Sam Quinones

Welcome to the Common Time Podcast, a show designed to give music educators practical, inspiring ideas for you and your program. Each week we sit down with world class educators, composers, and conductors to talk about teaching, leadership and building programs that thrive without burning yourself out. So whether you're a band, orchestra, or choir director, our goal is simple to help you grow and stay inspired and remember why you fell in love with teaching music in the first place. This is season 4, and we're diving even deeper. More real conversations, more actionable takeaways, and more voices shaping the future of music education. Let's get into the episode. Our guest today is Sam Quinones. Welcome, Sam.

Oh, great to be with you guys on common time. It's wonderful to be here.

Yeah, thanks so much. We are so excited that you're here and I want to tell our listeners a little bit about you since we typically have on more music education type guests. Sam is one of the most respected narrative journalists writing about American life today. And his previous books and most previous is Dreamland, which is about the opioid epidemic. And I believe that became a bestseller, helped shape the national conversation around addiction in the United States. Sam has testified before Congress. He's appeared on major news outlets. He's really built a reputation for deeply reporting these stories about — really stories that have shaped communities across America. So it's probably a surprise for our listeners that his newest book is about the tuba, and we're going to talk about that today. The title of the book is The Perfect Tuba. And there's a lot of great stories in there, but there's a big message that he's sending out to the world as well. So Sam, we're glad to have you. John, why don't you get us started?

Thanks, David. Hi, Sam, it's an honor to have you here. I'm a tuba player. So this one really is home for me specifically also. But all right, so I'm just going to get started. So throughout your career, you've spent some time writing about some of the darkest issues in American life, including addiction and social breakdown. So it could surprise people that your latest book is about the tuba. So how did this story find you?

Well, it's about the tuba. It's also about band directors because I find them to be kindred spirits, and as the book took shape, it became clear to me that the ways in which they were similar — band directors and tuba players — was very important. But basically I'm a crime reporter. I've been a reporter 39 years, and most of that I've done crime, covered hundreds of homicides and drug addiction, and a lot on gangs and etcetera. Years ago I lived in Mexico for 10 years, and then I came up and took a job at the LA Times. And at the LA Times, at one point, I wrote a story about how the tuba was this enormously important instrument in the Mexican immigrant community in Los Angeles, particularly through Banda music, but also because a lot of social life in the Mexican immigrant community took place in backyard parties and people would hire their own bands. And having a tuba — glorious, enormous, golden thing, Sousaphone really, but they don't call it a Sousaphone, it's a tuba — was almost first of all a powerful force at a party, but also was a sign of an immigrant having arrived economically. And so they became enormously important. Everybody, all these trumpet players and trombone players switched their instruments because they're getting paid triple. And then I published that story on the front page of the LA Times, 2011. I think it must have been the next day a band director called me from one of the predominantly Mexican high schools in the area and says, yeah, wonderful story, we've been — that's absolutely true what you wrote. Did you know that we've had all our tubas being stolen over the last few months? And I said, no, I have no idea. And so I wrote another story, a follow up to that, about how these tubas were being stolen from these high schools, predominantly Mexican high schools, mostly because of the popularity of the instrument. And then something hit me. First of all, I do not play the tuba. I have never played a brass instrument or wind instrument. I was never in band. But I began to understand — I began to see this is a subculture. It's a world I know nothing about. And I've always wanted to dig into worlds I know nothing about. As a journalist, that seems to me very, very important to do. And so I began interviewing tuba players of all kinds, not just Mexicans, all across the country. And very early on, I began to realize the people were playing the tuba because they loved it, because for a lot of guys — most of the guys — it showed them what they could be. It showed them their capabilities. And this was a powerful force in their lives. It showed them that if they kept at it, they would get good at it. And then all of a sudden it was just kind of transformative in their lives. And I was not expecting that. I was expecting, like, it's cool. No, this is something that people — without any expectation of wealth or fame or notoriety of any kind — playing a tuba and really focusing on like playing 8 measures of an etude just perfectly before you go on to the next day, that kind of thing. And you know, as a journalist, by then I had really understood one thing, and that is if you find people who are doing something with great love for that activity and you stick with them, you're going to find great stories someday. And I just kept on interviewing people as I wrote. I actually wrote two books about drug addiction and drug trafficking in America — one was about the opioid epidemic, then the next one was about fentanyl and methamphetamine. And through all that, I would just do these interviews with these tuba players, until the last book was finished and my agent said maybe you should see what kind of book you could write about the tuba. And that's kind of what happened.

That's a wonderful story. You mentioned that you don't play an instrument. And so to me that was especially interesting as I was reading through this book, because the book itself is kind of a history lesson as well. There's a lot of things I learned that I didn't even know — I didn't know anything about the York tubas, those kinds of things. So you come into this somewhat as an outsider. We're the insiders, the music educators. So I'm curious, since you didn't grow up in band or playing the tuba, did you notice something about this culture that we on the inside probably take for granted?

