Sam Quinones

After 149 episodes of spirited banter, we finally did the unthinkable—we made an episode without it. Don’t get used to it, though. Odds are the pendulum swings back soon and we overcorrect with an episode that’s all banter… and a mildly concerned guest.

Fortunately, that’s not the case this week.

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based journalist and acclaimed author known for his narrative non-fiction work on drug trafficking and immigration. A former L.A. Times reporter, he gained prominence for his in-depth reporting on the U.S. opioid epidemic, most notably in Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic and The Least of Us. 

Today, he joins us to talk about his newest book, Perfect Tuba—a narrative nonfiction exploration of band culture, where discipline, collaboration, and long-term commitment offer a powerful counterpoint to a world chasing instant gratification. Through stories of dedicated musicians, iconic instruments, and tight-knit communities, the book reframes the tuba as more than an instrument—it’s a metaphor for purpose, perseverance, and the kind of fulfillment that comes from doing hard things well, together.

GET THE BOOK HERE: THE PERFECT TUBA: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work

LEARN MORE ABOUT SAM AND SUBSCRIBE TO HIS NEWSLETTER HERE: 

http://www.samquinones.com

samquinones.substack.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:08

Hey commuter, welcome back. After 149 episodes, your wish has finally come true. This week's episode begins with absolutely no banter. You're welcome. On this episode of Beyond Artless, we're joined by journalist and storyteller whose work has consistently uncovered the human stories behind some of America's most complex challenges. From immigration to the opioid crisis. After beginning his career in regional newspapers and spending a decade reporting from Mexico, he went on to write for the Los Angeles Times before focusing on long-form narrative journalism. His books, including Dreamland and The Least of Us, have helped redefine how we understand addiction, community, and systemic change in America. Today, he joins us to talk about his newest book, The Perfect Touba, a narrative nonfiction exploration of band culture where discipline, collaboration, and long-term commitment offer a power counterpoint to the world chasing instant gratification. Through stories of dedicated musicians, iconic instruments, and tight-knit communities, the book reframes the tuba as more than an instrument. It's a metaphor for purpose, perseverance, and the kind of fulfillment that comes from doing hard things well together. Please welcome our guest, Sam Kignonis.

SPEAKER_05 2:02

We're honored you'd be in our little our venue here. So for a guy who's an award-winning journalist and author who's covered all these things from Mexico and the opioid F uh epidemic, how did you get to the perfect tuba?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Well, first of all, thanks to you guys for having me on your podcast here. I really appreciate it. Very nice of you. So I'm a I'm a crime reporter uh for many years. I've covered in my history, in my time, 200 murders, I suspect, something like that. Street gangs, prostitution, drug trafficking. I worked for the LA Times for 10 years. I lived in Mexico for 10 years before that. Um and I never I do not play the tuba, and I was never in marching band. However, um the last two books that I did prior to this uh little baby of mine, the perfect tuba, were about the opioid. Well, the first one was about the opioid epidemic, actually Cotton and heroin.

SPEAKER_06 2:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

And the second one, which came out in 20, and that did very, very well. And that really was kind of, I think it's gonna be immodest to say so, but it really awakened the country to the problem of opioid addiction, uh prescription painkiller, over-prescribing by doctors and Purdue Pharma and all that kind of stuff. And that came out in 2015. And in 21, I put out the sequel to that essentially, which was a book about uh chronicling that the continuing drug epidemic in our country. But this time uh the source was not doctors or pharmaceutical companies, it was Mexican drug traffickers and and their switch, their revolution down in Mexico, away from plant-based drugs and towards uh synthetic drugs. And the two most commonly and most infamous are fentanyl, of course, and methamphetamine. And and so that was and these were uh powerful books. They were, I think, had enormous impact. Uh they were also quite grim. And and I was covering people, I was writing about people for whom you know the point of life had become pursuit of happiness through something we buy and then put in our bodies, right? And um, and at the end of that last book called The Least of Us, um, the first one was called Dreamland. And uh, after Dreamland about OxyContin and Haron, and then The Least of Us about Fentanyl and nothing fetomin, I really what was done. It was 12 years of writing about people who were who were just kind of consumed with doing one thing and really their lives amounted to almost nothing but that.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

And that's really the point of addiction is you don't have a relationship with anything or anybody else, you know? And so, uh other other than the drug. And so I told my agent, you know, I'm really tired of I'm I I don't think I can write another book. What had happened was years before, I was working at the LA Times, had just moved up from, had moved up from Mexico and at the LA Times, kind of my hometown paper, I'm from the Southern California region. I wrote a lot about the Mexican immigrant world in Los Angeles. And one of the stories I wrote was about the importance of the tuba in Mexican immigrant life, primarily in banda music, which is kind of dance marching band instruments playing dance music. Basically, that's what that form of music is. And the tuba was much bigger than like the guitar, which is what I had come come along with when I was growing up. And um, and so I I wrote that story and how it was enormously popular and all the backyard parties, everybody wanted to have a tuba at the backyard party. It was just a huge, huge thing. Trumpet players were switching to tuba because they paid, they they got paid triple. You know what I mean? And and and then, and then, strangely enough, the day that came out on the front page of the LA Times, this story comes out. I get a call from the a band director at one of these neighborhoods uh high schools is predominantly Mexican. And he says that was a fantastic story. It's absolutely true. Everything he wrote, so much so that did you know that we are now getting our tubas stolen? And sure enough, there had been this rash of tuba thefts in many of these high schools, and I wrote that next story about that. So I uh in in the space of a month, I wrote two front-page stories about the tuba, which at the LA Times would set some kind of record, I'm quite sure. I think in any journalistic after that, after that, I just wanted to I it hit me, you know, as a journalist, when you are when you find a subculture about which you know nothing, but you finding that the people within it are doing it because they love it, it's a good idea to stick with them. And that's what I began to find. I began to interview tuba players, not just Mexican tuba players, because they're two very separate worlds. There's the Mexican world, and then there's the non-Mexican tuba world in Southern California. And I just began to interview people, guys who played at Disney or community college instructors or whatever. And that led me over the next 10, 12 years, as I was writing these books about OxyContin and heroin and fentanyl and math, and I would occasionally interview tuba players wherever I happened to be. And as I as I I had a big file at the back of my computer called tuba. It had all my tapes and all my transcriptions and my some of my writing. And and I I was doing this without much focus, though. You know, it was like just let's see what this guy is and say, I'm gonna be out there, let me call him and see, you know. And that's what I did for the for the next 10, 12 years, as I was doing books about very severe drug addiction and and and devastating consequences all across the country. I was also interviewing tuba players. And so when I finished the last book about fentanyl and notam farab, my agent said, Maybe you could see what kind of book you might be able to write about the tuba. And that hit me. It's like, yes, because the truth is, I was doing interviews, but as I said, I wasn't very focused. I didn't know where I was going with that. I didn't know if I'd ever do anything. I mean, I didn't play the tuba. I was never in marching band. And so, you know, it just was like this thing that I kept on doing. My wife would ask me, Why are you doing this? And I'd be like, I'm not really sure. It just, but really, the truth is, when you find people who are optimistic, who are working hard at something, and they um uh, for the pure love of it, not from any promise of wealth or fame or any of that, you will, if you stick with them, you will find great stories. And that is a rule almost in journalism, in my view, anyway. So I just began to get into it. I re-interviewed people that I talked to maybe a decade before, and and it just became this. I really delved into it in a way I had never done before. And with that, I began to write stories of first of first of all, tuba players, but then I added band directors too because this was why. Band directors, as one guy said, band is just the tuba on a much bigger scale, meaning you are trying, you are working very hard, enormous hours with great focus to try to put together this enormous cohesive sound, and you're doing it without much expectation of wealth or or fame. You are doing it instead, as one band director told me, for the pu the love of what what for for seeing the light go, lights go on in the eyes of your kids when they get it. And to me, after writing about addiction for so long and the stories of addicts and the stories of cops trying to do something about it, and social workers trying to, and all this kind of stuff, to be writing stories about band directors and tuba players seemed this great liberating joy in my life because it it allowed me to just go in a direction I'd never, you know, never thought I'd ever go in and see what was out there. And I kept and so it was the stories of these band directors, first of all, of course, the tuba players, that just got me out there into this world. And then I got I got very heavily immersed in the whole thing. So that's really a long explanation about how I got into a book, being a crime reporter, writing about dope, writing about Mexican traffickers, how I eventually wrote a book about tuba players and band directors. I love it.

