Venting. Part 2

So let’s backtrack a bit and pick things up with the survey that went out shortly before the looming “ultimatum lunch.”

As I think I’ve already shared, the main beef that most of the “Players Committee” had was with the band’s director.  In order to save myself keystrokes, said director will henceforth and forever be known as “Joe,” and to really understand a lot of what is to follow, you need to know a bit about him.

Joe is exactly 11 months older than I am, is also a transplanted New Englander, has an extremely quirky sense of humor, and has been intimately involved with brass bands for at least 30 years.  He got his start playing with Salvation Army bands, but oddly isn’t a big fan of sacred music.  In spite of being an employee of the S.A. to this day, he’s much more interested in and educated about more technical pieces.  He once regaled me with a story of how he and his college roommates would sit on the couch under the S.A. flag in their apartment all day – blasting contest music on the stereo while binge drinking and watching silent porn.

I guess that sentence could give you the idea that Joe is somewhat of a character.

In the summer of 1999, Joe and one of his colleagues at the S.A. went out to lunch and had a discussion about forming a secular British brass band in Atlanta.  As the story goes, they took notes on a napkin regarding where to rehearse, how to fund things, and potential players.  Actually, that’s not just a story.  I’ve got a picture of the napkin somewhere.

A few days later, I got a call out of the blue from this guy I’d never heard of asking me if I wanted to play an instrument that generally didn’t play, reading treble clef (which I did not do) and playing a type of music that I’d never before heard.

So I gave it a shot and fell in love with it within 30 seconds after the first rehearsal started.  Since Joe worked very close to my office, he and I started to have lunch together fairly often, talk about brass music, and get to know each other.  Joe told me about the competitive aspect of brass banding (I had *no* idea that that sort of thing went on), and he and I and a couple of other guys attended the championships in 2000 and 2001, at which point I told him that it would be really cool if our little band to do that type of thing someday, but that we just weren’t good enough.  He surprised me by telling me that he thought we’d probably do okay if we ever decided to try it.

In the background, Joe was basically running all operations of the band by himself.  He was involved in getting the majority of the band’s traditional instruments from Besson.  He beat the bushes for performance venues.  He bought all of the music.  He found rehearsal space.  He set up the legal corporation.  He helped land our first major donation (from The Home Depot, if you can believe that).  And when the band eventually did decide to go into competition, and the other director (the other guy who doodled on the napkin) didn’t have time to commit to it, Joe became the only director.  It’s not overstating things to say that Joe built the band from the ground up and made it successful basically on his own.

So that should be enough background to let you know that I like Joe, I respect his musical talent and I know that he knows more about brass bands than I ever will.

When I first began to realize that the “Players Committee” had it in mind to replace him and was blaming our supposed lack of competitive success on him (remember, this band has never gotten less than 2nd in competition, and has won twice), it didn’t take me very long to choose which side I was going to be on.  Any threat to Joe was, realistically, a threat to the band’s existence.

By the time the surveys were distributed, I was aware that Bob had been taking part in the “Players Committee” discussions, a fact that didn’t thrill me at all.  Bob further annoyed me (and others on the board) by sending an email to the board regarding the survey as soon as it was distributed, saying, “While I was happy to receive the questionnaire from Rich, I believe for this to be truly effective and productive for the group, this should be sanctioned by the board…”

To my mind, this was Bob jumping in to criticize the effort, largely because he had not been consulted about it.  Interestingly, I tended to agree with his sentiments.  The survey was designed and distributed with no input from the board as a whole.  It simply appeared in my mailbox one day, and I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a tool for the board to use or not.  Still, his instant criticism irked the hell out of me.

I should add now that, by this time, it was fairly general knowledge that I’d been selected to serve on NABBA’s board.  I believe that Bob took that little bit of trivia as yet another sign that he’d been wronged.  After all, I’d never even heard of a brass band 10 years earlier.  Previously, Bob and I had generally managed to ignore band-related conflicts in our dealings with each other, but there was now a definite tension in the air.

I wandered through the Duluth cemetery over the weekend, and attempted to leave my mark.

As expected, the 7 or 8 members of the “Players Committee” all used the survey to basically say one thing.  To wit, “We need a better conductor.”  While the surveys were technically anonymous, it didn’t take a genius to read various responses and know who had penned them.  Everything was blamed on Joe, and I do mean everything.  If not for Joe, the band would compete at the highest level (The Championship Section).  Joe devoted too much time in rehearsal to warm-up.  The band’s intonation was bad because of Joe.  The band wasn’t fun because Joe occasionally used profane language.  Our recording session was terrible because Joe didn’t take the time to explain the meaning of “The First Nowell” to the band (I can’t make this stuff up, folks).

