Category Archives: Grief

After Midnight

After Midnight

The only thing harder than forming a great band is leaving one. After 14 years (or so – we’re not quite sure when this actually began) of drumming for the best cover band in Central Texas, I had to reluctantly tender my resignation from After Midnight last week. While this isn’t exactly John Lennon leaving the Beatles, it still hurts. A lot.

I’ve grown to love these guys. Barry Hankins (guitar, vocals) and I had played together at 7th & James for several years, usually backing other people for youth talent shows, 7th’s Up, and even Cool Yule when I asked him if he’d be interested in forming a band that specialized in R&B and Texas shuffle. He said yes. Barry had been in a number of bands through the years and has this wonderful Bob Seger/Detroit rock voice that was just achin’ to be spotlighted.

Within a couple of weeks, we’d heard about Steve Gardner (keyboards, vocals) at Lake Shore Baptist. We approached Steve, played a few tunes at his house and found an immediate musical/personal fit. Steve had also been in bands growing up in Oak Cliff In fact, Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray’s brother, once asked Steve to go on the road with him. Steve instead chose to go to college. Jimmie’s loss, our gain.

Several other wonderful musicians came and went — Jim LePeyre, Scott Rasnic, Andrew Armond, John Haskett and others — before we finally found Lance Grigsby (bass) who, at the time, had an office across from mine in the Department of Journalism, PR & New Media. Lance is a multi-instrumentalist and good-naturedly set out to master the bass guitar. Which he did. In the process, he became After Midnight’s youngest member and token eye candy.

But between the commute from San Antonio and my knees and now my shoulder, it has gotten harder and harder. I never dreamed it would get so difficult I’d have to leave something I love this much. When I told the guys, they were disappointed, but supportive. In time, a good band becomes like family. And I had come to regard our Saturday morning and Tuesday evening practices as an anticipated family reunion. Relatives by choice.

I’ve strongly urged them to continue and I believe they will. After Midnight is certainly a lot bigger than one broken-down drummer. It gives too many people too much pleasure to stop now.

In those 14 years, we’ve played every possible gig – private parties, the Bosque River Stage, the Carleen Bright Arboretum, fund-raisers, benefits, wedding receptions, smoky dives off the Circle, La Fiesta, Hog Creek, Common Grounds, 40th, 50th and 60th birthdays, even a particularly unsettling gig on the old Brazos Queen, where we were repeatedly asked to play the Eagles’ “Desperado.” And when we didn’t replay it immediately, the entire party left the dance floor, never to return.

And, oh, the stories …

We once played a reception for an academic conference in Austin on Halloween. I had had a kidney stone the day before. But in the great “the show must go on” tradition of rock’n’roll, I played the gig with a catheter and on some serious pain meds. That night, as Mary drove us out of the downtown hotel where we’d play, we were stopped by the midnight Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender costume parade. Still loopy from the meds, I watched hundreds of beautiful LGBT people – mostly dressed as slutty nurses – parade by. Strangely, nobody remembers this but me.

We eventually came up with a two-tiered fee system. We had one fee for afternoon Southern Baptist wedding receptions where only punch was served and a lesser fee for everything else. I didn’t become a drummer to play softly.

Over the course of the years, we got to be very good. Actually, Steve, Barry and Lance were pretty good to start with. I was the one who got better. Playing with real musicians will do that for you. I’m not enough of a musician to be a great drummer, so I concentrated on keeping a funky beat when a funky beat was called for. My drumming idol is the late Al Jackson Jr., the great minimalist drummer with Booker T & the MGs. But then, the Stax/Volt and Atlantic soul/R&B eras of the ‘60s are my musical foundation.

Being a drummer in a rock band, of course, is the greatest gig in the world. You make people happy. There is nothing I like better than watching people dance and enjoy themselves. The bass player and the drummer, relieved of the added burden to be the featured soloists and sex symbols, usually people- watch. Lance and I have seen couples come together and break apart, shy guys ask a girl to dance for the first time, tipsy 70-year-olds emulate the Solid Gold Dancers, and – at the many outdoor gigs we’ve played – shooting stars explode on the horizon.

When After Midnight is cookin’, I would get totally lost in the music and the beat. I never thought about what would come next, which drum to hit, which cymbal to crash. I would get caught up in it. Making music. Having fun. Watching people smile.

In songs like “Walking to Memphis” or “Brown-Eyed Girl,” I could just play and listen to the band at the same time and marvel at their skill and my luck to be a part of it.

We eventually adopted “Mustang Sally” as our “theme” song – or, perhaps, our audiences adopted it for us. As Lance would begin the intro, our most faithful fans – Mary and Kathy and Ann and Becky and Linda and Dana – would rush the dance floor. And when we’d hit the “Ride, Sally, ride!” chorus, everybody would sing along. Magic.

