By Andrew Amelinckx
Appeared in The Register-Star, October 8, 2007
The three men looked incongruous standing next to their cars, wearing clothes that haven’t been in fashion in over 200 years. John Myrick, 48, master fifer, David Irving, 54, a snare drummer, and Tom McDonald, 38, a bass drummer, who make up the Headless Horseman Fife and Drum band, were wearing tri-corner hats, green wool jackets and other 18th-century accouterments as they readied to play authentic tunes of the era. The jackets, which according to Irving and McDonald are civilian in style rather than military, a style other fife and drum bands often wear, were tailor made by a man in Massachusetts. “I would wear this jacket all the time if it were socially acceptable,” said McDonald, but added that people sometimes look at them strangely when in uniform, even family members.
“I came down the stairs in my uniform and one of my foster children, who was 4, said I didn’t know you were a pirate!” laughed McDonald. The band started up four years ago and was formed because “the rock and roll thing just wasn’t working,” said Myrick, but he said he was as inspired by rock and roll as much as fife and drum, and listed Eric Clapton, Jimmy Hendrix and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull as influences. To prove his point he broke into a fife version of “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin.
The three members all hail from New York state: Irving from Catskill, Myrick from Queens, but now residing in Coxsackie, and McDonald from Brooklyn and now living in Claverack. Irving and Myrick were in another fife and drum outfit, called Rolling Thunder, of which they were founding members, and Myrick and McDonald worked at Hudson High School together. Myrick now teaches French and Spanish in Coxsackie. According to McDonald, Myrick asked him if he played drums and he answered “no.” “Great you’re hired,” Myrick told him.
The three men spend as much time researching the tunes as playing them, and get together at least once a week to practice. “It’s not just the music, it’s the history and the history of the music,” said McDonald. “It’s always a constant research project,” added Irving, who has been playing drums in drum and bugle corps since he was 8. The band plays eight tunes from the Revolutionary War period that are authenticated. “They were written down in fifer’s journals,” said Myrick, adding that there are only 27 total that can be verified in this way. The band knows about 50 songs and continues to learn new ones, but the trio doesn’t play Yankee Doodle, the ubiquitous fife and drum song. “We plan on learning it,” said Irving.
They also take traditional Christmas songs and turn them into fife and drum songs and managed to collect $500 for the Salvation Army one year by playing outside. According to Irving, the band spends the winters researching and learning new tunes and admitted he was obsessive about fife and drum music. Each member picks a song for the group to learn. “I like Celtic music — jigs and reels,” said McDonald.
The band is looking to expand, since with only three members if one person gets sick they can’t perform. The trio is sponsored by the Valatie Fire Company, which according to Irving, gave the band their start. “They put on us on the map,” added McDonald. They play for other fire companies as well and at many other events including performances at Olana State Historic Site, the residence of famed 19th-century painter Frederic Church where Irving works, the Schuyler Mansion in Albany, the Winter Walk in Hudson, the summer solstice celebration at Waterfront Park in Hudson and an annual stint at the old fashioned Independence Day at the Clermont State Historic Site. McDonald, a special education teacher at Hudson High School, said since they are often marching they especially enjoy performances where they stand and play because it allows them to explain the historical significance of the music to the audience, but marching is still important to them since “the kind of music we do is set up to keep people in step. That’s why they would have been formed,” said McDonald, adding that with all the parading he’s “seen a lot of the back roads of New York state.”
The trio marches in many parades and in many different uniforms. They have marched in an American Civil War Zuave unit in Highland (the Zuave uniforms were based off the French military uniform and are very colorful) and have also marched in standard civil war uniforms as well. The uniforms are made of wool and since they mostly parade in the summer “you leave a parade drenched,” said McDonald. They also march with the Roosevelt Fire Department in Hyde Park. “They hire us every year,” said Myrick, calling the department “a benefactor.” The three recalled one year when they dressed in Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses and straw cowboy hats and tried to get fire companies to parade with them. "They turned us down," said McDonald, adding, “the music is still the same.”
They have a busy schedule during parade season, and one year, on the Fourth of July, played in two parades — one in Hyde Park and one in Windsor — and also gave a performance at Clermont. “That was the Hawaiian shirt day," laughed Irving. According to Myrick, there are many fife and drum bands in the region, across the country and around the world. “It’s a national and international phenomenon,” he said, with the “epicenter” in northern Connecticut and a new center in Basil, Switzerland.
There is one muster, or gathering of many fife and drum corps, in Basil. That is “the Super Bowl of fife and drums,” said McDonald. They would like to take the band there one year. “We’re hardly international, we’re barely co-county,” commented McDonald. Myrick, whose family is Irish, visited Ireland but realized fife and drum music is quite different there. While in Belfast he went to a “band shop” where fife and drum men gather. Myrick said Irish fife and drum is dominated by Orangemen, or Protestant Irish, and since Myrick comes from Catholic Irish stock, he realized he was in the wrong place. He said he looked at a rack of compact disks and saw bands with names like “The Protestant Boys” and titles such as “Nobody likes us but we don’t care.”
"On the cover the band is wearing ski masks and holding Uzi machine guns,” laughed Myrick, who added that he didn’t remain in the shop long. The bands are famous for marching through Catholic neighborhoods and they “intimidate people,” said Myrick. McDonald added that the bass drummers there use large traditional bass drums called Lambegs and the mallets they use to beat the drum have leather straps that would cut into their hands and send blood flying as they marched. “Talk about intimidating,” said McDonald, adding, “Here it’s different. We honor the Irish.” The band has seen and participated in a lot over the last four years, and for McDonald it has been somewhat surreal. “I was walking down the road in my uniform and carrying my drum and was picked up by a fire truck … I never thought I would be wearing a civil war uniform hanging on to the back of a fire truck.
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