When the board met to go over the survey results – along with that letter send by the “Players Committee,” there was a very clear division in the room.  On one side of the line was Bob.  On the other side was everyone else.  While discussing what was to be done, Joe made reference to the unstated ultimatum by saying, “If it comes down to they leave or I leave, I can tell you this: I’m not leaving.”  Bob, while being against open auditions for every seat in the band, wondered in an email to me later, “What makes Joe untouchable?  If I didn’t think I was contributing, I’d have decisions to make.”

In an attempt to convey that the board desperately needed to provide leadership to make it past a looming crisis, someone said, “We don’t want the inmates to running the asylum.”  Bob fixated on and took exception to this in an email to the board a few days later.  “…we also need to be mindful that these are NOT inmates. These are individuals that donate approximately 200 hours per year or more, to this organization. As such, we should all be viewed as part-owners of the organization, and as such, our actions as a board should be carefully considered to properly reflect the will of our co-owners.”  He also began to lobby vigorously for the election of a new board, proposing that 6 of the existing 9 board members step aside.  He did not volunteer to be one of the 6.

It was decided that a full rehearsal should be set aside for a band meeting to discuss the issues that had come up on the survey.  In order to keep things as civil as possible, an outside moderator was hired to run the meeting and, late in the game, a strict agenda was written up so that we could have a discussion about the issues that had gotten the most responses on the survey: The attendance policy, the goals for the band, and an audition process.  Bob’s reaction to the agenda, sent to each of the board members for approval before being sent to the band, was immediate:

While I understand the desire to control the agenda for this meeting, and to prevent a feeding frenzy, should we, as the board, be controlling it to this amount?


Given the view, even held by many board members, of the board having been less than perfectly effectual over the past two years, perhaps we should allow for a little (controlled) open commentary during the meeting?

In spite of further protests in this vein, Bob was outvoted and the agenda was passed.

The discussion then turned to competition in 2011.   Bob was adamant that the band should not bother with competition on a national scale and should instead focus on growing the local audience.  When it was pointed out that the band made its most dramatic improvements in the ramp-up to competition, he responded that the same improvement would be seen if the band concentrated on other projects.  When it was noted that basically all of the band’s promotional material was a direct result of our participation at the championships, his take on it was that that sort of promotional material didn’t mean anything to a local audience.  When the comment was made that participating allowed us to mingle with other brass bands, he asked, “…what does this do for our primary purpose?”

And he continued to push for the election of a new board, in spite of the fact that our by-laws do not allow for it.  “Surely if we want to, we as a board can change the mechanism between now and December to allow for direct election of board members.”  Eventually, the board agreed to hold such an election, with the stipulation that the sitting board would choose three officers from among itself and the remaining six seats would be open to anyone who wanted to run for them.  After an election was held, the sitting board would rubber-stamp the results – this was done in order to abide by our by-laws, which do not allow for a general election of the board.  Bob was not happy about this compromise, but he agreed with it.

A few weeks later, we had the band meeting.  It went okay.  Not a lot was set in stone, but people had a chance to comment on things that bothered them (most troubling to menu was the prospect of having to audition for their seats) and give suggestions for what would make the band more enjoyable.  It seemed as if the crisis had been averted.

Bob’s response to the meeting was in all of the board members’ inboxes before most of them had gotten home from the meeting.  “The meeting tonight was a good gesture, but a flawed one in my opinion…The agenda was….not appropriate….”  As he had also taken a veiled shot at the board during the meeting itself (when asked about increasing our exposure through mailers, Bob had volunteered – rather tersely – “I tried to do that last year, but the board voted not to fund it.”), Joe was in no mood for Bob’s negativism so soon.

Joe responded to all, “[Bob], why do I so often sense that you are an agent against the very board on which you serve? Sorry if that sounds like a personal attack. It isn’t meant to and I hope I am not violating any protocol in asking this. You seem to have separated yourself from “us” on most every issue. You are part of board discussions but seem to distance yourself from the decisions. I know not everyone gets their way all the time, but we still vote as a board and should present ourselves as a board.”

Bob responded in a typically maddening way.  “I don’t feel I am an agent against the board, but do often find myself standing alone in decisions…. When the moderator asked why the mailer idea didn’t go anywhere, the truth was the answer I gave….I also find myself being the one person on the board most often willing to ask the difficult or unpleasant questions, if this makes it seem I am an agent against the board, so be it.”

Two things have to be noted here.
One is that the few quotes that I’ve included in this post do not do justice to the actual volume of verbiage that Bob can throw out there, and those who aren’t directly involved with Bob in this business probably cannot figure out what is so infuriating about his attitude and demeanor.  You’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that Bob had pushed everyone to the breaking point.

The other thing is that, by the time Joe had sent his email, I’d already sent my own to Bob – the first of the private thread that I mentioned in yesterday’s post.  It began:

“What do you want?  Just between you and me.  What exactly are you trying to do here?”

And my next post will take it from there.

Yeah.  I’m a tease that way.

TWD