That's a good question. I would say that within the stories I was telling — first of tuba players and then adding on to that band directors, principally down in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — I began to see that what you would learn, regardless of whether in the long run you became a professional tuba player, what you would learn were amazing skills that allowed you to do well in life. So focus, in a time of horrible distraction provoked by algorithms on social media and all the rest — we have a group of people whose main idea in life is focus again, playing those 8 measures of that etude just right. And postpone gratification. I began to see that this was all about that. Even when you played it really, really well, the applause was nice but not overwhelming, and nevertheless you came to see that through this, the tuba player learned how to navigate life in a more healthy way than corporate American capitalism is teaching us with those algorithms on social media and all the rest. I thought too — very important in all this, and clearly in opposition to all that I had written about in my drug books and my crime books — was collaboration with others, even people you don't really particularly like all the time. You are collaborating, and we are so isolated, and our isolation in America seems to me to be a major root of our drug addiction epidemic. And so all of this I began — and this was not immediate, it took a while — it took a while interviewing lots of people and especially sitting down to write their stories. And it's one thing to interview someone, it's another thing to sit down to write that person's story, because then you have to usually interview that person over and over, and you get very deep into that story. And that's where you find — through telling those stories that are in the book — that's where you come to these ideas like, oh my goodness. And again, it's about immersion. And what is a band director or a tuba player about if not just complete immersion in making this sound as proud and as solid as possible.

Yeah, absolutely. So then, Sam, of all the people that you've met throughout your research of the book, including tuba players, teachers, band directors, is there a single moment or story that stayed with you the most?

Oh, you know, it's a great question. It's a little bit like asking me which was my favorite child, you know? They're so, so many. The story of Giard Trevino — one of the probably the best tuba players in the Rio Grande Valley in his time — his story was very powerful because he came to the tuba almost as a balm against the horrible bullying he was experiencing throughout his life, and came to it — you know, a lot of times people come to musical instruments because their parents tell them to, and I totally believe in that, my daughter plays the piano now because I insisted that she play the piano even when she didn't want to — but Jr. Trevino never came to the tuba because he had to. He always embraced it fully and loved it and began to almost have a communion with it, and got very, very good because he did not go to it kicking and screaming. I also have to say that again, the band directors — I began to include the band directors in a book about the tuba players because they seemed, as I said, almost kindred spirits. What are you doing as a band director, right? You're putting in unbelievable hours. Probably the most overworked profession in America.

We wouldn't just say that. Agreed.

Yes, no, it's nuts. It's nuts. School districts really need to reduce the amount of hours a lot of these directors have to put in. But you're putting in all these hours and you're again — focus, postpone gratification, perseverance through failure — it's another thing that kids in band and tuba players really, really learn early on and it's so helpful in the rest of your life. And none of this really without any, as I said, expectation of notoriety or fame or fortune or any of that kind of stuff. Rather, as Al Cortinas — who remains kind of my guy, just a brilliant man I think and very big hearted — who set up this system in the little town of Roma, TX that turned a whole group, whole years and years worth of kids who had no access to music lessons, into really top flight bands in Texas. He said — I still talk to him, he's not retired and he's still kind of part time teaching here and there — and he said, I still love to see the lights go on in the eyes of my kids. And I thought that is exactly how certain tuba players had felt after they had practiced and practiced and practiced and gotten this performance just down, and then to play it one time really well — it's just that feeling didn't leave them. And they learned so much from that. And to me — you know, I got very, very carried away. I'm a crime reporter, I'm supposed to be all cynical and crusty, you know. But I really, really love optimistic people. And tuba players and band directors are, up to this point, about some of the most optimistic people I've met.

You know, the book itself — so we're both from Texas, we're both music educators, band directors. And growing up, I remember the Lopez High School band, the honor band recordings from when I was in college, my undergraduate, and then my first teaching job was in the Dallas Fort Worth area. I remember well when they won honor band because it was a huge deal to hear that group perform at TMEA and I was in the audience for that. Like it was a pretty mind blowing accomplishment.

You were there?

I was there.

You were there in San Antonio, in that big theater? That was Lila Cockrell.

Oh my goodness. So that's amazing. Well, I'm telling you, reading this book, there's parts of this book that I teared up at — like literally the stories of success, seeing these kids that have come from a very different world than the Dallas, Austin, Houston area and those very wealthy districts. So the expectation was different, but it was also really refreshing to see that those directors created their own system, which is connected to Vandercook. John and I actually do a course at Vandercook every other year or so on a book that we wrote. So there's a lot of connections in this book for band teachers, especially if you're from Texas — like some of it was memory lane for me, some of it was reinforcing why we do this thing. But there was another part that was really interesting to me and kind of surprising because I knew nothing — I'm not a tuba player, I'm a trumpet player — but I knew nothing about the perfect tuba idea, the York tubas, I knew nothing about. So learning about that, and obviously the title of the book is that. I'm just curious — in terms of you had to learn a lot from a non-music standpoint — you describe things in here musically and I'm like, man, he really did his study. Like you talk about Symphony Persichetti 6, that symphony which is what Lopez played at Lila Cockrell in their performance, and then you start talking about Persichetti's music — man, this author did a lot of research to come up with all of the information in here.