Jesus, I’m going to miss that.

 

 

On Grief

As I’ve mention, I have had a number of significant milestones in the past year and a half. I’ve moved twice (including the most recent one where I left what had been my home since 1979). I’ve finished the largest book of my career. But few milestones compare to the passing of your parents.

My father suffered mightily from Parkinson’s Disease and seemed to lose interest in life following of my mother’s death 18 months ago. I was in San Antonio when the call came from my sister Danni to come to Waco. Now. Mary and I rushed back and I arrived in time to share his last few minutes. The days/weeks that followed saw a different kind of grief than that which accompanied my mom’s passing. I handle loss differently at different times, it seems. Perhaps you do, too.

One recent Sunday in Waco I saw examples of how people cope with the death of a loved one. There is a strip mall on Valley Mills Drive, just past Franklin Avenue but before West Waco Drive. At the entrance is a grouping of crosses, marking the tragic death of a carload of young people some years before. At the crosses, several people stood, apparently sharing a private service of some kind. Oblivious to the noise of the busy street, they huddled by the small white crosses. Perhaps they sang, perhaps they prayed. I couldn’t see as I drove past.

Later that same day, as I drove up 25th Street, I saw a single cross. It was across the street from Reicher High School and it is often adorned with flowers. What I hadn’t noticed before was the small bench beside it. A man sat on the bench, elbows on his knees, hands on his head, staring at the cross. I finished my business (it was at my parent’s house, near Lake Shore Drive) and I returned the same way. The man was still there, this time with his right hand on his chin, still staring at the solitary white cross.

In both cases, people chose a specific way to remember … and grieve … that worked for them.

In the August 24, 2012 edition of the Waco Tribune-Herald, I turned – as readers of previous blogs know I often do – to the obituary page. Three of the obituary photographs featured the deceased with their pets. Rick Quaintance posed with his little dog, which looked like Toto from the Wizard of Oz. Sandra K. Smith was pictured hugging her little dog, some kind of spaniel.

But the most intriguing photo was placed by the family of Johnny L. Chapple.  Chapple was, judging by the picture, a formidable-looking man – broad-shouldered, bald, and with a long, sandy-colored beard. He is shown with a stern look, almost a glare. He’s also tenderly holding a Boston Terrier, though the Terrier is actually in the foreground. Among Chapple’s accomplishment was listed his work with Boston Terrier Rescue of Houston. In fact, in lieu of flowers, the family asked that donations be made to Boston Terrier Rescue of Greater Houston.

I suspect that it gives Chapple’s family and friends a real sense of peace making those donations. Doing so also, I suspect, helps them deal with their grief.

What we do when someone we love is taken from us is an intensely personal experience. I really haven’t found any one-size-fits-all approach on how people handle, internalize, express and/or cope with that kind of loss. I’ve discovered that my grief for the passing of my parents (and for the passing of many – too many – good friends) in the past few years is much different than what I would have anticipated. Perhaps it is the “reporter” in me. I was trained to observe first, analyze later. But then, my friends and family’s memories of me indicate I was that always that way as a kid. I’ve found that I keep most of it inside.

I also believe grief will express itself … eventually. Somehow and someway – and usually in an unexpected moment. I wasn’t able to attend the funeral of my beloved grandmother Allie Owens (I was in the hospital with a bad back at the time). But I don’t think I actually really grieved her death until a few weeks later when I was at the funeral Jim Hudson’s wonderful mother. This delayed reaction has happened to me before and it will no doubt happen again.

Mary has helped me see that when we get blue, we’re sometimes reacting to the anniversary of some kind of loss, perhaps an anniversary that we may not even be consciously aware of at the time. It’s only in retrospect that we see that our bodies are/were reacting to a memory.

How long it takes someone to “get past” the death of a loved one (or even a favorite pet) is strictly up to them. It’s not my place to judge. In fact, I think maturity (and hard knocks – which may be the same thing) have taught me that it’s not my place to judge someone else on MOST occasions. Besides, it’s just not my job. There’s Somebody far better equipped for that particular chore.

They say funerals are for the living … the dead are long past caring. Mom and dad are together. Johnny L. Chapple is playing with a pack of bounding Boston Terriers. Grandmother Allie is young and pain-free and funny and feisty and beautiful, surrounded by her family and friends.

Milestones and anniversaries mount as I get older, whether I am always aware of them or not. I want to tell the people I love that I love them NOW so that when the time comes and I’m the one standing  by a roadside cross or sitting by a tombstone or an even holding an urn of ashes, it is with a sense of … peace. They knew I loved them on earth because I repeatedly showed them and told them so while they were here.

Then when I’m standing or sitting there, I’m just reaffirming that love… not regretting opportunities lost.

I grieve, for you
You leave, me
So hard to move on
Still loving what’s gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on

– “I Grieve” by Peter Gabriel