SPEAKER_06 10:21

Yeah, that's fascinating. And you know, the as much as you know, if people are coming to this book thinking it's all about tubas, it's it's it's not. I mean, it is and it isn't. And the beauty is is all the things that you uncover and pull back, these layers, you know, especially like you said, this concept of hard work, you know, and how you see that through line. Talk a little bit more about that. About sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up, Chris. In fact, the the the subtitle of the book is Forging Fulfillment from the Basehorn, Band and Hard Work. And and I really began to understand that what I was writing about was actually the opposite of what I just spent the last 12 years writing about. And and that that that there was something very healthy in what band and and tuba players were were had to say, had were what they were teaching, which is what what do you learn? You learn focus, you learn um postponed gratification, you learn um uh uh uh collaboration uh with others, discipline, perseverance through failure, and yes, hard, hard work. This is how you develop fulfillment. Dope is about finding pleasure, immediate gratification that lasts two hours and then you're back to where you were. This is about finding the the joys, the small joys in life through hard, through, through hard, hard, hard work. And and and basically it it it it that's kind of as I as I got into it, I began to realize that's what I had stumbled into. I did not realize that I was what writing about that, but I felt that a lot of what tuba players and band directors were about was the very healthy opposite of it of addiction. It was a building of community. You know, band is just nothing but development of community, you know. And so, um, but also I I I think there was also something else, another theme that really came out of out of all this, and and I and I probably first saw it in in what I call tuba Woodstock, the the story of of the of the first enormous gathering of tuba players uh in the history of probably the world, frankly, at Indiana University in 1973, where where all they held the symposium and all these tuba, hundred two, three hundred tuba players came from all over the country, and they all got there and they spent three days together, and they realized that they they it was like the formation of the national a national tuba consciousness, you know, it was like this feeling of like we're all in this together, and and and they found a few things was were true. One was that they and the most important was that uh everybody around them, wherever they were, they were all very lonely, all alone, kind of in these different places. They all faced problems of people saying that tuba isn't really worth much, it can only do this very confined thing, and therefore tuba players are not really, you know, real musicians, of course, you know. And there was this feeling like there began there a kind of a tuba civil rights movement at that at that at that moment that held we're tired of we're gonna be at the back of the band physically. We're tired of being thought of as being at the back of the band. You know what I mean? We want to be known as musicians. We need to, we need to burst those ideas out there in the music world among conductors and composers and other musicians. We also need to break it from our own internalizing of these ideas, you know. And so the book with that, I realized that what was happening was that there was this the the larger story in the tuba. This is not a history of the tuba. As you said, Chris, it's it's not, it's it's it's more like a store stories of how people liberate their own creativity, free their own creativity, finding communion with other people. You know, and they all went back, as one guy said, it's like the gravitational pull, you know, it pulled us in and then it flung us out into the into the universe more energized than than ever to create something new with our lives and our and our instrument and and go against every every limiting idea that people had about us.

