Music has remained with me through nearly every change in my life. While attending Lamar, I played solo for two years and eight months at Club Laffitte in Beaumont’s Holiday Inn. Later, I played solo at Riverside Country Club for eleven years. It helped when money was tight, but it meant much more than income.
Six Strings
There is something about a guitar that has remained familiar to me regardless of what else was changing. Homes changed. Schools changed. Jobs changed. Marriages changed. Cities changed. My hair certainly changed. But six strings still made sense. I could pick up a guitar and recognize the world in my hands. There are memories that come back through music more quickly than through photographs. A song can suddenly put you in a room you haven't seen for sixty years. It can bring back people who have been gone for decades.
For a few minutes, you aren't remembering the past. You are almost standing inside it again. Perhaps that is why music has remained so important to me. It connects the different versions of myself. The ten-year-old boy. The high-school guitarist. The young man playing clubs. The husband and father trying to make ends meet. The professional estimator. And the old man looking backward.
The Buster Curry Band
For over thirty years, I was one of the vocalists and rhythm guitar player in a band that did all of its rehearsing in nursing homes throughout Brazoria County. We played at a different nursing home every week because those old folks appreciated the music so much. We took our music into those nursing homes where the audience simply wanted someone to come play for them. The band was called The Buster Curry Band, because my Uncle Buster started and sponsored it. I can honestly say that was some of the best pay I ever received for playing a gig—and I am not talking about money.
They loved us, and we loved them. I haven't played with the band for the last eighteen years or so. Some of the musicians have changed, and some have passed away. But the remarkable thing is that The Buster Curry Band is still playing in those nursing homes to this day.