What the hell was I thinking?

As the year wound down, I found myself face to face with a second trip back to my days as a teenage musician.

When I was in grade 12, I got a call out of the blue from a guitarist who led a horn band. He asked me to come try out at a rehearsal. I had been recommended by a pro sax player whom I hardly knew.

At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about this type of music, being a prog rock type. That was a style of music notably deovoid of saxophones, with King Crimson as the occasional exception. But with horn bands, the big names were Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Tower of Power, Earth Wind & Fire and thanks to cancon, Lighthouse. I had previously learned exactly one piece from the entire repetoire of these groups. Thanks to my extensive K-Tel collection, once I had gotten it into my head to learn the Lighthouse hit One Fine Day.

By pure coincidence, that was the piece that the band chose to audition me on and I played it from memory. So I was in. And in way over my head. Fortunately, they had great charts, all beautifully handwritten. I went out and bought a whole bunch of vinyl and got to work. And I had to go over to Halifax and join the musicians' union. I was thrilled and a bit intimidated, as I thought I would have to pass some sort of competency test. The only criterion was whether or not I had the joining fees, which the band leader had fronted me.

So in no time, I was playing all over the province, having a lot of fun with these guys. Their book was pretty heavy on Chicago tunes, which I really loved playing. The other two horn players were also high schoolers, as was the drummer, but they were some of the best young players in town. They pretty quickly figured out I was not. They replaced me as soon as they could, when I said that my mom was forcing me to miss a gig in order to attend my high school graduation. The band leader drove across town to fire me in person - it was a terrible feeling and I was pissed off at my mother for a long time.

As it turned out, my replacement, a much better funk player, didn't last long and I ended up playing off and on with these guys for about four years. We had a lot of laughs, doing all the stuff that a bunch of young guys do on the road. Many of the guys in the band went on to be fine career musicians.

Now to the present: by early December, I knew that I probably wouldn't have a New Years gig with Wanda and the boys, unusual but not unexpected given the current dearth of gigs in town. Our bassist took another gig and he asked me if I'd be interested in join him in doing a horn band gig. I knew some of the players, most of them good, but I had my doubts about the leader. Mark told me they would be doing a lot of Earth, Wind & Fire, so for the sake of nostalgia, and despite the pay not being too great, I said yes.

At this point, please refer back to the title of this blog entry.

This was a brand new band. The rhythm section had been rehearsing for a few weeks. The plan was for the horn section to come in on the last two rehearsals Dec 29 and 30, and the singers who had been rehearsing separately would join us on those nights.

(Note: After a couple of days, I've decided to go back and edit this post. Suffice it to say that the rehearsals leading up to the gig were the worst I've ever had. I needed to vent a bit, but I think it was dull reading.)

The final rehearsal came and we still had about five tunes that we had not played as a group. Again there were lots of surprises. Good times. By the end of the night, we still hadn't actually run the set in its entirety. But at least, I felt we wouldn't totally embarrass ourselves.

I had a good sign while getting ready for New Years Eve. I put on a pair of gig pants that I hadn't been able to fit for a long time, and found the pay from a gig years ago still in the pocket. I considered that cash as a raise for my efforts on the coming night.

As it turned out, it wasn't a bad gig at all. We weren't super tight, but given your typical New Years crowd, nobody noticed. A good rehearsal or two would have made all the difference.

I considered it a privelege just to play this great music again after 30 years.

So if the call comes again, will I do it?