That's the beauty of journalism. If you love exploring, which I do, if you love gathering stories — and then once you have a story that you think might be good, you know it's like gold, you've got this gold mine — you do not let it go. You keep on interviewing everybody who might have anything to do with it. So for the Lopez High story — I'm just so touched that you were in the audience that night. When I heard the Lopez High story, George Trevino and all those — there's not a lot of kids, so like 30 people in that band, it was not a large band by any means — and how these kids who didn't have any access to music lessons at all created the sound that had the audience giving them a standing ovation midway through the concert, not even at the end, and that people would then years later still remember this. I mean, I'm getting chills right now telling it. But see, as a journalist, a main model of any journalist — certainly this one — is find stories. You don't write about what you know, write about what you don't know and you're going to find out all about it. And that was the tuba book, the band, this perfect tuba, for sure. And especially then some of these band directors' stories — just like my wife started crying reading it. And I began to understand that this was not a book — as sometimes has been reported in certain reviews — this is not a zany romp through the history of the tuba. It's more about how we find fulfillment in a world where we're being told constantly that fulfillment comes from immediate gratification and distraction and all the rest. No, I've written too much about that as a drug reporter, and I can tell you none of that works. The thing about this book was it was an attempt to say, we know what leads to fulfillment. It's hard work, it's perseverance, it's focus. It's all those things that you learn playing the tuba. It's all those things that you learn in band. So many kids in America learn these precious, precious things and we ignore them. We applaud the athletes on the field, but the kids who are really learning the good stuff are up in the bleachers playing for them. So that Lopez High Symphony Number Six story — I found that late in the manuscript and I made an extra trip down to Brownsville to talk to kids who had — well, they're now adults — who had been in the band when that band played that concert, which was in February 2004 at the TMEA conference there. And I was in my glory. I felt like, oh my God, it's been so hard to figure all this story out, and here I found this beautiful, beautiful story. Do not miss any kid — adult now — who can tell you something about what it was like being on stage and all the work that went into it. And it was such a beautiful story. I think it's one of the great stories I've ever told in my life. And it was about a small band — I never played in a school band and stuff — but it was so, so beautiful. Anyway, I get carried away.

So it's so good.

Very, very healthy thing. Yeah, well, you know the story. There are so many good stories. It's not that's not the only one. There's several in there. There's in Roma and that marching going to the state marching contest, like I've had bands performance state marching contest. That's and it's hard work that is there is a process to get there. But there the title of the book is the perfect tuba, so it. Yes, I'm sorry, I forgot to answer your question.

No, no, it's all right. I just to make, I want to draw us back over there for a second, because those instruments, the York tubas, I read about this in the book. I didn't know anything about them. I'm guessing our listeners, some of them will, some tuba players will, but I had never known. So I'm curious, can you tell us a little bit about what makes those instruments so legendary and then kind of how you use that to really create the whole?

Well, first, first, it's important to understand that I have been a reporter for a long, long time. And I'm not, I don't, I've never written anything about music education. I do play the guitar. My mother, not well, my mother when we were growing up said every, every, every one of her boys was going to play a musical instrument. And so we all, we all did and, and it was fun and all, but, but I would say that really, and it's in journalism that I found my, myself and, and I now have a very, I can say this with confidence. I have now a very, very finely tuned journalistic radar that goes bonkers when I hear a great story. OK. And so I, I, and so as I was interviewing all these tuba players, one guy I talked to was Bob Carpenter, who is the tuba player for the Orlando Symphony, also a NASA engineer and engineer, rocket scientist, guess. And he was. He told me, Have you ever heard of the Chicago Yorks? I'm like, no, I'm never. I don't know what you're talking about. OK. And then he proceeded to tell me the story of these two tubas that are renowned mystical tubas in the tuba world. Like every tuba player looks at these two tubas as like, you know, the most perfect expression of their instrument. Made in the 1930s by the York Musical Instrument Company, Grand Rapids, MI, a company that later very not long after that went out of business. They made two prototypes of this one C tuba and that's it. And that's all they ever made of this one prototype. And it was the eventually landed in the hands of the great Arnold Jacobs, who was the tuba player for well, but he got it before he became the tuba player for the Chicago Symphony. But this great musician and these two great, great tubas formed kind of the foundation for the Chicago Symphony's legendary brass sound. But more than that, more than that, that's very important thing that this story wasn't about. And that was at this very moment talking about the 50s, sixties, 70s, tuba players were rebelling against the confines in which they've been held. Tuba can only do this. Therefore, you are right, not really a musician. You can do this and this and that's it. You know, there was this real like, like limitation on what people thought tuba could do. And a lot of tuba players kind of eternalized all that, you know, in the 70s really began this feeling like, no, no, no, we need to break away from all that. We need to find our own expression as musicians, find our own virtuosity, and along the way, they need it. Because of that, I think it's very natural that they needed superheroes. And Arnold Jacobs became a tuba superhero to all these young tuba players all across the country. And along with that, Arnold Jacobs gave many, many master classes and he was very public about and he talked all the time about these two tubas, these tubas that you, you know, one guy says it's an honor to be in the same room. And they are the perfect expression of tuba, right? And Arnold Jacobs talked about them constantly. And so you have this virtuoso musician and also one of the great music teachers of all time in the 20th century and taught many brass instrument players as well as vocalists as not just tuba. He becomes this purveyor of this idea like we can be great musicians. And by the way, it doesn't hurt to have two perfect tubas, you know, in your in your closet like he had. And so there grew up around all this among tuba players searching for the liberation of their own creativity to break strain the bonds that constrain them. This feeling like I we have a superhero. We have two great, great horns. And it created this kind of almost a mania for York tubas. They had made many tubas. They just had never made these two other more than this two of these prototypes. And they were really probably the greatest tuba manufacturer of their day, certainly in the United in the United States. And so, yeah, anyway, it became this. And so nine companies, 9 including Yamaha, have tried to replicate these two tubas over the last 30-40 years. And really they've come very close, but not really there. And so part of the story that Bob Carpenter was telling me was how he and another engineer in Orlando, Tom Trees, 2 fabulous guys, fascinating stories. Each of them had been comparing notes about how to replicate these two gorgeous, glorious, legendary and mystical. The Holy Grail of tubas is how it was described to me on a few occasions tubas and the story that I tell in the book is Bob and Tom's attempt to recreate those two perfect tubas. But along the way, it's it's again part of this book became a wondrous antidote to all the addiction and the drugs and the drug trafficking I had once written about it became addiction does enslavement. It's obedience to a substance which will not allow you to do anything but use it. That's it. You don't have a relationship of anything or anybody else once you're addicted to fentanyl or heroin or whatever, right? And here was a story. These were stories about people wanting to liberate their own creativity, train their beautiful breath of the column of air coming up from their abdomen and so on. And it was just a beautiful idea that I was writing about people really not understanding us at first who were trying to liberate their own creativity and find themselves in that. And I think that is one of the great to me. It's one of been was one of the great themes that I've ever written about because it is so it requires hard work, preparation, perseverance, all the collaboration, all of that. But in the end, it's how we as humans find fulfillment, find contentment. Unlike drugs, which gives you very immediate blast of pleasure and then leaves you in the gutter. This is a way of developing, you know, finding your own perfect tuba. And I saw at the end it became kind of like a metaphor for how do we as human beings find fulfilment. And at the very last part of the book, I say, you know, parents come up to me and ask me how to keep, you know what, what, how to keep kids away from drugs. One of the things I don't tell them was, I'm not. I'm not sure. But, you know, high school band seems to do a pretty good job. And the other thing is, the other thing is don't get in the way of your kid working very, very hard to develop his or her own perfect tuba. That does not mean everyone should go out and play the tuba, but all of us have within us something to which we will devote enormous amounts of work to get better at it because we love it, and regardless of how much fame and wealth and all the rest that we're going to get from it.

