One of the benefits of learning to play and perform music is doing so with other people. If you play an instrument you might be one of the millions of people who at some point in their lives got together with fellow players and formed a band. Many of those bands, the so-called “garage bands” because that’s where they rehearsed, were, and still are, formed in high school, or even earlier. You get to a point where you’re good enough and know enough songs to play for friends’ parties, or even paid gigs, like school dances. Your relationships with the other players in your band often last a lifetime.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to choose music as your career. I meet many people who have played in a band growing up and then went on to college and other interests, disciplines, and careers, but regularly reconnect with their past band members. Some even get back to playing music together again. The reason those relationships endure is that they are sharing a pleasure that comes only from playing music with others, a unique kind of joy you get from nothing else. When the band is playing, and it’s good, and you’re in the midst of making it happen, there’s no other feeling like it.
I am lucky to remain in touch with members of our band in the late ’70s and early ’80s in New Orleans. We put the band together in Fairhope, Alabama, around 1975, and took it to Bourbon Street where we were the house band for a time at the Absinthe Bar, or A-Bar as it was called (and not to be confused with the Old Absinthe House, a bar down Bourbon toward Canal). Just a couple months ago I was reunited with Saxophonist Chuck Schwarz and Trumpeter Larry Carter in person at a club in Pensacola, and we also stay in touch with Bassist Ellis Bryant. All three, by the way, are still killing it, great musicians still working in the best clubs along Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Friends for life. That’s one more great benefit of learning to play and perform music.