Steel Jam: Life in a Grrrlllll Band
Mary Spalding is the leader of the band Steel Jam, a calypso band. The band is already unusual in that it has Mary as its leader – a female and an out lesbian. When questioned about whether this has made a difference, she shakes her head firmly and says, “No, not at all.” Being a female lead hasn’t been a problem, either. “People are surprised, though, to see two women fronting a band, but the response is positive. “That’s been pretty consistent geographically.”
Even more unusual was her quest for that second woman fronting the band, Josie Reichert. Imagine this: It is the end of a long work day, and you are firmly ensconced in your favorite chair for the evening, surfing or watching TV. A friend of yours – a musician – calls you and tells you she has found the perfect person to fill out her band. You’re thrilled, because she’s been looking for just the right person for months in an agonizing, no-holds-barred search. “Who is it? Who is it?”, you half-scream into the phone.
Your excitement turns to shock when she says, “It’s you.” You played piano as a kid, and later alto sax in your high school band, but you don’t really consider yourself a musician. Unless the band’s repertoire is limited – perhaps just to Chopsticks and Happy Birthday – you don’t know how you’ll be an asset. Besides, you’ve got a day job.
That was the position Josie found herself in one evening back in early 1995. It’s not the typical recruiting pattern for a band, but not much about this band is typical. Bandleader Mary Spalding’s reasoning went like this: “I moved to San Francisco in mid-1993, and spent some time researching the market. I met a number of people, but it wasn’t an exact fit. And an exact fit is important. You spend a lot of time with your bandmates – they’re kind of like a family.
It occurred to me one day, after searching for just the right fit, ‘Hey, I get along with Josie. I’ve found the player. She played alto sax in high school, and I’m a music educator by training. I can teach her.’ ” The approach worked, and by the middle of that year, the band was getting paid gigs. Mary continues to use this approach, and she and Josie are working on incorporating singing into their repertoire.
I contacted Mary and asked if I could sit in on one of their rehearsals. (Oh goodie, I’m thinking to myself, I get to be a cool girl groupie.) “Well, we have so many gigs right now, we’re not doing rehearsals.” So I tag along to one of their gigs instead.
When I walk into the venue, a man is still touching up the walls with paint, while another pulls up an orange electrical cord, used for some last-minute repair. Outside, a younger man is washing off cars, paying attention to those near the building. Employees in matching polo shirts carry, place and replace green and white balloons. Others move a bar, wine and glasses to one side of the room.
In the middle of this nervously hushed chaos, Mary sets up with band mate Josie Reichert. Mary is a full-time musician. Josie doubles as a pharmacist. Gary Montrezza, the missing member of the group, plays trapset when a trio is requested. No, it isn’t exactly rock and roll, but a variety of pop, reggae, salsa and even classical, played in the calypso style of a steel drum band. And (if you haven’t guessed yet) it’s not a smoky bar or nightclub, but rather the grand opening of a National Car Rental in San Francisco. It could just as easily be the San Francisco AIDS Walk, a North Bay winery or an outdoor concert on Treasure Island.
Steel Jam’s professional front flies in the face of the stereotypical strung-out musician/band, playing in some dive bar on the wrong side of town. “People most often think we’ll be disorganized. When we show up in a timely manner and have all the materials, people are quite relieved, especially if they have been burned a couple of times,” Mary adds. “Sort of like the stereotype that all writers are crazy?”, I ask. “Yeah.” Pause. “Hey, how long have you had that facial tic and wild-eyed stare?”, Mary asks me. We both laugh.
As she sets up, I notice another shattered stereotype: This is far beyond the proverbial “poet and one (wo)man band”. In addition to Mary’s steelpan-tenor drum and Josie’s steelpan-double seconds, the band sets up a computer, software and a synthesizer. The gadgetry takes the bulk of the set-up time. As in every other industry, music has gone high-tech, minimizing the need for bands with more members. “The computers aren’t icing on the cake,” Mary explains, “but intrinsic to the arrangements and the band. Before 1993, when I was in Wisconsin and had a steel band there, I had a different configuration.
There were four of us and more drums, but no computers or synthesizers.” Although other bands in the Bay Area use drum machines, not many of the steel bands she has seen use the synthesizers. On top of the computer sits Gig-Kat, a stuffed meer cat and the band’s mascot, which joined the band after a gig at the Oakland Zoo. A generator is also de rigueur, as the band quickly discovered while playing at an outdoor venue in 1996 during the rolling power outages which plagued the Western United States. “When we do the AIDS Walk, or really any outdoor venue especially, we have the generator with us,” Mary says. The technology helps the band to scale the volume downward as well as upward. “Especially in San Francisco, it’s important to be able to adjust the volume level. There are so many close quarters here. But for outside venues, we really need to be a lot louder.”
As someone who was born and raised surrounded in Muzak(TM)?, I secretly wondered whether all the electronic gadgets will make the music sound too canned, too typical. Again, it’s not typical, and this is evidenced by many of the party’s attendees dancing and swaying to the music. Everyone who grabs a drink boogies across the room to the bar, as if they are in a dance contest, first prize being that tempting glass of Chardonnay.
That response is pretty normal when Steel Jam plays. At one event, an older woman approached Mary and said, “I bet you don’t know polkas.” Mary had come up with a polka set for her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary a few months earlier, so the band launched into a polka set. “People flew out of their chairs, dropped food and made a beeline for the dance floor. The average age of the dancers was 65,” recalls Mary, still chuckling at the sight of previously sedentary seniors jumping to the dance floor with an X-Games kind of energy.
So, how does a white lesbian from Wisconsin end up as the leader of a steel drum band? Mary’s start in music, and the events leading up to Steel Jam’s formation, are as unlikely as the band itself. When Mary was 5, her older brother (then 11) was taking piano lessons. Although her brother was the student, it wasn’t long before Mary’s parents realized she should also be taking lessons, based on their young daughter’s ability to pick up instruction from her older brother’s lessons. With a born talent to play music by ear, though, Mary was not very enthusiastic about practicing at first.
“If I could get the teacher to play music, I could play it.” In the middle of 6th grade, she encountered a teacher who realized what she was doing, and made her practice. “I found out later he did the same thing, except he did it until he went to the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University.” After high school, Mary attended the same conservatory and majored in playing the organ. After graduation, she taught K-12 music for six years, then returned to college for her Master’s Degree in World Music from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she was introduced to the steel drums.
“I figured, how many other chances will I get to learn steel drums?”, Mary says. She graduated, returned to Wisconsin and the forerunner to Steel Jam was born. Twice in her career, she has played steel drums in Trinidad with the “Petrotrin Invaders”, one of the leading steel bands of Trinidad and Tobago which has been in existence since the early 1940’s.
When she isn’t playing a gig for Steel Jam or as a guest in another band, Mary might play instruments like a bleach bottle banjo or bottle cap tambourines. These and other wacky instruments are part of her Nature Awareness With Recycled Instruments program, one of two programs she offers to schools, libraries and other children’s programs. “The steel drum is, of course, a prime example of making music with recycled materials,” she adds.
And who knows? Maybe the next new member of Steel Jam is gluing bottle caps to her tambourine as we speak.
