Jim Fox
This year brought Jim Fox to us as our new band director. Jim had recently joined the band, playing euphonium, and was a fine musician. Multi-talented, Jim was also a psychologist and the director of the choir at the Newburgh Presbyterian Church, where his wife is minister. By this time, Jon Patton was newly married and had moved to the Spencer County countryside. Under Jim’s direction, the band started playing some new music, and all of us remember especially the first time we tried “The Incredibles”! It was incredible, all right, but eventually we did get the hang of it, and we still occasionally play it today.
Jim also introduced us to tunes such as the “Blues Brothers Review”, “American River Songs”, the “Chicken Run” (remember that one, guys?) and to John Williams. We were definitely playing more sophisticated stuff! Much of the music he introduced us to then is still in our active library today.
This is the year the band purchased our parade trailer. We tried it out for the first time on June 11th for the Newburgh Summerfest parade. On the trailer that day were Wayne Fiester, Hugh Whitaker, Steve Pitt, Tracy McConnell, Pat King, Kathy Parker, Frank Book, Anna Hartig, Rick Williams, Mike Reising, Carl Zimmerman, Mary Williams, Virgil Miller, Terry Bailey, Janet Pirtle, Bill Haas, Ted Gore and Nance Fiester. Dan walked alongside with his sousaphone. Luckily, the parade route was short! Jim Fox directed from a perch at the back of Jim Sermersheim’s Lincoln Navigator. Jim Fox is a big guy, and everyone was a bit nervous that Jim Sermersheim would buck him off a couple of times.
Parade riding carries its own set of rules and fun and risks. We learned to rig lights up so we can see our music during the West Side Nut Club night parades. Dan found out that we need a back-up battery to run the lights long enough to get us through the whole route. We learned to at least try to catch our breaths once in a while. We learned to tape our music to the backs of the musician sitting in front of us because there’s just no room for stands as well as people on that trailer when it’s full.
Jim Sermersheim drove his Navigator to pull our parade trailer in every parade we were in through November of 2010 when he underwent heart surgery. He almost lost the lot of us after the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival parade one time when he, obviously, forgot about the rather fragile load he was pulling… eighteen folks sitting on folding chairs on an open flat trailer! We went roaring through the West Side at 35 MPH with all of us hanging on for dear life! Luckily, Jim Fox had gotten inside to ride back to our cars, or he’d have landed on a lot of people that evening. Who says being in a parade isn’t fun? Or adventurous?
On February 19 of 2005 the Little Old Dam Band played for the first time at the Evansville’s ARC fund raiser, “The Really Big Show”, held in The Centre. The guys played in the lobby, as they have every year since, to entertain the audience as they gathered for the show in the auditorium. They were so popular that they delayed the start of the show that year while a large crowd waited to hear their last tune. From then on, the band learned to stop playing a few minutes BEFORE show time! By 2011 the band has graduated to the stage and will play there for the first time instead of in the lobby! Way to go, guys!
During 2005, the LODB played a total of 18 shows, including its 100th show since its founding, from nursing homes to charity fund raisers, from cruises on the riverboat “Spirit of Jefferson” to car shows and bank openings. They played that year for the 50th Wedding Anniversary of Bill and Cookie Haas and for the Junior League of Evansville’s Holiday Mart fund raiser. As usual, this remarkable Dixieland band was the source for much of the donated funding for the ODCB, as well as providing an enormous amount of exposure and publicity. And these guys have fun, too!
Looking snazzy in their straw boaters and sequined vests, they play great Dixieland tunes and sing-a-longs such as the ever popular “Back Home Again in Indiana” and “Waitin’ on the Robert E. Lee”. Wayne Fiester provides the audience with song books so everybody knows the words, and some of the folks at the nursing homes can belt it out with the boys.
The ODCB performed 17 times during 2005, including 5 Christmas concerts at various locations! We played for the Evansville Arts in the Park and for our own Spring Concert. We took the parade float out twice, and played concerts for the Strawberry Festival at the Presbyterian Church in Newburgh and for the 4th of July festivities, where we nearly blew away in a terrific thunder storm that outshown the fireworks. The Christmas concert that year was recorded for posterity with the following holiday tunes:
Do You Hear What I Hear
Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!
Sleigh Bells
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Carol of the Bells
Jingle Bell Fantasy
A Fresh Aire Christmas
March of the Little Tin Soldiers
Feliz Navidad
Jingle Bell Rock
White Christmas
On November 6th, 2005, a huge tornado hurtled through parts of Evansville and Newburgh, killing 25 people in the area and destroying the homes of 4 of our band members. Wayne and Nance Fiester, Bryant and Joann Taylor, Bryan and Rose Hartig, Anna and Laura, and Don Ellis and his family all lost their homes to this destructive storm that came roaring through their neighborhoods at 2 in the morning that awful day. They all probably still have nightmares, but, thank God, no one was seriously hurt and they all have rebuilt their lives. Dan and I were in Michigan on a business trip when we got a cell phone call from Wayne, who assumed we were at home in Newburgh, asking us if we were OK. We were asleep in a hotel room and were just confused over what he was frantically trying to ask us. Our home was not touched, even though we live only a few blocks from some who lost everything, but we saw the story on CNN the following morning and were so horrified to see what everyone at home was going through. That was a terrible day for all of us, and certainly worse for some of our band members. We just are grateful that all of our good friends got out from under the destruction with their families and their lives. Thank God, life (and The Band) goes on.