Crying It Out

Dedicated to all the dance floors of yesteryear. After composing it in 2011, I found that this tune takes me back to the late 1970s, when I was touring with a big band whose music dated back to the 1930s. In the big band era, there were the bands that toured nationally and internationally, and then there were the territory bands whose fame was more local. This was a territory band, still crisscrossing the midwest to play in dance halls mostly to stir nostalgic memories for the generation that came of age in the 30s and 40s. We'd drive through the cornfields until a dance hall appeared on the horizon, improbably packed with people waiting to hear us. Even though I found the music sentimental and relatively uninteresting, it was a pleasure to play for an audience that gave back energy in the form of dancing. The band was also called a "ghost band," because the leader in the 1930s for whom the band was named, Eddie Howard, was long gone, but the book--the collection of tunes people still wanted to hear--lived on. I must have looked odd on stage, with my long hair and a beard, wearing an old, ill-fitting double breasted tuxedo. The rest of the guys were mostly middle aged, mostly escaping their marriages to play saccharine love songs on the road. Irony and quiet desperation hung heavy. There were amazing moments, though. An alto sax player who they said had been forced to undergo shock therapy at some point in the past would most nights play as if on auto pilot, but every now and then he'd suddenly blossom, and play a solo that showed he had once been a great player. Others also offered glimpses of a dormant greatness that would rise briefly to the surface, then dip back down beneath the musical backwaters we found ourselves in.