SPEAKER_05 14:48

Sam, I I I love that. I mean, of course, we always uh tease our tubo players uh for being in the back of the band and stuff like that. But I love that idea that they found that common ground and the the music community, the community that music ends up making, right? It's individual expression and creativity, but it's also done in community with others. It expands your listening and those ensembles and communication, uh, sharing your part. Um I mean we we as music educators are all in on that. How how can we, in your uh outside view of music education and band directories, what do we need to do differently in our advocacy so that everybody who's not like us or has had the same experiences as us can understand how powerful this is for the future of the world?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Answer that by starting with another story in the in the in the book, and that is that um one of the uh great uh I thought very great stories that I was able to do, I stumbled on, is a story of how Orlando, Florida became kind of like this tuba mecca uh in the 90s. Disney was hiring lots of in-person musicians, uh many bands all over Disney World and all that kind of stuff. And and a lot of tuba players, young tuba players, came out of the blue, out of different jobs or just out of college, and they came to Orlando. In Orlando, they developed what is really the most, what was really the most important tuba scene in the in the United States, uh, certainly in a town not small. It was a small town back then. And they all had salaries, they all had healthcare, and they all were about the same age, and they all wanted to get better. And they all kept on pushing each other. So there was this kind of they drank a lot, but they practiced a ton, and they were playing all day long, and then frequently they had gigs at night. So a tuba player would not be uncommon for a tuba player to be playing eight, 10 hours a day for years, right? And it's and it showed them too. This was all again about this idea of breaking away from old limiting ideas of what they could be and what kind of musicians they could be. And it was just so I I wrote uh one one of the chapters in The Perfect Tubba is about Orlando, Florida during the 90s. And I talked to several of the the guys who were who were in the town then, and and it was like this revelation for a lot of these guys that they were they were seeing themselves in ways that they had never seen. They were recreating their lives. And I bought and that led me to think, in answer to your question, Peter, that the musicians and and uh people in marching band, and let's just talk about in general in marching band, do a very poor job of promoting themselves and selling themselves. When when when when band directors leave college, they come prepared with enormous musical and conducting skills and maybe even marching skills. They are absolutely unarmed when it comes to developing allies beyond that, beyond that little world that they uh the boosters and the parents and all that, and you know, and developing allies beyond that so that they can then sell to a community, sell to the board of education, sell to the superintendent, principal, what have you. The idea that band and music instruction is about um is is about creating something that will prepare you for life. And they do a very bad job of this. There are all these allies they could develop in any community you want to mention. There are all these people who are no went didn't go into music, but they have band in their background. And and band was probably for many of these people, it doesn't take much. You talk to them and they'll tell you it was a revelation. It was like what those guys felt in Orlando was felt like I can break free of what I've been told I can do and achieve a whole lot more. The problem is what I found that that that people go out to these communities completely unprepared to do battle with what they will inevitably confront, which is we've got to cut the budget. And to me, I'm gonna tell you, after writing two books about drug addiction, where parents will come up to me and say, How do I keep my kids away from drugs or what can we do? You know, all this kind of stuff. Um, I stumbled on the answer doing the perfect tuba. It was a very weird experience. I did not expect it. But I, you know, now when people come up, people would ask me that question all the time, every speech, and I gave hundreds of speeches, right, about these topics. People come up to me and go, you know, how do I keep my kids? And I'd say, I don't really know. And I'd hug lots of parents. I didn't really have a good answer for it. Now what I tell them is, look, I'm not an expert in this, but high school band seems to do a pretty fine job of that, you know, of just molding kids. But the attitudes, the habits, the values, the the approaches to life that they learned mastering or attempting to master an instrument and march with, you know, many other hundreds of other dozens of other kids at the same time and all that in this in this little insular world, those are values that that can take them and send them through life into very successful lives. And at no point have I ever heard of a band director going out into his or her community, interviewing people to find the people whose stories that who have those stories, and then bringing them together. This is what I think band directors need to do. They need to bring all that together and present this at school board meetings and present this to the local news reporters or whatever. But it's it's the it's not done. And um, my feeling is uh as I got done with the book, I felt like, man, if I were a if I were a band director, I know just what I do when I come to Newtown. I'd interview the clergy, interview Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, Hospital Minnesota. There's gonna be band people in all of those areas. You've got to develop those allies. And I that's kind of one of the reasons I I wrote wrote the book. It's the the book is a kind of a tool for helping people, new band directors, young band directors, or old band directors too now, who who just simply are befuddled about what to do when when the when the when the call of it and ebony comes that they have to cut the budget.

SPEAKER_05 21:08

Love that. That's great. I've never thought I mean I've had to learn to think that way through the years, right? That doesn't, you're exactly right, that doesn't come naturally. So you write this great narrative nonfiction model. What's your favor? There's a lot of stories. The book is lots of stories. Right. What's what's your favorite story?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Do you have a favorite story in the book? It's a little bit like saying, which is my favorite child, you know. Well, I have a favorite child, but it's tough. Um you know, there's there there there are many. Um the stories that got me into writing about band had to do with um uh a region of the country uh that I had actually spent some time in writing about drugs, and that is the Rio Gran Valley, South Texas, along the Mexico border. And I wrote about two um uh bands, high school bands. One is this little Town called uh of Roma, Texas. And you know, you guys know tech band in Texas is like football in Texas. It's like very highly developed, very prestigious. Everyone wants to, you know, and here was this little town that no one really could find on a map, far away from the major population centers of Dallas and and and uh Houston and Austin and all that, way, way, way down on the border. And the story of how one man came to that town, that school district, um, have been in band for many years, a guy named Al Cortinas, still alive, um, a retired, kind of semi-retired. No one ever apparently really retires from band directing, I guess. Tough. It's tough. Um and um and Al Cortines had developed ideas about how to create great music bands in the Rio Gran Valley where none of the kids can afford music lessons. There's zero ability to have music lessons in the Rio Gran Valley. Um, and he had this idea, and he was just lucky enough, frankly, very lucky, to have uh got the ear of a school district um superintendent and board president. And they both decided that the the and the idea was instead of having three band directors per school district, what the kids here needed to take the place of teachers that kids in other districts paid for all the constantly was the school district had to hire several more band directors so that there would be one band director for each instrument Saxes, clarinet, French horn, you know, on and on like that. And that each teacher would teach kids throughout the district from sixth grade to 12th. And that if you had that, you would develop a uh a kind of a cohesion among teacher and student. This the kids would get much better along the way, you would be demanding more and more small steps, but demanding more and more. And so the Cortina system, he implanted the system in 1994, it was very rough going initially. But eventually, as the kids in the sixth and seventh got older, they were the ones that were really getting good first. The the sophomores and juniors by then were really the band existed, but it was not good. It was just they had no practice, you know, they had just not very very little training. So as the sixth and seventh graders moved in, and other kids began accepting this the idea that this was going to be hard work, you were gonna be graded. None of this was true before, right? He this band emerged. This is a town of 11,000 people, off in the middle of nowhere. And it emerged gradually as one of these bands, a band that went head to head with the some of the best funded, the best bands in in suburban Austin, suburban Dallas, suburban Houston, etc. And it was this remarkable story of how, as Al Cortinez told me, after he told me at one point he he said, a band we are gonna do uh Carmina, we're gonna play Carmina Burana, Karl Orf. And he played it for him over the speakers, and they were like, Oh my god, that's such a great piece, piece of music, but can we play that? And he goes, Of course we could play it, you know. And he told me later, he says, kids will rise to the level you set. Just don't tell them that it's hard. Right? And so he never told them it was hard. And so they began, now they didn't play it really well, but it, you know, but the idea is you you get here and then you get up here, and you it's little steps. By the time I came around, by the time 2003 and 2004, so eight, seven, eight years have passed, this band was now in the finals. This was a band that couldn't even march in 1994. And now they're here on the finals, Billy University football field playing, you know, in San Antonio uh Alamo Dome. I mean, it's just a remarkable story of and I will say though this though, that the the superintendent and the and the board president put their money where their mouth was. They cut other programs to invest it in band, new instruments, a very high level of of and and the the band directors worked their butts off, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. You know, basically that was how they did it. And and so, you know, and now you have there's this fabulous map, which I'll send you could put it up on the on your on your site if you like. A map of the 12 finalists of 20 I came along in 2023, 20 years after they first went to the finals, and they were back in the finals again, and and somebody put a map up on on YouTube on Facebook uh a while later, showing with a star each of the high schools that were finalists in 5A, Texas uh UIL 5A uh band championships, and there were several around Dallas Fort Worth, six, and then there was four around Austin, there was one over here by Houston, and then all the way down, you would miss it if you know what you're looking for. There's the star for Little Roma, Texas. And the thing about the fascinating thing about about about what happened there was that first of all, very quickly band band uh I should I'm sorry, I should say college in Roma had really been the the the purview of really of kids of teachers, or maybe a doctor's kid or something, and very few kids went to college. As this band became much better, and as the quality levels rose, kids were getting scholarships and and and and and going on to school study, and Tuba was a big the low brass, almost the entire low brass section of 2003 went to college to study low brass and then came back as band directors. Yeah. Al Al Cortinez counted of his ex-students, 81 of them were now band directors somewhere in Texas. 81. But the the other thing that was really actually probably even more important than that was that now every kid who graduates go to c from band, in band at Roma, Texas, goes to college, maybe to study mechanical engineering. It doesn't matter that we're studying music or not. This was never the case before band became this thing. And then all the parents are like 100%. They work those kids hard. And one woman said to me, uh, she said, you know, other parents come and tell me, doesn't it bother you that they work your kids so hard and they're out in the cold marching and on? And she said, I don't care. So long as it's there's no lightning, it could be raining and all. I don't care. So long as there's no lightning, I'm fine with it. It's because they work hard that they get to where they they they they get to, you know. It was just, and so Al Cortinas and Roma, Texas was this story that that just as a reporter just thrilled me, just captured me completely, and also showed me now those kids are in drugs. And believe me, on the border there, the allure, one of the problems that Al Cortinas was seeing was that the allure of the drug cartels, easy money and all that stuff, was very, very powerful. And and now band has really one of the things I wrote about is one of these kids who later became a band director, was part of the Lobras, he played uh played Euphonium, he was going back and forth to Mexico because a lot of family there and something and there was like this time when he kind of might have stayed there. And instead he got really into band, and he went on to college, came back as a band director. While all his friends who were in Mexico, they either got caught up in the band in the drug trafficking world, a couple of them were murdered, one's gone to lamb, you know, that kind of stuff. It was just this beautiful story of, again, hard work, not telling kids it's hard, just telling what's what we expect of you. And and we're gonna work until we get it. And um, and and can and commitment to funding band.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

