For This Veteran, Music Is Lovelier the Second Time Around

Brian Cade: My name is Brian Cade, I’m a musician. Folks at Guideposts reached out to me when they learned about how my wife had gotten me to get back into music, going so far as to buy the piano. My story is pretty simple. I had played music for most of my life and had pretty much given it up. Background in the military, active duty, I was in the band. I left active duty in ’96 and went to the National Guard. I had pretty much given it up when I left active duty in ’96. I was done with music, I was just completely done. Didn’t want to deal with it anymore. Didn’t want to deal with the daily practice regimen anymore. Went back to school. Met my wife, we got married in ’06. Went down to my parent’s house in Texas. My mother sat down and asked me to play, my wife didn’t know I could play. So we sat down at the piano and my wife decided that we needed a piano in the house back here in Alaska and pretty much without talking to me about it at all, she started wrapping coins out of the coin jar we had and wound up about $900 worth of coins and bought this Yamaha piano for me for Christmas the following year of ’09. Then about a month or so into it, I began to wonder, “Well, if I can pick this back up again, maybe I can pick up the trumpet again too.: Okay, so I bought an el cheapo horn off of eBay and started practicing again. Was practicing on a regular basis. Bumped into some people I had served with in the military and the army band and let them know I was practicing again. I get this call from an old squad leader out at Fort Wayne, Jim Fisher, who is now playing with community band. He asked me, and I told him I was back to playing trumpet again. He says, “Would you cover for me for a rehearsal?” I said, “OK, what part?” He says lead. All right. I had only been playing the horn regularly for about six weeks then, so I’ll give it my best shot. So I showed up to rehearsal, don’t know a soul there. They hand me the lead book because this is the first semi-pro gig I’ve had in, you know, since 1996. After break was over, we come back and play probably for another 45 minutes. He said, “OK, let’s call it a night.” And as people were packing up, the leader of the group walked over to me, said to me, “Would you be interested in taking over as the leader of the group?” I said, “Yeah, OK. We’re gonna do this.” And later on that summer, I became director of the Fairfax Community Jazz Band.