My first professional opportunity came during my junior year at Moeller when an acquaintance of mine “had to get married” and I was asked to put a band together to play for his reception. I got my brother and several buddies from band together and played mostly familiar jazz band arrangements. The reception was at a VFW hall in Reading, Ohio where our sextet, without a name, played to rave reviews by the drunken crowd (all for a modest sum of money which didn’t bother us - even after almost 30 years, some things don’t change!) At the end of my senior year, I purchased my first and only trumpet on my way to college band. |
|
Attending
the University of Cincinnati, I majored in biology for the first four
years and then switched to Political Science at the start of my 5th
year. UC’s band was like a
social fraternity. I forged
some life long friendships and had
the opportunity to meet people who had different musical perspectives and
interests. During college I
developed a voracious appetite for musical knowledge.
Not wanting to be limited to playing just the trumpet, I
researched, studied and experimented with other instruments and learned to
play, with some proficiency, all of the brass instruments including
mellophone, French horn, euphonium, trombone and tuba.
Lower register instruments fascinated me so I taught myself
baritone and bass sax after class. One
of the band drummers taught me percussion rudiments and I practiced
whenever I had access to the equipment.
One of my lifetime goals was to be familiar with the fingerings of
every instrument and to be able to at least play some simple tunes.
(I still have a long way to go.) |
|
During
this time I also developed an intense interest in vocal harmonies. I
became a Beach Boy aficionado after hearing one of the local bar bands
perform “Good Vibrations”. I
collected and played their albums in an attempt to analyze and reproduce
the vocal arrangements even going so far as to join a barbershop quartet
so I could have a group sing my vocal arrangements.
In addition, I was able to further my own music education by
helping friends with their music theory homework and arranging music for
stage and marching bands. |
|
In
my spare time, mainly on weekends, my friends and I would frequent the
Clifton bars to hear the local bands.
I remember going to “Alexander’s” many times to dance and
listen to a group, which played at many of our high school dances and had
a killer horn section, called BlueStone Ivory (BSI).
As I got closer to graduating in the late 70’s, I lost track of
BSI and spent more time sitting in with a couple of wedding reception
bands. Another goal of mine was to start a band of my own that would
play songs by Chicago, BS&T, Tower of Power, etc. as well as the Beach
Boys and Manhattan Transfer. Great
vocal harmonies plus a horn section would make this group extremely
marketable. I was going to
have to wait until the end of my first year in law school to realize this
dream. |
|
Having
started Law School at UC in the fall of ’79, academics occupied my every
waking hour. I was spending
about 18 hours in class and studying a day and therefore didn’t have any
time for music (assuming I wanted to get some sleep).
My musical hiatus lasted only a semester and a half.
As was the UC College of Law tradition before final exams, the
students organized, wrote and performed in a variety show which in essence
poked fun at the law professors - all while consuming large quantities of
beer. It was the last big
blast before exams. I decided
to put together a small band to accompany some of the musical skits and to
perform a few numbers on our own, just as I had done as an undergrad.
To my surprise, there were some very talented musicians in the
student body. The group
consisted of a 4-piece rhythm section, 5 horns and 3 vocalists and was
called the Negotiable Instruments. After
our successful performance, a friend of mine, and I recruited some members
of the Negotiable Instruments and started a band called Time Span. It consisted of bass, drums, guitar, two keyboards and myself
on trumpet, trombone and sax. |
|
Time
Span went through a bunch of early personnel changes including a new
guitarist, bassist, drummer and pianist.
The new pianist was Amy, one of the female vocalists from the
Negotiable Instruments. She
became my best friend in Law School and in 1985 would become my wife. |
|
Over
the next 15 years Time Span would play a lot of wedding receptions and
private parties. Amy and I
had two children, both boys, who appear to have considerable musical
talent and potential. Along
the way, I became interested in audio engineering and recording.
After additional study and training, I started Time Span
Entertainment and TSE Records to do sound reinforcement and digital
recordings in the tri-state area. To
date, I have produced some Classical CD’s for members of the Cincinnati
Symphony, demo’s for local bands as well as live concert recordings for
area orchestras and churches. |
|
In
the mid 90’s I met Tom Cecil whose was working for one of the local
pro-audio stores. Having so
many interests in common, we became good friends and eventually played in
a couple of bands together. In
1999, while playing in one of those local bar bands, we were contacted and
asked to join BlueStone Ivory. This
brought my musical career full circle, giving me the opportunity to play
with some extremely talented musicians from my high school alma mater in a
group that I greatly respected for years. |
|
After
a year with BSI, I am having the time of my life. I have been doing the horn charts for the group and am
excited at some of the new material we will be doing in the coming months.
The unrealized potential in the group is staggering and I look
forward to developing that potential over the next several years.
Good
things do come to those who wait!
|