I fully support everybody listening should play the tuba. I fully support that. So, so Sam, the book profiles some remarkable band directors working through really tough, tough circumstances, I mean, including economically depressed towns and underfunded schools. And, you know, so in reporting these stories, what did you learn that's actually happening in these band rooms that America may not fully understand?

Yeah, this was very good question. And I think one thing is that, and I think Al Cortina said it best real early on in the in his development of his band. Now Al Cortina's came to Roma High School from another which is in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest parts of America, which is just the valley alongside the Mexico border of Texas. He had been a band director in another town, had developed there some ideas about how to make band much better given the economic realities. The economic realities was that were that families could barely afford instruments and certainly could not afford music lessons. So the teachers had to be their kind of their. The instructors had to be there also their music teachers. And he found two in Roma, TX. He found a Superintendent and A and a board president, school board president who really, really bought into his idea and provided the funding, cutting a lot of other things to provide the funding to hire a bunch of band directors. Each band director would have responsibility for one instrument, French horn, clarinet, tuba, trumpet, you know, that kind of socks, whatever. And they would teach every kid in that instrument, all from six, who happened to be from 6:00 to 12th grade in that school district. And so all day long, they would be going from school to school, elementary, middle school, high school, and then teaching marching at the in the evening. And in that way, he felt we could create peak kids who were, who could compete with the wealthiest, predominantly white schools in, in Texas, meaning schools near on the suburbs of Dallas, Austin and, and, and Houston. And, and, and it took a while, but one of the key moments came early on, like the third year of this system where, where his kids in 6th grade, we're now in 9th grade. And so the band was getting and they were all learning fundamental. It was all about fundamentals, notes, playing, rest, playing together and all this kind of thing. And, and, and they were getting to a certain sound that was beginning to really excite the kids. They were amazed. They were like, oh God, we could make this. They had never learned that because band was like, they had no football team back then and they didn't really, no one really cared about the band. And all of a sudden this guy comes in and all of a sudden puts these new standards high Standards doesn't tell anybody they're hard, but just says they're high. These are the standards. And the kids begin to meet it over a period of years. And he assigns for the band Carmina Burana, Karl ORF this wonderful, very bass heavy, by the way, piece of poems that chanted or sung by, by monks of the Middle Ages and so on. And, and all these kids were blown away when they heard it over the speakers. He told me and he said, and they said, could we do that? And he said, of course we're going to do it. And they said, OK, He says, this is the key thing. Kids will rise or fall to whatever standard you set. High standard, low standard, they'll meet that standard, whatever. Just don't tell them if you set a high standard, don't tell them that it's hard. And this is such an important thing for our culture to hear. So often parents are so eager to prevent their kids from experiencing difficulty and disappointment and hard work. And my feeling is man, band, that's all that's band is about is learning to deal with that because obviously through life, we're all going to deal with all of that. And, and still, I think very often kids in America just are taught, no, you should never feel that. Oh, no, no, hovering over the kid. No, no, no. And band, man, it's, it's creating studs. It's saying get out there and do it and do it again when it's not right and do it again the third time for whatever 20th time. And I think to me that is now it can be taken too far. There are, I think I've heard of examples of like kind of insane, frankly, approaches to band that require people to be, you know, this all they do. And I, I, you can go from one end to the other very quickly if you want. But band done well and done with common sense and requires so much of kids that they don't think they can do, but then they do it. And when you realize that as a young person, I mean, I can remember my own case and in other contexts thinking, Oh my God, I could do this. And there is nothing more intoxicating than that. No drug compete with that, you know. And so to me, this was one of the things that I felt was really going on in those band rooms was saying, you're going to meet this and I'm not going to, you know, we're not even discuss how hard it is. I'm going to tell you that you'll be able to do it. And then when you do it, you'll realize I was right.

