Becoming a Retirement Band Fan

I’m not falling behind on the trying new things part of the Try New Things Every Week Challenge to Myself, but I am a few days behind on writing about them. 

Eight days ago, my friend Luna and I went to the historical Linsmore Tavern to see the band 2 Trick Ponies and our friend, lead vocalist, Jeremy Chan. For the very first time, I became a retirement band fan.

I hadn’t seen Jeremy in about 20 years. Seeing him freshly retired and standing behind a guitar was the best possible way to avoid recognizing how old all of us have become.

Back in the early days of Internet development, the 90s, when weekly beer nights attracted digital workers as a health benefit, I worked in a company related to Jeremy’s and occasionally ran into him out dancing with his friends at the Orbit Room of yore or another live music venue. I remember that, even then, he was learning to play to guitar while the demands and deadlines of internet industry growth pushed down on all of us as if we were tasking with curing cancer instead of digitizing processes that, until then, had required a trip to the bank or travel agent, or any other industry that has since been transformed several times over. 

Hanging on to creativity, whether music, art, poetry or prose, was essential to maintaining some semblance of self during that period. A pick up hockey league or softball team played the same role in the lives of those who found a part of their identities rooted in team sport. Volunteering at the food bank or at a soup kitchen helped keep souls in order too. 

There was then, as there is now, a kind of derision creative young people had for those who ‘sold out’ and took real jobs so they could pay off their students, have a family and feed them. There was a special kind of derision for those who promised themselves they’d pick up the paint brush or get back to the pottery wheel again once they retired. Looking back, I am embarrassed by the youthful arrogance I had that flowed in this vein. 

What I know now, is that those weekly jam sessions with friends, the Saturday painting classes, the writing groups I participated in off and on were all acts of resistance to being worked into conformity. 

If anything, that resistance is even more important now. If anything, watching Jeremy’s retirement band last Thursday at the Linsmore represented a win for being true to oneself. It was 2 Trick Ponies’ first gig and I was proud to see Jeremy and his bandmates do their big new thing. 

But, of course, this series is about my trying new things and my own desperate attempt to hang onto my creativity and human experience in a world of AI that infiltrates not only my chosen form of creative expression, but all the visual and decorative arts and music – if that’s what we have to call those godawful ad jingle-inspired audio viruses now featured on so many TikTok reels. 

There was much to learn from 2 Trick Ponies. 

1. Transitions do not need to go smoothly on the set list of life

If you have ears that hear, following an Al Green standard with the Stooges might not sound like a good idea because it’s not. But Drew Atkins, who I also knew from olden times, took the band’s mic for the Stooges cover, and made it work into the program with banter. Stories, memories, and sharing the two make all changes easier to navigate. 

2. Community is everything

I hadn’t seen Jeremy for 20 years, but our mutual friend Luna had been in regular contact. She could greet Jeremy’s friends I’d last seen at the Orbit Room, as well as his brother and more recent acquaintances. She could point out his lovely wife and daughter. It was a room full of support, but also of excitement shared. That act of appreciating a friend’s accomplishment is a sign of time spent cultivating meaningful relationships and a full life. 

That means one thing for expansive amateurs like 2 Trick Ponies. It means something different for professionals. Career musicians are having a hard time surviving. Spotify and other digital music services have seen middle-class incomes drop to poverty levels and guitarists who have never practiced any other job, are looking for bartending and delivery driver gigs to survive. Authors, actors, theatre and film techs, and visual artists aren’t doing any better. While there will always be talented creatives who deserve superstardom and widespread appreciation, it isn’t clear they will always be able to survive. They, more than ever, need a safety net of friends and family to keep them going. 

3. Focus on fun

There’s a difference between going to see a cover band built by early retirees or students or working stiffs and going to a stadium show to see a long-established act. The smile on the face of the 55 year-old vocalist you know may not be brighter than the rock star’s, but it’s easier to see from the back of the bar than it is from the nose-bleed section of an amphitheater.  

Besides, what greater gift can there be than reminding your friends they can still get up and shake it from a stage you’ve been practicing for decades to sing from? 

The other new things I have tried so far include being a model, infrared therapy, ecstatic dancing, archery, pickle ball, aerial sling class, and dancing at the legion.