Picking Up The Alto Again
Today I picked up my alto again. I won’t say how long its been. I more or less turned my back on music in the late 90’s. It wasn’t a difficult decision at the time. I had two young children with my partner, was still living at home with my mother, and was driving taxi and limousine to survive. I took every gig that came along. I played a lot of weddings. I played in lots of bars.
As my twenties - can I call it my delayed adolescence? - came to end I realized the importance of things like health insurance, benefits and a steady salary. I felt incomplete as a man that I couldn’t provide any of those things for myself or my children. I was tired of playing Brickhouse and Mustang Sally. My best year financially in music I spent half the year on cruise ships, and the other half teaching and driving taxi/limousine — with no benefits and not a whole lot of money to show for it — especially those months away from home — I was getting bitter. One thing that wasn’t so bad was teaching. I had some really great kids that I taught — some I still hear from on occasion.
An alto playing acquaintance of mine was doing well in the technology field as a consultant and a trumpet playing friend of mine had begun a one year course at a local vocational tech school in computers — he suggested I check it out. So, I entered the computer school the next quarter. I got hired by a company before I graduated. The market was really hot back then for IT. As my career in technology progressed, the saxophone took a back seat.
At the moment I have time on my hands. The saxophone has been calling my name - taunting me to revisit sounds and moods and people and places I haven’t heard, or felt, or seen in years. So many ghosts. So many possibilities never realized…