Yeah, this book is in, in a lot of ways, in terms of advocacy for music education. There's a lot of themes in here that I think people need to hear because I think you're right, the band room does provide that community. And you just mentioned that, you know, talking about those kids and their experiences. So I for me, in reading the book, it made me think about how many students do find identity in a band room. And this is across the country. So I'm kind of curious from your perspective, since you came into this as the non music educator, if you will, did the book change how you think about music education?

I would. I would say that no, because as I said, my mother was an elementary school teacher and she played piano and grew up in the church choir. We had music all along. And so I did not think that this was AI always support. I still support music education in schools. And I think one of the great saving graces of, of America is that it has the most evolved, the widest, most expansive music school, music education programs in the, in the world, probably the most, I would say. And, and so, so I guess what really struck me was having come from writing about addiction and all the enslavement, the immediate gratification and, and that and that people were, were casting about like, how do we keep our kids? I mean, I can tell you, I gave many, many, many speeches over my previous two books about opioids and fentanyl and meth and all that kind of stuff. And frequently, how do we keep kids away from our, you know, so many of them. And here I was in the middle of a world that I didn't really know, I didn't know about at all, learning all about it, putting all of my effort and all my energies into trying to understand and interviewing constantly, sometimes repeatedly. Many people I interviewed in this book 8 or 10 times just because I'm afraid of not getting something right, you know, looking like a fool and, and, and through it all, I began to see that what they were teaching was kind of the answer to how do you keep your kids away from dope? You know, and, and, and so I did not. That was to me a remarkable idea. Not that there are no kids who ever have any problems with drugs in band rooms, but I would say that the, the, that, the, the, the amount of that is so, so small. I've just did an interview for my, my sub stack. I have a newsletter called the Dreamland newsletter. It's at Sam quinones.substack.com. And I'm going to put up an interview I did with the tuba player of a young kid, a very, very small town in West Virginia where the opioid problem was really bad and banned. It was a like a, a shell to protect them from all and the, the stuff going on around them. And none of those kids got involved in drugs. All of the kids who were seniors in his year, all of them graduated. You know, I, I find it, I find it absolutely delusional, delusional that any school Superintendent faced with a budget issues would cut band. I just, I mean, that is like the that's shooting yourself in both feet. You know, I have said this in public and, you know, written this and so on. It's it's it's such an important thing. And so to me, this is this is kind of what I realized that they're across America was this thing that was keeping us alive as a community and it was banned. And all these kids learning instruments that were not easy and required a lot of work and that their parents didn't stand in the way of their suffering. Quote UN quote which is not suffering at all, but just hard work. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. This is such a fascinating story.

Yeah, it makes me. I'm serious. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm there were times when I was like, ready to cry. Yeah, because I had written so much about the opposite people. The fentanyl fold. I don't know if you know what the fentanyl fold is. People use fentanyl. They walk like this at inverted hours sometimes like this. I mean, it's, it's grotesque. It's grotesque. And so to see this, The opposite right here. We just have ignored it. Banned and name, well, you guys can, but I mean, I frequently in public name a band director, name a tuba player. Nobody can. Why? Because we focus on the athletes. We focus on all the glitzy sexy stuff. And instead we've got the answer right there. Now we've ignored it.

So we just talked about this, but I, I do want to perhaps codify it just a bit more for the listeners. So during your reporting on addiction and social breakdown, you often write about communities that are coming apart, right? And in the book, you spend time with people who are building something together through the art of music. So did those experiences change the way you think about what holds a community together?