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SPEAKER_06 30:01

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SPEAKER_05 30:14

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SPEAKER_06 30:42

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SPEAKER_04 30:54

Was there a compelling moment in all of these interviews in the whole process where you knew you had to write the book, or did it just sort of evolve over time?

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, that's a really good uh question. Normally, like with my drug books, I knew there was a book there. It was so clear. Drug addiction, overdoses were going like this, you know. It was like, and it was nationwide, you know. This was not nationwide, except that in America we have the best school music education programs in the world. Nobody comes close to school education, music education programs that we have. But I I, you know, so it took me a while. And in fact, you know what happened was um I was afraid to sign a contract to write a book about this for a long time. And so what I ended up doing was I told my editor, I think this could be great, but I don't know yet. So I'm gonna write a very large chunk of this book. It ended up being about a third of the book before I want to sign a contract because the worst thing that could happen is I'll say early on, yeah, sure, there's a book. And then I go, Oh, no, there isn't. And I've already signed a contract. I didn't want to be uh committed in that way. So it took me about like a third. I probably had, yeah, I had many chapters. And what's more, even more important, I was so thrilled with it. I loved this. This was exactly the book I should have been doing after 12 years of writing about drugs and and all the rest. You know, you because you find these stories of individual achievement. Down in um, down in uh uh at Roma, Texas for a while, the tuba, the the tuba section or the low breast section was consumed with this idea. Um, this would have been 1999, 2000, 2001, that there was another tuba player out there who was the best tuba player ever produced by the Rio Grande Valley. And they it was not a big tuba section at the time. It was just two guys for a bit, but they were like obsessed with beating this guy in like all-state competitions and stuff like this. And um, the kids who who knew about this were all much younger. They'd heard these older players talk about this guy, this this man, this this phenom, the superman of the tuba, right? And I said, Oh man, well, okay, I gotta find that guy. That guy's got a story, a hell of a story. And I did, and and his name is J.R. Trevino. I caught up with him 20 years later. He was now 38, 39, whatever, maybe 40 by then. And um, you know, talk about what my favorite story is. There are time my wife was crying when I told her the story of J. Trevino. Gerard Trevino was horribly bullied, horribly bullied um all throughout, laughed at because he played the tuba, but more than that because he was just kind of like, you know, frankly, socially inept a little bit, and big coke bottle glasses, and the classic thing that's just painful to watch. He found in the tuba friendship and and comfort. And so he never went kicking or screaming to practice the tuba. It was always with love. He embraced the tuba figuratively and literally, right? And he became and so he played it constantly. And he would he wouldn't really go to lunch. He would go to the lunch room, eat lunch in the in the uh in the in the band room and all and all this kind of stuff. And little by little by little, before it didn't take too long, he was the best tuba player at his school. And then I think he graduated in 2000 uh 2001. 2001 is when he graduated. By then he was the greatest tuba player um in the in the entire area and all state and all that kind of stuff. Great stuff. The sad part was, though, that he he you know, he lived in this little dusty town of Harlingen, a ran kind of ranching town, Harlingen, Texas, down south, right on the Rio Grande Valley. And he never um, you know, there was nothing there for him musically. Yeah he would talk about Arnold Jacobs, great two of a player for the Chicago. No one knew that guy was. You know, Mahler, no, nobody knew who Gustav Mahler was, you know, the the liberal the the the uh uh the the various symptom symphonies of uh Shostakovich, all these different, all this stuff was, he didn't get it. He came to a point in his life, particularly after high school, where he needed to go far away. The problem was he was also psychologically incapable of that. He didn't have any money, number one. But number two, it was going far away from what he knew. He he he had so turned to the tuba as a balm of the horrible treatment against he didn't want to be around other people, you know. It was just with his tuba that but when it came time to actually go away, which is what he should have done, and he realized that when he spoke to me, he was very, very uh thoughtful and articulate on this on this stuff. Um, he never did. And he taught tuba to young kids for a bit, and and then, you know, and then he got very physically ill, and it's a long story, but but he never could. What made him a great tuba player for Rio Grande Valley prevented him from becoming a very great tuba player at a national, which he undoubtedly could have done. I have total faith in the guy um to have been able to do that because the idea, you know, a very poor family. His dad was a car wash guy, you know, works in the car wash. Um, and and his and and uh his mom was a homemaker. And so you had JR Trav this the JR Trevino, so I w I heard about J.R. Travino without knowing his name first as this phenomena, and then I figured out who he was, and I called him, and so I went down twice uh from Nashville, where I was living, to uh to uh Harlingen, uh Texas, where he still lives, and uh we had long conversations at Zoom as well and so on. But his story was both of the beauty that you find in um that you can find uh uh through your own creation, what you create through your own hard work and everything. It was just gorgeous. And I would tell my wife this story, she would be crying by halfway through, you know. And uh I I think it is one of those stories that people read and they just start start start crying. But he he he was also a a story of how you could take that too far. Or or you can, you know, you don't you you do need other people, you do need to be around other people, you need to get right with being around other people, even though the these other people were extraordinarily cruel, you know, uh to them. And um anyway, it was uh the uh maybe if there's one story that I just love as much as any other, it's it's it's JR's uh story, who um nobody had ever written about him. I couldn't believe that, but I mean that's that was the territory I was in. Nobody had ever written about any of these people. No, you know, and and yet they have these jewel stories. These stories are gold, they're beautiful, and that's where I was mentally, f I mean emotionally. I was like, I can't believe I ever thought that I wouldn't be able to write a book about this, or I was doubtful about that, you know, and now I'm like in the middle of it. Same with I have to say, um, the story of uh tuba fats, the greatest uh kind of like the iconic tuba player down in uh in New Orleans, who I'm an enormous man, 6'5, whatever. Um, I went down there, you know, I went down there thinking I'm gonna write a story about tuba fats as kind of like the anthropology of the tuba. I'm falling asleep telling you about that idea. It was such a bad idea. The anthropology about the tuba, blah, blah, blah. I was like, oh my God. Instead, bless, blessed be Rhonda Rose, a woman I met who who actually was his landlord for a while, who told me uh the the story of how tuba fats, enormous man, gigantic man, fell in love. And so it was a tuba love story. And um the the love story of uh of this man and his horn with this woman who was this belter of a singer. She was big herself, and I know you could hear her sing two blocks away. Linda Young, and um anyway, I'll leave it. People, it's just this beautiful story, and I don't want to get into the details about how it what all happens, but but it's those kinds of stories, and I thought that I was actually continuing the legacy of Tuba Woodstock by writing these stories because it was writing about human beings, not tuba players. It was tuba player, people who played the tuba, not just that's all they were, you know.

