We like to think of Count Basie Theatre as the crossroads of our community, or at least one of the crossroads of our community. Like a general store counter in the olden days, the Basie is a place where you run into your friends and neighbors on a routine basis - as well as reconnect with old friends. We frequently hear from customers that they came to see artist XYZ, and were surprised and delighted to run into old friends from high school that they hadn’t seen in ages.
Even though I am not a native of this area, here’s my own version of this:
Last Thursday we had a triple bill of Firefall (“Just Remember I Love You”), POCO (“Crazy Love,” “Heart of the Night”) and Pure Prairie League (“Amie,” “Two Lane Highway”).
I was in the Carlton Lounge, our VIP lounge, during the second intermission, and I looked outside and saw Pure Prairie League’s drummer on the sidewalk, looking lost. So I went out to the sidewalk and asked him if he’s lost? Perhaps he was trying to find his way back to the stage door? He said no, their set was done (Pure Prairie League played second) and since he was done working for the night, what he was really up to was trying to find a place to have a drink with his wife. They’d come to the right place! Into the Lounge we went for a round of drinks on the house.
We chatted, and he described the travel day from hell that the band had. It’s worthy of it’s own story line, but by some miracle, they all got here from points north, south and west, they loved the venue, and loved the crowd.
Mr. Drummer’s name is Rick Schell, and he’d been here before. He did a couple tours with Southside Johnny, and played a New Year’s Eve show here in the late 90’s. So we had that connection.
Then he asked me if we have an usher named Judy? He doesn’t know Judy’s last name, but he and his wife had dinner with Gary Tallent, bass player for the E Street Band, in Nashville last night. Rick and Gary play in a Nashville band called The Long Players. The Long Players are Nashville’s answer to our own Jersey Shore Rock-N-Soul Revue, coming back to you on October 29 with “Music of the American Graffiti Era.” But, I digress…
So Gary told Rick to look up an usher named Judy and say “hello.” So off went one of our intrepid employees to see if we had an usher named Judy working that night, and indeed we did; Judy Desarno, who, it turned out, is married to a high school buddy of Gary’s. Message sent, message received. Judy, who arrived in the lounge not having any clue why anyone wanted to see her, was as amused as the rest of us.
I’ve never met Gary Tallent, but we have some mutual friends and based on those people, I’ve always assumed him to be a decent guy. Now I can put two more strikes in the “decent guy” column in case we ever do meet in person.
So then Rick the drummer introduced me to his sister and her husband. They were down from upstate New York to see the show and hang with Rick. I asked them where they live, and they told me that I won’t know where it is. I told them that I probably will. I spent a lot of time in upstate NY. My family vacationed there, I used to live in the Hudson Valley, I went to Boy Scout Camp in Trumansburg, NY, outside of Ithaca, and I went to college upstate.
Rick the drummer said, “Where did you go to college?” I said, “Fredonia.” He said, “Me too!” I said, “What year?” He said, “1985.” I said, “Me too!” He said, “I was a Music Business Major, what was your major?” I said, “Music Education.” Now we were truly in the Weird Zone. The Fredonia School of Music at the State U. of New York College at Fredonia (or SUC Fredonia, you can pretty much figure out all on your own how we shortened that into a nickname) only had about 400 students. We never met, or at least don’t remember it now. Rick did two years at a community college in Syracuse and then transferred into Fredonia for his junior and senior years, so for two years, we had to have seen each other at least a few times a week.
Then, like all this wasn’t enough already, as we’re talking about who we knew, and what dorms and off campus houses we lived in, I suddenly remembered I had a suitemate freshman year from the Cortland area. His sister asked who, and I said, “Peter Camp,” and she said, “Oh yeah, he just moved back to the area a couple of years ago. He lives in Homer, NY.” As soon as she said, “Homer,” I remembered this was exactly where Pete lived.
Like the Monmouth County area, the music and entertainment world can be a truly small place, but this meeting was so totally random. If I had not noticed Rick was wandering around looking lost, we never would have had this conversation in the first place.
Come to the Basie, and you never know who you are going to run into!
______________________________
Numa C. Saisselin
CEO
Count Basie Theatre, Inc.
99 Monmouth Street
Red Bank, New Jersey 07701
Phone 732-224-8778, ext. 105
www.countbasietheatre.org
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