You know, I don't think it did. I kind of had these ideas that it's about small steps. It's about, you know, it's about finding your way forward through small steps. It's like all those kids in Roma, TX every year, you know, they play a certain etude perfectly. Then they move on to the next etude. I would say that I had this idea long before this, that the way we fight drug addiction is by focusing on, on strengthening, rebuilding, in many cases, community through the small steps. We so want magic answers to all our problems. You know, the opioid epidemic was basically that. It was, what's the problem? Human pain, how do we deal with it with one kind of drug for every single human being, all these opioid painkillers, Oxycontin, Vicodin and all the rest. And man, we're still paying for that. Yeah, delusion. And really it's about the way we human beings make progress. When we innovate and we make social real social change is small steps. It's not, not coincidentally, it's the way you recover from drugs one day at a time, that kind of thing. That idea is very, very potent. The problem is, in today's American corporate capitalism, we are inundated with the idea that no, no, no, no, no, you need it immediately. You can't do it if it takes a long time, you're going to get bored, blah, blah, blah, all that. And I think that is such a damaging message, I swear. Yeah. And so building community, you know, it was like John Weber in Harvey, IL. Who this white guy from North Chicago comes down to teach this predominantly black school South of there and, and he had this little, this system he divided. No, these are kids again who could not afford music lessons. John Weber devised this system called check off, which means he would divide all of your music knowledge that you needed to have. He was junior high, so 7th and 8th. By 9th grade you needed to know this. He would divide it up into small little pieces and each one of those when you did this A2 or when you were playing this G scale or whatever, you would get a check and you make it very public. You put it up on the on the on the wall here, this guy has five checks. This girl, she has nine. What's going on? You need to get more that kind of. So there's this competition and little by little, the checkout system was brilliant because it kept kids eager to improve and it was not brutal. He did not hit. If you couldn't really do it, he would explain to you how you need, what you needed to do, but he would always leave you with a way forward. It was not saying, oh, you're you're a loser. It better you best leave. No, you're going to be able to do this. You're just not doing it yet. But here I want you to do this. And he would give you the way forward, small, small steps. And also as a band director, one of the beautiful things that John Webber would do. Sadly, John died, visited John several times at his house. He was long retired by then. He died before the book could come out. But what several of his students told me was that one of the things he also had was an enormous box that they remember as being CDs basically, this was long ago in which it was just filled with jazz band music, classical music. And he would let them explore. And that's really, really important. Let them rummage through the through the box, right. Oh, I want to listen to this. I take this home, you know, and so people, kids, the two of players, one of them particular Willie Clark, I, I interviewed a great, great length and it was a big part of the book. You know, he brings home a flight of the bumblebee that the that John Phillips in England had played on the tuba. And, and, and that's I'm going to do that, you know, and, and so it's, it's providing this place for kids to be themselves. And yet he was also a disciplinarian. He would get very upset when they would like mess up or screw off, you know, that kind of thing. And so there was this combination of love and discipline and hard work and fun, all of that together. And also understanding that the check off system was the key because you were making these small steps and it was the small steps that the building on one another on each on one building on the next on the previous one. And, and, and that was how it was going to be. You were going to get kids to really click in. And many of those kids never went into music. But my impression is that many of them are doing marvelously well in life because of the things that they learned in doing the check off system. And in John Weber's junior high school band in Harvey, IL.

Yeah, right. You know, I in reading the book, I mean, it's the perfect tuba. This is the title and it doesn't really talk about addiction, but I remember in the beginning you do set us up and give us some background. And at one point you contrast addiction, which is really about chasing instant gratification, which you've just mentioned. But you contrast that with the discipline of learning an instrument, specifically the tuba here. And I remember you almost you, you set it up as a mirror, mirror of one of the other. What did you mean by that?

Well, by then I had studied addiction and particularly opioid addiction and opioid addiction. These are addiction to drugs like heroin, morphine, various drugs that come from the opium poppy. And these drugs have one thing in common. It's a long story about why this is but to overdose on these drugs, it shuts down your ability to breathe. That's how you overdose. That's an overdose. You know you can't breathe. Your lips turn blue and eventually brain deprived of oxygen. Eventually you died and, and, and I'd also understood that there was, along with addiction, there was a when you're in the throes of addiction, there was this in intense, intense, overwhelming feeling like you must have it now you know, you can't wait and a whole lot more. But as I got into writing about the tuba in particular, but this is true, of course, of all wind instruments, but particularly the tuba, I began to realize it was the opposite of addiction. What you're actually doing is cultivating and nourishing that precious column of air, that breath of life So to the point where you can fill this enormous beast of an instrument to the point where you can make these sounds that Will Rock your room. And it also seemed to me very, you know, I'm a writer. I find metaphors and almost everything, right. So playing the tuba was very much like life itself. So how does it start? It starts by you blowing into this metallic mouthpiece. Very saliva trench sounds awful, right? It goes through the tubes and then it begins this, this path trajectory through these winding term, these detours, these problems. You buffet it here and then and, and, and make this, this turn and then make that turn. And you come out the bell with this sound that Will Rock the bones of everybody in the room next to and where you're sitting. And to me, that was very much like life. It's like it starts out, you're stumbling, you're buffeted, you're detours, you do this. And then finally you keep at it And, and you, you learn to deal with all of those trips and stumbles and buffets and all that. And you come out with this gorgeous accomplishment. Doesn't have to be on the tube. It can be almost anything in life, honestly. And to me, that was, that was like a moment. I still remember, I think I was sitting up in my office, in my writing office, and I was like, oh man, that's, that is something that is absolutely true and a good way of explaining. And so anyway, from there it was like, again, the way you, you, we, we do best is when we immerse ourselves in something as human beings. It doesn't matter. Landscaping, you know, a carpentry, whatever, it doesn't matter. But when you immerse yourself in it, you get so immersed in it and really loving it, presumably that you begin to get very good and a lot of ideas begin to occur to you. And that's how the great inventions are made, I firmly believe. But it's that immersion that I have learned as a journalist is so, so important that when you do it, all these ideas be just going to flood in. And it's you get high on that, honestly. And so to me, this was this was kind of, I hope I'm answering your question, but I think this was kind of how I felt as I got into this book that, that it was it was like almost like life itself. The tuba was almost like life itself, Right? Yeah. You were cultivating this beautiful column of air to then fill this weird, weird instrument with air consistent enough so that you can make these beautiful sounds and these sounds that really just count this enormous event. And you know, that's kind of what kids need to understand. Life's going to buff at you. You're going to take all these detours and left turns and all that. And it's going to, you're going to look, you're going to sound awful. And then you keep doing it. You keep doing whatever it is you're doing. And eventually you will get to a point where you sound profound.