SPEAKER_06 39:33

So yeah, no, and that's the beauty of, you know, that's the beauty of this book is it's it's just way deeper than what you might perceive that the cover says. Although I must say to you that the story about the York tubas, I actually uh got to see Gene uh Picorney about two weeks ago after they played The Rite of Spring. And 30 years ago, a good close friend of mine uh went down to to meet with Gene and have a lesson, and there was one of the York tubas. And after buttering him up with deep dish pizza uh for a while, we're like, hey, could we maybe play that for a minute? You know, and he's like, Yeah, go ahead, you know. So, like, yeah, but I gotta say, even having that opportunity to sit with that horn, and even as a young, you know, tuba player, knowing the significance of that, but after reading your take on it, your perspective, and your interview with Gene and so on, like it it puts it in a whole different light, you know. So, even as a geeky tuba player, I loved all the little pieces of this because like I didn't know that I didn't know they took the lead pipe and they threw away the lead pipe.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

You know what was interesting, Chris, was that back when I was just interviewing tuba players because I just thought it might be a good idea that someday it might enter it and become something. I interviewed Bob Carpenter. Bob Carpenter was like the first one to tell me about the the York tubas. And he mentioned it in a way, he said, Have you ever heard about these two tubas like that? You know, I was like, No, no, nothing. What are you talking about? Yeah, the the Yorks, the Chicago Yorks, owned by Chicago Symphony, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, and this was over the phone. I didn't have, I had not, I didn't meet Bob for 10 years after that. But he told me the story. And then I talked to Mike Roilance, uh Boston Symphony tuba player, and then I talked to Tom Triese, who was kind of the guy who, the collaborator of uh Bob Carpenter and Tom Triese were two engineered tuba players, and they told me the story of these two mystical, legendary tubas. And then when I heard other tuba players talk about them, I have to tell you, I've been a reporter, I can't play the tuba, but I have a very, very finely honed radar for great stories. And I could tell you when I heard that story, I go, oh my God. There's so wait, let me stop. There's two of these tubas, and they are viewed as the greatest expression of tuba in the history of manufacturing. Is that what you're saying? Yes, right. You it's an honor to be in the same room with them. Nine, nine companies, nine companies have tried to re-replicate the York tubas. And the reason they've tried to do that is because there were only two of these. The York Instrument Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was probably the greatest in manufacturer of tubas before World War II. They made a custom, they custom made these two tubas for um uh Philip Donatelli, Philadelphia uh Orchestra tuba player. He couldn't play them because he was frankly too chubby. And he sells them to he sells one of them. Um uh actually he got one, not two. They kept one. York kept one as a as a as a prototype because they thought once Donatelli starts playing it, we're gonna have orders coming through the you know, out our ears. We we need a prototype to be able to recreate this tuba. So they kept that. Anyway, falls into the hands of Arnold Jacobs and Arnold Jacobs and this York tuba, and eventually he buys the second one. These two tubas create one of the great hit careers in in in brass, frankly, in the United States, and certainly in the tuba. Um, using um both his virtuosity, the exquisite quality that that York, having really made the best tubas, now put all of their energy into making the very best they'd ever made in these two tubas, and then they went out of business. So nobody could replicate. Meanwhile, as I said, the tuba players were beginning to feel like they like they needed a civil rights movement, like they needed a hero. You know, the way guitar players made a Jimi Hendrix or something, right? You know, and and Arnold Jacobs became the tuba superhero. And along the way, he gave many master classes in all, and he would frequently talk in the most glowing uh terms about the two tubas that that were. You know, fantastic and unparalleled. And so nine companies, as the tuba became an instrument where virtual virtuosity was expected, began to make better and better tubas. But nine companies tried to replicate those two tubas. And then you had the, they probably have heard about the Franken tuba phenomenon where they would cut tubas that were B flats to mimic a C tuba, which is what the Yorks were. So you had all this kind of underground manipulation of tubas. I mean, it's just, I'm telling you, Chris, it was like I was just blown away by the whole story. And that also that Tom, Tom Trees and Bob Carpenter, both of them in Orlando, tuba players who also were engineers, and I'm not going to tell you the whole story of their thing, but that they embark on an idea that they think they can replicate the two York tubas, even though they don't work for any major manufacturing corporation. They don't have any budget. They just are doing it because they love it. Again, once again, it all gets back to people doing stuff because they love it. They did, they put lots of money into trying to figure out the proper metal and all this kind of stuff. And I'll leave it to people to read about the story of the perfect, the two, the perfect tubas. But I was in love with that story. I'm not going to lie to you. I was in love from the moment I heard it over the phone in 2011 or whatever. And the back of my mind, I said, if I ever write a book, if I ever write a crazy idea like a book about the tuba, I'm going to write about the perfect tubas, the perfect York tubas, because the story is so sublime and beautiful. But again, it's about people doing stuff because they love it. You know, it's like Jim Self. Yeah. What does Jim Self do? He he teaches, he plays on movie soundtracks. How does he use his money? He builds a 38, there's a great, another beautiful story. It's like maybe my favorite one other than Jim than J.R. Travigno, where he builds a 38-foot long practice hall because 36-foot long is the longest tuba sound wave. Uh the the what is it, the B flat, the lowest B flat, the B flat tuba, its sound wave is 36. And he was tired of playing the tuba and practice halls made for trumpets. Damn it. Yep. He makes this enormous hall. And I visited it three times and it didn't quite understand where I was until like the end of the second time. And but what but see, this is the whole thing, man, it's such a beautiful space uh these peop people, you know, and he lives on the Hollywood, or he lived, he died, of course, in November. But uh Jim lived in the Hollywood Hills. You know what people put their money into on the Hollywood Hills? Housing tennis courts and swimming pools. And here he puts instead he puts this just beautiful hall, 38 feet long, packed with, of course, a chimbaso and like five tubas and all this kind of stuff. But anyway, I get very, very wound up when I write when I talk about this stuff, you know. Um, and but that's why I love being a journalist, you know. It's you don't write about what you know, you write about what you don't know. You're gonna find out all about it. And I played one time, as I said in the book, I played one of those York tubas. I know. Yeah, it was embarrassment. And it sounds like the sound you get when you haven't in for a while and your stomach's growling.

