If you’ve ever been on a sports team, in a theater troupe or a collegiate club of some kind, you may know that feeling of family that comes with spending a lot of time with people who are as passionate about something as you are.
As adults, we don’t often get opportunities to be a part of those tight-knit communities like we had in our school years. New York’s “L Train Brass Band” Meetup group started when a self-labeled ‘band dork’ wanted to resurrect the good old days of marching band.
Missing the magic
Ryan Hall created a Meetup group because he missed being an active musician. “I loved every minute of being in marching band in high school and being a part of a big group like that. It inspired me to study music in college, which was also a lot of band shenanigans and band jokes and just being around fun-loving musicians 24/7.”
Fast-forward a few years, Ryan got his master’s degree in administration and eventually fell out of the music community. It was in 2016, while working at an HR technology advisory firm, that it really started to affect him. “I found myself really missing that creative, fun, weird part of my life.”
A band of one…then two…then fifty
Ryan scheduled Meetup event inviting music lovers to meet at a bar to talk about New Orleans jazz. “The first event was almost a failure,” he remembered. “I say almost because two people showed up. One is still in the group.”
And so he tried again. At the second event Ryan met Dave, a professional trombonist. “Dave felt my frustration of having this energy and excitement for music but no one to play with. He mentioned we should try an event where everyone brings their instrument and we play together.” One week later, they hosted a third event in Dave’s basement in Brooklyn.
Quickly Ryan and Dave realized that getting people in a room actually doing things was their group’s key to success. In a matter of weeks they gained another trombone player, a trumpet player, and eventually more horn players and drummers. Soon they reached a tipping point in Dave’s basement and moved to a local park. Even then, the band kept growing.
“We got to the point where we were no longer just an interest group, we were an actual band organization.”
The band has around 100 dues-paying members, sees an average of 40 of them at rehearsal each week, and is a registered nonprofit organization complete with a board and all sorts of committees. The L Train Brass Band has played at hundreds of events, including parades, music festivals, nightclubs and The Today Show.
Women play an important role in the band’s organization and make up the majority of the leadership board. Women members started their own Meetup group, “Brass Queens,” when they realized there was enough instrumentation to have a ladies-only band.
Alex Harris, a founding member of the L Train Brass Band who handles the bookings, says they don’t even need to try to get gigs anymore. “Meetup is really good for search results, so when people search for ‘brass band in New York,’ we’re one of the first to come up.”
Pilgrimage to the Church of Jazz
Being a New Orleans-style brass band, the group often dreamed of visiting their mecca. When they finally planned a trip together last year, about 30 members said they were in. “We wanted to go to immerse ourselves and learn more about the kind of music we say we love to play,” said Alex.
The group marched in the annual Mardi Gras Krewe Delusion parade, played jazz on the streets, and took a master class at Preservation Hall, the historic jazz venue. “Not just anybody can walk into Preservation Hall,” Ryan said. “It’s like the church of jazz. The fact that we have access to these things tells you about the power of this community.”
The band’s membership has doubled since the first trip to New Orleans, and it also marked a turning point in solidifying the bonds within the community. “Acquaintances became friends, friends became best friends,” said Ryan.
Part of the Krewe
Now an annual tradition, the band upped the ante this year and added more activities to their agenda, like a cultural music exchange with a local school district and a black history tour of New Orleans. There was even an “extremely optional” agenda item to go get tattoos, for those interested (eight members participated). In total, about 60 members flew down to New Orleans for the trip, as well as some friends of the band.
“Marching with them and dancing through the French Quarter is a feeling I can’t describe,” said Ervin, a friend of the band who tagged along for the trip. “There is truly something special about the community they’ve created. Even though I’m not a member, I still felt the support of this big community.”
Ryan’s dream of recreating the community he had in his school days has become something unique in of itself. It’s a rare, tightly-knit community of adults with regular day jobs.
“When you graduate high school or college you never think you’re going to find that kind of group of people again,” said Alex. “The marching band clique is a real family kind of thing. So to have the kind of opportunity to have this as an adult is a life-changing thing.”
Last modified on September 13, 2022
