I play alto sax with The Rancho Cordova River City Concert Band.\u00a0 I’ve been playing with the band for several years.\u00a0 We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity, dedicated to providing music to the local community as well as promoting the arts.\u00a0 I’m the current president.\u00a0 Those are the basic facts, but I want to talk about some of the history, and how I feel about the band.<\/p>\n
For starters, I wasn’t the first Buhl to join the band.\u00a0 My daughter joined about a year before I did.\u00a0 Melissa dropped her off every Monday night for a while.\u00a0 When Melissa got tired of that, she made me start dropping Bryanna off.\u00a0 I dropped her off exactly once, then started bringing my sax and playing with the band.<\/p>\n
Those first couple of years, I had mixed feelings about the band.\u00a0 I didn’t feel like I was being used to my fullest potential.\u00a0 I felt frustrated and disconnected.\u00a0 I didn’t really know anyone other than Bryanna.\u00a0 I didn’t feel fully engaged.\u00a0 After Bryanna quit, I nearly quit, too.<\/p>\n
Then in 2014, we hosted a convention in Rancho Cordova, and for the first time, I felt like a part of the band.\u00a0 I felt like I mattered.\u00a0 I volunteered my time, helped with stage crew, and when my competence was appreciated, I felt like I belonged.<\/p>\n
That convention was an interesting experience.\u00a0 I got to spend some time with my old High School teacher, Larry Hudson.\u00a0 The band had worked really hard on the set list, and we played better than we’ve ever played.\u00a0 I played with the convention band.\u00a0 It was an amazing week.<\/p>\n
But that convention came with a cost.<\/p>\n
The president of the band at that time, Gary, had a gambling problem.\u00a0 Worse, he was in positions of authority and responsibility, not only in the River City Concert Band, but also the Sacramento Valley Symphonic Band Association (SVSBA).\u00a0 He was president and acting treasurer of both organizations.\u00a0 And he’d been cooking the books and stealing money from both organizations for awhile.<\/p>\n
He’d talked of big game, about how we had sponsors and donations.\u00a0 About how the fundraising we’d done had been enough to pay for the convention.\u00a0 But shortly after the convention, Gary got sick, and the people that the band owed money started calling people other than Gary.<\/p>\n
That’s when we found out how screwed we were.\u00a0 Almost $20,000 debt.\u00a0 And we had nothing.<\/p>\n
The SVSBA had been hurt bad, too, and maybe I’ll talk about that organization in another post.\u00a0 A lot of people were hurt by Gary’s actions.<\/p>\n
Before all that had gone down, I’d looked up to Gary.\u00a0 I wanted his approval.\u00a0 He had a grandfatherly way about him, and he seemed generous and kind.\u00a0 He commanded respect.\u00a0 He had clout.\u00a0 And then we all found out the hard way that for as much as we loved him, he had stolen from us to feed his own addiction.<\/p>\n
Several of us regrouped.\u00a0 We worked out a deal with the city of Rancho Cordova.\u00a0 Part of that deal was formally changing our name to Rancho Cordova Rivery City Concert Band.\u00a0 There were other parts of that deal which didn’t sit that well with me.\u00a0 It was my first brush with local politics.\u00a0 We made compromises, did all of the proper paperwork, and now we’re a 501(c)(3) and our organization is much stronger.\u00a0 We’re close to paying off our debt.\u00a0 We may have been knocked for a loop by the actions of someone we trusted, but we got back up and kept playing music.<\/p>\n
How do I feel about the band now?<\/p>\n
I believe in the organization.\u00a0 The board is full of people that volunteer and follow through.\u00a0 We’re a good team.\u00a0 The band is full of good musicians, and most everyone steps up and does what needs to be done.<\/p>\n
I don’t think we are playing as well as when we played for the convention.\u00a0 For the convention, we had a goal in mind, and we had a lot of really good pressure to force us to excel.\u00a0 We haven’t had that kind of pressure for a long time.\u00a0 We don’t have anything pushing us to reach beyond our comfort zone.\u00a0 I would like us to take on something that scares us a little, because I think that’s the fire that forges us and shapes us into something beautiful.<\/p>\n
We’ve purchased some new percussion, but we don’t have a way to practice with it very easily.\u00a0 We don’t have very many percussionists right now, either.\u00a0 Logistics for moving equipment is still a concern.<\/p>\n
One of my long term goals for the band is to find a permanent practice location.\u00a0 Some place that we can call our own, and where we can keep and use our equipment.<\/p>\n
The challenge there is that for us to achieve that goal, I have to overcome one of my weaknesses: reaching out to people and asking them for stuff.\u00a0 That is not easy for me to do.\u00a0 I stress out about it.\u00a0 A lot of times, I can push these types of tasks off to other board members.\u00a0 But this particular one has been challenging.\u00a0 We’ll get there.\u00a0 It’s just taking longer than I like, and it’s my fault.<\/p>\n
Those are my thoughts about the band, for better or worse.\u00a0 Like any family, it has its share of problems.\u00a0 But it is a good band, and I’m glad I’m still a part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I play alto sax with The Rancho Cordova River City Concert Band.\u00a0 I’ve been playing with the band for several years.\u00a0 We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity, dedicated to providing music to the local community as well as promoting the arts.\u00a0 I’m the current president.\u00a0 Those are the basic facts, but I want to talk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":913,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions\/913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}