David Chen & the Muddy Basin Ramblers

I was listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" today, and the marching band riffs reminded me of that part of my past. Also, I dreamt last night that I was wandering around my brother's old high school, Clear Lake High in Texas (home of the Falcons). I hadn't gone back in time, it was still present day, but I was just walking around the hallways and ended up outside as a tornado approached. "Do you think it's dangerous?" a sandy-haired student asked me.

"Are you kidding, look at those explosions!" I said, pointing at the blasts coming from the now towering school. It had only been one floor before. Then I woke up.

I started playing trumpet at 11, in sixth grade. I'd lost interest in both violin and piano after years of lessons, and I looked up to my older brother Kevin's exhalted status as a band member (he plays the flute). So when we went to Seabrook Intermediate School to the band room filled with tables and instruments, all seeming quite shiny and complicated -there were so many buttons and valves!- I picked the trumpet after falling in love with the sound and the versatility of the instrument (and the fact that it only had three buttons and didn't mind getting wet). My parents, wary of yet another loss of interest, took me to a pawn shop, where they rummaged around the back and fit together a patchwork cornet, with silver and gold pieces that clashed underneath thick tarnish. It would do, and did. I started playing in the marching band after we moved to Florida at Maitland Junior High School the next year. I picked the instrument up at an average rate, perhaps a bit faster than others, but my range and power were both abysmal. Still, I loved playing and saved up for a silver-plated Bach Stradivarius, the instrument I still play today. It had a beautiful tone and facilitated fast, complicated riffs and sonorous melodic soloes, but of course in marching season, none of that mattered. What mattered on the field was projection, mainly. "We got the beat" wasn't exactly Hummel.

It was fun hanging out with friends from band, and making interesting patterns on various football fields, even dancing about out there, but I didn't have enough pure volume to be effective on the field back when the law of the band was the higher you could play, the better you were. It was really just that simple. I recall in one practice session, for regular band and not even marching band, another trumpet player, disgruntled because he had a lower chair, interrupted me, yelling, "Just play a high C! Just try to play it!" to somehow prove his point that I shouldn't be talking about trumpet playing. It was indeed a rare day I could easily hit that note.

"Just play anything well!" I shot back, but his point was made. I could play many things better than anyone there, but for pure power and Chuck Mangione-type screaming high notes, I was complete crap. A friend of mine who many considered my arch-rival, Jim Engle, had me every time when it came to range, though I did learn to play loud when the music called for it. Sometimes, anyway. I nearly ruined Romeo and Juliet squeaking through a high loud bit, but for the big garbonzo closing of Samson and Delilah I was the loudest damn thing in the orchestra. Jim and I traded off on solos and seats; he was typically first chair for marching season, while I'd take over for concert season.

Back then, I was quite defensive about it and tried to compensate with a certain amount of arrogance about my playing. "Good luck next year, TC, and try not to be such a jerk about your trumpet" was an oft-repeated reminder in my yearbooks. Really adolescent, when I think about it now.

So I looked on in envy as Jim and other trumpeters marched up to the front of the stands during shows and play solos into the cheering crowds. I knew that I'd make first chair again after marching season for concerts and things, but it still seemed like a defeat.

When I was 13 I got braces, not the thin wire type, but the whole-tooth-encompassing type, which I thought was the end of my trumpet playing career. After building up enough caluses inside my upper lip, however, I found that I could still play reasonably well. When they came off four years later, not much changed. I could still play, just about as well as before.

In high school, wearing the thick black wool uniforms of the Winter Park Wildcats in the hot Florida weather didn't help my growing dissatisfaction with marching band. I did the usual low-chair marching season/high chair for concert season shuffle for a couple of years. In the end I dropped band completely my senior year, electing to play instead with the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra. The school band conductor, Ken Williams, went to the symphony board to try to get me kicked out of the FSYO based on my reluctance to be in the school band, but he failed when my dad showed up at the meeting and challenged him to give a good reason why I couldn't play in the orchestra, except pure spite.

I continued to play in college, both at Washington & Lee and at Tunghai University. Both had orchestras, but neither had a marching band, much less a group as impressive as the marching band my brother ended up playing in , Texas A&M's world-famous Corps of Cadets. I'd pretty much plateaued, in any case. Further playing hadn't helped my range an iota. Once, at a gig in the Bahamas, I just ran out of steam and had to drop part of a mariachi solo down an octave, which was so embarrassing I got sympathy pats afterwards. I did, however, get my first taste of jazz and blues playing with my pal Boogie in a little jazz trio at a local sandwich shop, which was fun while it lasted.

The next marching experience I'd have would be in the army, and the only music involved there was singing army marching songs. I put the trumpet aside, and years passed. I didn't pick it up again until I got invited to play with the Muddy Basin Ramblers a couple of years ago.

Finally, I thought when I first sat in with the group, finally, I've found a place where I can play pretty much what I like for the crowd out there, Chuck Mangione be damned.