SPEAKER_05 47:17

That's that's the tubas love that sound.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Yeah, it's fine. It was embarrassing to to to to hear it, but you know.

SPEAKER_05 47:27

Anyway. Oh my gosh, Sam, this has been amazing.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

Um crazy stories. But that's kind of again, Jim's story was like Jim's story came to me late. It was like I didn't understand what I was. I was talking to the guy and I was like, okay, this is interesting. Where is this going? Until I realized that I was sitting in the middle of this 38-foot long. It's like he acoustically, he learned the best acoustics are when your hall is twice as long as it is wide. So it's 19 by 19 by 38. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 47:57

Lovely stuff. Yes, yeah, that's wild. Sam, what you do, yeah, what's so fascinating about you is that you are you are coming at this from outside of this tuba world, you know what I mean? And that you're coming in and you're giving perspective to not only others who are outside of that world, but even to the tuba players within it. And and you are validating a lot of the things that we see as being so essential. I think it's that. I think it's your own curiosity, and I also think it's your patience. Like to listen to all these services, like tuba players can talk. And a lot of times they talk about nonsense. And the fact that you've been listening to this for so many years, and then to be able to pull out these nuggets, Sam, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

You know, like I appreciate you saying that. But it's the, you know, again, it's the love of the job. It's it's that's journalism. And if you if you allow your so the thing is, if you don't hold too closely to what you thought the story was, but instead you let interviews and facts and data show you and take you, it's it's a little bit like the um ocean current. I've always thought of it as that, where it takes you someplace you never thought you'd ever, you know, you'd ever go. And you just kind of like, oh yeah, okay, okay. This is I'll go, let's go here. Yeah, okay, I'll go there, you know. And and I think that that um the good thing was that I didn't have to try too hard to get interviews. You know, people call call up people like, no, you want to talk to me about what? Well, hell yeah. Nobody has asked me to talk about the tuba. But also, this was the I I came to the same understanding about about band too. Um, that that there was, again, all of these values, they were community-sustaining values that you learn doing tuba, during band, whatever. And this was a very, very important uh thing to me because I, in my previous two books, uh Dreamland and The Least of Us, which are fantastic books, and everybody should go out and read them, those books were about the destruction of community. If you look at addiction, addiction is really festers where people don't know each other, where maybe job loss, or even in well-to-do communities, no one's out on the street. There's like this atomization that we've gone through in America that is profound and extraordinarily damaging. And one of the major symptoms of that, of that destruction of community, is our opioid uh uh addiction and malfentanyl and math and all the rest. And not and not just that, it's all the legal crud, right? It's the fast food, it's marijuana, it's uh it's uh gambling apps lately. They're like locusts, right? Um, all of this is kind of built into the the idea is that we have shredded community and the foundations that we need, we we survived as a species. For millennia, we are dominant species on the earth because we work together. Remember the caveman who who marched to his own drummer, he broke his leg and got eaten by the cheetah.

SPEAKER_05 50:57

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

You know what I mean? That's not how you survive as a species, except until in the United States the last 40 years or so, where we decided, wow, we don't need all that. And so all of a sudden, I was coming upon people for whom collaboration and focus, you know, in a time of horrible distraction, focus, discipline, postponed gratification, a time of immediate gratification, and of course collaboration with others, even people you don't like too much.

SPEAKER_05 51:25

But see, Sam, this is the um we we also grew up in that. So we just think that everybody understands that already. And your gift is A, you're willing to listen to tuba players for 20 years, but then B, you're also willing, you have the gift of journalism and to find the story and allow the story to evolve and to share that. And and we need that. And this that's the really cool thing about you entering our world and sharing it.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

It's weird, Peter, that you say that. I I felt that as well. I felt like these guys don't know how to tell their story.