So we have talked about this a bit, but just to kind of clarify also after writing about addiction and social fragmentation, and you wrote a book about people dedicating themselves to a mastering something that is difficult, you know, simply for the love of it, right. So what did the world of band and the Tuba specifically reveal to you about how people find purpose today?

Yeah, purpose is something I think that is lacking and, and I, I think a lot and I think people are looking for, for money. They're looking for what all the, the easy this or that. And, and, and purpose is, is I, I, I think so because I have found it on my own life, through my own journalism and through a lot of hard work for years. And I don't think of it as hard work. I loved it, but it was hard work, you know, and you just get better and you get better and you get better and it's beautiful idea and I love that. So it wasn't hard for me to see the parallels in band and the tuba. You know, it was, it was it was it was pretty easy after a while. And I think where I saw a lot of this was in again, getting back to the Lopez High Band in Brownsville, TX in there. They're one big concert in 2004 at the TMEA conference. These kids worked and worked and worked. It's hard for me to overstate how much these kids worked on this six piece concert. And what I remember, what I loved was I, I, I got a hold of the French horn leader of that band, a guy named Eddie Salinas, who is now a freelance musician in Corpus Christi, TX. And, and I interviewed him. Now, I never met him, but I interviewed him over the phone a couple of times. Anyway, he said a week after that show he saw George Trevino, his band instructor on campus on the high school. And he comes up to me and goes, hey, yeah, Mr. Trevino, what's next? And George Trevino goes, you know, this is the end of the year. It was like March or April, the winding down. He goes, well, no, there's that's it. There's nothing there. That's it. We're done. And Eddie Salinas told me I was overcome. I was like, no, they, they can't be. It can't be. We have to continue. Because he had gotten so used to the idea of practicing something until it was perfect. Now other people would look at that and go, these kids must hate this. They must be so bored or rebelling against the hard work. No, no, these kids loved it. And Eddie Salinas was one of those. And he was like, I couldn't believe that we had that we were done. I wanted to continue playing, you know, of four measures and making sure that those 4 measures for an entire class, we're going to be perfect by the time we end of the class. And what kind of thing got so used to that? He says, you know, it was a strange thing because all those Trevino and other Mr. Trevino and other band directors in the in the at Lopez at that time were doing was preparing us to play 1A, a series of pieces. But let's just call Symphony number six by Vincent Persicchetti. Play this piece one time as perfectly as we could and that was it. That's what we were after. And you would think that's not much or that you can't take much of that with you. But I'm here to tell you, you told me. I've taken all of that with me the my entire life. It's all of this sticks with me. That what I learned there, just working endlessly over like a few measures at a time. I learned how to navigate life. You take that with you. Yeah. It's not. It's not lost. It is actually ingrained in you, even though you may not. He's a musician in this case, but other people may not ever be a musician. You still learn this thing. It's, it's, it's the importance of doing things perfectly or doing as perfectly as possible that's better. Not perfectly, but as perfectly as you possibly can. And coming away with that experience is, I am afraid in our culture today, stressing immediate gratification and protecting our oppressors, kids from any kind of hard work whatsoever, any, any disappointment, any, any, you know, difficulties that we are in a situation where kids are actually turned away from that. And that is not healthy. It's it's, it's long term is an essential for kids to learn that stuff because that's how you navigate life well, but also, if you ask me frequently it leads to drug addiction because, you know, drugs are nothing if not all that, you know, easy immediate gratification. That's that's like the far end. That's the final expression of all those attitudes that parents seem to want to inculcate their kids with.

Yeah, well, Sam, I'll tell you, this has been a wonderful conversation. I really enjoy reading this book and I hope that everybody that's listening buys it immediately. I think you'll I think they'll be inspired by it. I think in some ways it helped reinforced the work we do because it is sometimes, you're right, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. But the commitment to these kids is so, so important. And you know, the avenue of music. I, I'm glad I've ran into the book. I'm glad I've had the opportunity to meet you now and to talk with you. I do have, we have a couple of questions we ask everybody at the end before we get to those. I want to just one final question. At the end of the book, you encourage people to find their own perfect tube. I think it's the last line, if I remember. Yes. And 1st for our listeners today, if that, whether they're students or teachers or it doesn't matter. Someone that's searching for purpose. What? What would you leave our listener with and how to find the perfect tuba?