SPEAKER_05 51:56

No, we don't.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

And and the big part of their story is if you present this as arts are important for every l human being, which is normally the argument, um, the b people go, yeah, okay, yeah, I don't care. Or you're probably right, but you know, the budget is what the budget is, you know. However, if you say to people, we have a very serious problem among drug addiction and maybe addiction to other things like gambling, like stuff like that, right? Marijuana, the hyperpotent marijuana out there to me is just scary, right? Um and banned routinely every year without being noticed offers an opportun uh an alternative, an opportunity for kids to be in something together, to work their butts off. Even if they don't do supremely well, they're still in that world where they're do we're working together and they're learning the the things that will sustain them through life. Many of them are doing much better in the GPA, and many of them are graduating where maybe they wouldn't have before. You have this thing that is there to be marshaled and to be um recognized and um expanded even. But it is doing wonders for kids, and everyone all around you is going, What should we do about drugs and all this kind of stuff? And I'm like, Well, I guess why say you might try to think about getting your kid into band. Now it's not this to say that band is the only thing that will do that, but I was blown away by that idea, perhaps because I had spent 12 years writing about what happens when you have none of that. It's not just poor communities, working class communities, wealthy, wealthy and middle class communities too. They're just devastated by this, you know, and oh, Axie Contin. I it it it it it it hit me midway through the book. I'm like, oh my God, this is right. This is exactly what I had no idea this was true. And now it now it's clearly true because you know, the band directors, there's the story, perhaps it's true, maybe it must be true, or band directors ask at the end of the year, how'd your band do? Right? And the guy goes, uh, well, too soon to tell. Talk to me in 10 years. Yeah. Talk to me in 20 years. And that's the point that I was making earlier. Out there in the world, in whatever community you, your band director and music educator and all that is is living in, there are all these people with wondrous stories to tell about the effects of working hard together with other people on something that is hard.

SPEAKER_05 54:28

I don't know if it's I don't know if it's true, but when I lived in the Seattle area, there was this rumor that um Microsoft only allowed people into the leadership um program if they could find some sort of group music making experiences in their past, because they had found that the one thing that every one of their favorite leaders had in common, the only thing was that they had had some sort of a musical ensemble.

SPEAKER_00 54:52

See, this is the kind of story, Peter. This is really interesting you say that. This is the kind of story that if I were a band director, going out all alone to a town or county where I'm supposed to do all this, I would be finding these people. I would be finding them because they have wondrous stories. And frequently they were in a power, a position of some power or prestige. The uh I was giving a speech um I uh a couple years ago, actually. I'm still in touch with the guy, but um he, I sent him a signed copy of the book, in fact. But I was talking to a group of judges, federal judges in uh in Pittsburgh, and uh from all over the country, actually, they just came to Pittsburgh. And so I was talking about fentanyl and methamphetamine. That's the kind of that was my world for many, for a long time. And they asked me, What's what's your next book about? And and I told them, and I told a very short synopsis of what I've told you. And uh, and if and I tell you this, the reaction at first was tubas, ah, everyone laughed. And then everyone shut the hell up for 10 minutes because I explained to them why this was an essential story to be writing if I was concerned with addiction, fentanyl, Hachi Kant, and all of that kind of stuff. This was the most important story I could be writing, you know? And and the guy comes up to uh one of the judges comes up from West Virginia, he goes, Yeah, oh my God, I can't believe it. Gave me a big hug. I played trombone in my band. Now, this guy was in his 50s, and yet he his most beloved stories and his most beloved memories of high school playing in band in some town. I can't remember which town it was in West Virginia, but that's where he he grew up. And so I I don't know, it just seems to me like so. The book became, I kind of envisioned it as a tool for band directors to tell the stories of how band, the the experience of all of those those years of going through band and learning an instrument, which maybe you don't even play anymore. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. That's right, is something that that you can use as a band director to show people this is what we need. You want to be get get kids away from drugs, and what school administrator doesn't want to do that? You know, you want to boost your GPA, you want to boost graduation rates, you want to boost also, I think band really cultivates just engagement in school. And maybe that lasts after graduation too. Like, hey, I want to be part of this because we had such a good time in it, you know, or we learned so much, or maybe we worked our butts off. I'm not sure I really loved it all the time, but now that I'm 25, or now that I'm 35, I dig it.

SPEAKER_05 57:30

And it sets you up for that success.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

I I I I don't I I I mean, I think absolutely it does. And the problem is that it's not a story, again, getting back to what I said earlier, it's just not a story that band directors tell very well or at all. They just kind of sit there and go, what do I do? And I'm like, hey man, if I were a band director, I'd be out interviewing all those, all those, you know, I'd be the city councilman, I'd be interviewing the the pastor at the church or the director of Chamber of Commerce or the business owners or hospital minute, all the doctors, the judges, the lawyers, and bring them to the school board meeting where they're gonna talk about this and and have 10 of them set up and say, if you cut band, you will be shooting yourself in both feet.

SPEAKER_04 58:12

Well, we have so many young teachers that listen to this, Sam, and uh so your words are are not lost uh on those people that are listening to this and just looking for a suggestion to keep their program afloat.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

So in a way, there I I you Peter, you and I were talking about this b uh earlier. Um to me, it it it hit me that music education, band, whatever, uh you know, tuba playing, it's not a good idea. It's an essential uh I think now. I uh it to me it it feels so much like like any any school administrator or um or principal or what have you would be delusional to cut the the thing that really has shown itself to have decades and decades of great results. It's not like you've got to prove this, you know. And but the way but you do have to tell that story. And perhaps it's as a journalist that I began to realize there were all these people out there who could tell in any community who could tell that story. You just have to find them, like this judge. I'm sure nobody has ever come up to him and said, Hey, would you would you mind going to our school board meeting? Because they're thinking of, you know, and tell your story and maybe have eight or ten others come up and say, Hey, you know, okay, I'm a business owner. I can tell you the most important thing that ever happened to me in life was my was my band experience. Do not, under any circumstances, hide this thing. But music, university music schools don't teach that. I'm trying to get them to think about that. I'm trying to get them to think you need to teach that. That's what every school director, band director is gonna face. And I'm like, use the book. I'll do I do Zoom calls free of charge for for schools. I've been doing this for 10 years. I've done maybe 100, 150 zoom calls with book groups or classes that use my book, right? And um, I'm happy to do it. Um, you know, you gotta you gotta you gotta learn to tell your story. And I think too often in the music world, people complain to each other and everyone's like, I know, it's just terrible. I'm like, yeah, it's terrible, but you gotta tell your story better, man. If not, you're gonna be where you are, you know. Right. So yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:22

And these teachers are in the exact right spot to to to use that and to um use that platform and and to do good. Sam, what a treat. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your passion and wisdom and everything that you've learned along the way. This is uh this is pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