Don't, don't be afraid of, of the idea that you have to work hard at it first, that's first and foremost and that it doesn't, nothing comes without that. And that even though all around you people may be saying, ah, you know, kick back or it's 5:00 PM somewhere, you know, that kind of crap. I, I say keep at it. If you if and understand too that you will not maybe at first find the love for it. It's it's passion. We all need to find our passion. Yes, it's how you find a passion is the thing. How you find your passion is by working hard at something, getting good at it and then saying, oh, you know what I can do this. I'm pretty good at this. All of a sudden, you know that kind of thing. And to me, this is, and then once you find your purpose or a purpose in, in, in life, I think it will come from hard work. I think it will come from collaborating with others and learning from mentors, teachers, all that. Obviously a lot of that is, is, is all part of the mix and taking it small, one step, small steps at a time and not being disappointed or, or embarrassed by failure. Failure is part of it all, all of that. We've learned this. Human beings have learned this for eons. You know, in America, we seem to have learned to forget that. And I'm afraid the kids are going to be overwhelmed with the idea that they can just kick back and not do much And they still get to some point where they're they're doing well. And I don't think so, you know, so that's, that is kind of how I would express how you find how you find purpose. And in fact, it's, it's kind of like reflects how I've done what I've done with journalism. I just, I just love journalism so much, so much fun, so interesting, so fascinating. And it took a ton of work to get I.

Can imagine. I can imagine this. Has been such an incredible and insightful conversation, Sam. So here's the point of the podcast where we ask all of our guests 3 standing questions. OK, and I'll take the first one. Do you have a soapbox topic? And it can be about anything.

When I will tell you when it comes to band, yes I do please. Even though I never was in band, I would say what the hell is up with those props Get rid of. I mean, what does that have to do with beauty? The thing that teach that I'm I'm getting a little flustered here. Props you might have you got to be kidding. What does that have to do with playing and marching together in unity in unison and playing well together? What it shows, I'm going to tell you what it shows in my view very strongly. It shows which school district has a lot of money and which doesn't, you know what I mean? So I think if I, I mean, I ever sat there during a band finals 2023 looking at those props and I'm like looking around God. Does anybody else think this is absurd? You know, I know people want to, you know, at a certain point you get to a point where all the bands sound so fantastic. It's very difficult to see which one is better than the other. So maybe the props are part of the mix. I understand that. And I love the idea that people want to do storytell and do have this beautiful presentation, all of that. But it seems to me like what you're saying is all those, all those districts where, where the economic, you know, levels are really are poor or working class, they're going to have a tough time. If you're judging them based on props, those schools will have a have a very tough time.

Yeah, You know, it's interesting your, your response. It's there is a, a big divide honestly in music education of, of the have and the have nots. And a lot of it does have to do with the cost of running, you know, a major program at for the sole purpose of being the most competitive you can be. And I don't want to go down that road because it's a whole nother podcast, but it is something that is real out there.

And it's interesting to me that you're seeing it like you've come into the band world and that's an observation that you make immediately.

Fascinating one, by the way. Yeah, it really is fascinating. My question is simply you're a writer so this will be interesting as well. We usually ask, is there a book or books that have inspired your journey?

Well, there are many, many, many, but I would say one of the books that about right. I have not read many books about writing. If you want to be a writer, you write. If you want to be a tuba player, you play the tuba. So reading about how a tuba player played it can be helpful, but it's not going to get you to where you want to be. You got to play. And so writing is the same way. However, for books on writing, to me that are very good, the one that is really the most influential of all is a book called On Writing Well by William Zinsser, who has now passed. But he wrote this book and the first 8 chapters of which are pretty much the gospel on how to be a strong, particularly non-fiction writer, but really any kind of writer. And strangely enough, William Zinsser's ideas are not far from what we've been talking about. Writing is rewriting. You're not done when you do it the first time. Working hard at mastering the basics, that's a big part of his thing. There are certain elements I think that are common to all human endeavors. And I just happened to write about tuba players and band directors. But I think the things that they are about are also similar in molecular biology, and policing, and setting up your own landscaping business. There's a lot of similarities that are required of someone — the hard work, perseverance, all that kind of stuff — that I think are important. And I think William Zinsser was my idol, my god. And I have read his book, I think 8 times or something like that in my life. And so for me, that was the most important book.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Sam, thank you. Now I'm gonna ask the ultimate question and I think I know what this one is. As someone coming into the music world, we are curious about your answer. So what is your favorite time signature?

I thought that was going to be — look, I grew up on punk rock, okay. I grew up on nasty garage rock and also a kind of great New Orleans music and boogie woogie and all that stuff. And so I guess common time, four, is for me like I have based my entire musical life on it. Country music — I was very lucky to have grown up in a town called Claremont, CA, which is a suburb of LA, but at the time had this enormous country music, hippie country music thing. And so I took lessons from guys who taught me the songs of Merle Haggard and Tammy Wynette and Emmylou Harris and all that. And it's all four time. Yeah, to me, I love it. I like other time signatures but.

Well, it's clearly the right answer, so we appreciate it. So Sam Quinones, The Perfect Tuba is the book. Again, thank you, Sam, for your time today. We really appreciate it. I think this is a conversation that I know our listeners are going to really enjoy, so thank you.

I would love to be in touch with all your listeners and if any band directors adopt the book at any university, I do free kind of Zoom calls with book groups and that kind of thing. This has just been wonderful. Thanks to you both, John, David, for having me on. I love it and it's been a fantastic conversation. I'm so grateful. Thank you.

And that's a wrap on today's episode. Thanks for spending part of your day with us on the Common Time Podcast. If today's conversation gave you something to think about or something to try with your students, we'd love for you to share this episode with a colleague. And you can also follow us on social media for episode clips, behind the scenes content, and updates on our upcoming guests. And if you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep making music and keep making a difference.