Well, Chris, I really appreciate you um uh reading the book and taking it with you when uh when we met at uh at um um Midwest Clinic. I love it, man. Thank you. Thank you to uh you, Phil and Peter. Um really appreciate the opportunity. And um uh you can find me on my website. People can find me on my website with just my name, samquignonas.com. There's my email there as well. And and again, if anybody is using the book as a kind of a in schools or anything like that, feel free to give me a call. I'm happy to do a zoom call, free charge, all that kind of stuff, or come to your school and speak, all that kind of stuff. I've done that many a time. But this has been so wonderful, and I'm so grateful to to all three of you for allowing me to just kind of reach that that that crowd, so to speak. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:23

Thanks for sharing this book with our community. We love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

My pleasure.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:28

I didn't really know him before Midwest, right? Jerry Young, our mentor, brought this person into our view, and oh my God, we need more of that type of narrative. That's just not our skill set, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:39

This I mean, advocacy maybe, but in the way that he does it in his passion and and well, you know, when the three of us are looking for great pieces of music or great composers or great performers, we look for those people, composers and performers that are entirely unique. But but he's that person as a journalist and a writer. Yes. I mean, like who else tells the story uh with that uh type of angle lens uh and uh authenticity, you know, it it's a pretty remarkable story. I mean, what he's telling through the book.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:12

Yeah, and his craft of of find I mean tubas, and then 20 years, whatever it's been, about just finding these stories and realizing there's a there's a book there. It's just it's been wonderful to and then when I met him and we were visiting, like this guy's not just talking about tuba. He's all in on what the community and I I you know, I think he's right. We don't tell our story, but also we just assume everybody else knows, right? We we think everybody else who's gone through music knows that story, but I think we're the ones that yeah, I don't know. So I mean that's just how important.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:46

I mean, pretty amazing to go on a 20-year journey studying drug addiction and epit you know, drug epidemic worldwide after 20 years to arrive as a tuba as the solution.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:59

I mean, I'm sorry, but I didn't want to stop him, but I wrote no. I wrote down a few things. Tubas get paid triple, which uh I didn't know that was a thing, and I've checked with Steve Campbell and he agreed it's not a thing. I didn't yeah, I've never been. Uh they were stealing tubas. I again, this is a new thing for me. I was not I was not ready for that, but that was beautiful. Now you two played in Disney. Did you find it to be a life-changing experience when you were there? Well, yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:28

No, you weren't in Orlando though, right? You guys were out in California? We were in California. There was no hub for us. No, I went out to Jim South's house though, when I was at Disney. That's when I first met Jim and um was in that exact room. You know what I mean? I'm like, I asked him, I'm like, how will I know your house? He goes, There's a tuba window. You'll see it. It's up in the balcony, you'll see this tuba hovering over the valley. And I'm like, Oh yeah, there it is. So I mean, yeah, pretty amazing. Just uh wonderful his stories. I mean, it is a really fun read because of just all he's a great storyteller and writes really, really, really well. Like he pulls you in. So even if you hate tuba, you will find this, and it really is. He he talked about band a lot and how it really does spread well beyond the concept of tuba.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:20

This guy's a national book author award winner, like multiple times. Like, this is not your normal music education advocate. He's he's the real deal. So I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:32

But I think that's what makes him a great advocate. I just totally agree.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:36

Not a band director. And he's the one saying, go find that banker, go find that, you know, lumber store owner, go get him and have them tell your story. That's brilliant. Because we just find the parents that come toward us and the people that come toward us, but there's this whole group of people that, you know, yeah. Amen.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:55

Yep, good stuff. Um, uh, I do have to say one thing I wrote down. He said when it comes to drugs, it's about, you know, uh quick, you know, self-gratification very quickly, and that the tuba is completely opposite of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:09

I I wanted I it's not just delayed gratification. There might not be any. It may not be any gratification at all.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:18

And if you do work on this for years and not be successful, rehearse rehearsal just ended?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:24

I think the other thing is because of the title, two book players have started to read this and realize how great it is, but it doesn't, you know, speak the title doesn't speak like a Dr. Tim book does towards music educators. And I think that's why another reason why it was so important to get him on the podcast to share like there's stuff here. And in those stories, in his writing, I mean you can find the things you need to draw people in and to share your story as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:49

So I also think what's great is that you know we spend an awful lot of time on a podcast uh just razzing each other and razzing guests and our guests razzing us back, and that's not always for everybody. And it's okay. Um, and I I was glad that he put us well, he put our two listeners, you know, to our podcast in a in a place where they could take what it is that that we do seriously. And um it's okay. He elevated the tuba.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:16

He's elevated the tuba beyond the easy jokes. Sorry, Chris. You you you make it easy to make the jokes it's true. And it's elevated, of course. We all know it's not just a tuba. It could be violin, it could be flute, right? It's that it's the the rigor it takes to be successful, and the idea of having an excellence and the standard for people to meet, and and all the things we teach through the art of music making as a community that is just so resonant. So there it is. All right, boys.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:45

Uh hey, in an effort to uh bring us back down, uh here is Paul Kyle.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:01

Well, hello, commuter. Feeling adventurous? Then welcome to a step off the traditional band path as this week's band bustler explores a different type of band piece, one that invites your students into an entirely different sound world while still being highly engaging and fun to play. And if you like what you're about to hear, there's so much more where this came from, as this prolific composer is quite band friendly. Happy listening.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:09

Mostly because he put the title in the file. So maybe that's what it is. Yeah, that's right. Well, I didn't look.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:14

I should have looked. Yeah, you should have looked.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:16

Don't look. Trombones, right? Not tuba. They're not tuba. I was listening, listening too hard. I was gonna ask him. I was gonna say, would this work for any other instrument? You know, like the tuba just could be a placeholder. But this is your moment. This was your moment. I can't give it away. I mean, it's just like, well, tuba.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:33

I mean we need to change our name. This is beyond tuba. Like this whole year we've had tuba players. It's the year of the tuba. It's the year of the tuba, it's the Chinese year of the tuba.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:40

Yeah, well, for our last year of the podcast, there's still you know, it's a good good way to go from the room.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:45

Phil's always trying to get out of the podcast.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:46

He's like boxing out, he's just trying to get away. Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, and let's end that way today. Phil, if there was a way out of this podcast, what would it be? What would be the ultimate?

SPEAKER_05 1:08:58

What's your way out of what wait, what's your way out of not judging for Beyond the Artless or uh Beyond the Notes? Well, it's that end.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:06

Uh oh, how how do I get out of both the festival and the podcast at the same time?

SPEAKER_05 1:09:11

What do you think you could do to make that happen?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:13

Uh car broke down.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:19

Beyond Artless is sponsored by Beyond the Notes Music Festival. Our mission is to create and provide profound learning and social experiences through music that go beyond the notes. Visit BTN Musicfestival.com to learn more.