The Bottom Brass Band

By Cormac MacConnell

IT was McGarrigle, who is witty and sharp, who first christened them as the Bottom Brass Band. That was after the Trombone was sent up to Mountjoy Prison for stealing cars for the umpteenth time.

“Ye often hear about the Top Brass,” says McGarrigle to myself and another man, “but it’s great to know that we have the Bottom Brass Band in this town.” 

And he laughed out loud and so did we because, on reflection, he was right. His words, you could say, struck the right chord.

They are called simply the Town Brass Band, and I’m writing about them now because, though they do not play all that many times annually, they always play a recital in the park at the heart of the town, hail rain or snow, on the afternoon of the first Sunday afternoon in September. I’ve heard that about three times over the years and, d’ye know, it’s quite special altogether.

I won’t name the town for fear of libel and slander actions but I’ll put it this way. If you have ever been in the west of Ireland on holidays you have either passed through this town or, more likely, been captivated by the beauty of it and stayed overnight. 

If so you certainly strolled through the hilly streets for an evening hour. You admired the soaring spire of the church atop the hill. You strolled through the well-maintained town park down by the river, and you almost certainly laid your eyes upon the quaintly Victorian bandstand near the horse chestnut trees, with its domed roof and ornate green pillars. 

And you admired it, for sure, as an innocent relic of the era of Empire when this town was a garrison town, Redcoats clattering down Main Street from the barracks that’s a factory now. And the regimental brass band playing.

That’s where the Bottom Brass Band began. Garrison towns in Ireland usually have a strong brass band tradition, because of the excellence of the tuition at the time and the fact that the soldiery intermarried with the locals. 

A century ago the Bottom Brass Band (sorry, the Town Brass Band!) was entirely composed of ex-soldiers of Her Majesty. Even today, all those changes later, all that history later, all the members of the band are descended from the garrisons of yore.

They play on all the big town occasions, like St. Patrick’s Day and the summer festival and Christmas with the carol singers. And this special first Sunday recital in September to say goodbye to summer and the longer days.

The band, to dissect the wit of McGarrigle slightly, is today composed of colorful characters, and that’s putting it mildly. The Trombone would not be the only one of them to know the way to Mountjoy, I’ll put it like that.

It has been alleged, with some truth too, that the hardest work any of them do every year is blowing into their instruments. The band hall was burned down, allegedly to collect a little insurance one Christmas and, since then, each man lodges his instrument at home. 

They still have a navy uniform with red piping down the trouser legs and military-type caps. McGarrigle says that both instruments and uniforms have been inside the only pawn shop in the region so many times that the staff in the shop are now better musicians than the members of the Bottom Brass Band. I can’t confirm that but it is possible. 

In my time as a journalist in the region I have seen most members of the band in court at one time or another. Invariably the offenses are petty, it is fair to say, and non-violent, and directly related to raising the price of a few pints in between dole days.

I last heard them play the September recital in the park about seven years ago. I checked yesterday, and all of the members that I saw playing then, down under the drifting leaves, are still

hale and hearty and playing away. 

So I can see now, clearly in the mind’s eye, the picture and the sound of this year. I see the lines of deck chairs that the park attendant circles the bandstand with after lunchtime, I see the fresh green paint on the bandstand, the empty chairs there, and I can even see the bandsmen arriving, dribbling and drabbling towards the bandstand in ones and twos. Nothing military or spick-n-span about them either, though the uniforms look good. 

And they talk only to each other, dragging a last few puffs from their cigarettes, before taking their chairs and unleashing their music. And it is ironically beautiful (and I checked this too!) that they always begin with “The Saints Go Marching In!”

Oh, did I forget to say that they are magnificent? Did I tell ye that the sound they jointly create, there in the park of the town in which they are nobodies and have-nots is heavenly, goldenly superb? 

Did I say that they make magic under the old chestnut trees? Did I say that it is almost sacramental, this September recital? Did I say anywhere above that the sums of all their flaws, of all their mortalities, of all their pains, when it comes throated through their instruments, tots up to a music that is unforgettable. 

And did I say that on this day their townsmen and townswomen, knowing this, fill all the chairs and all the spaces around that old bandstand and do them honor. If I did not say that then I should have.

They play all the standards, all the military marches and Irish band musics, and, once they begin, it seemed to me, it was as if they did not wish to stop at all. They looked like middle aged men made young again, as if on a different and even spiritual plane. 

When I last saw them I knew from local knowledge just how the First Trumpet got the black eye. I knew the Flugelhorn’s wife had left him, and their children had been taken into care. 

I knew that our friend the Trombone and the French Horn were in deep trouble with the water bailiffs for poaching salmon from the river and getting caught again. I knew the Sousaphone had been told by the old town doctor that unless he stopped drinking he’d be gone inside six months. (He didn’t; he isn’t!)

I knew both Buglers and the Drummers had a well-earned reputation for blocking the town’s telephone coin boxes with cardboard, and later collecting the tourists’ lost coins. And every man in the Bottom Brass Band to my certain knowledge, had a hard life one way or the other. But there came a moment, towards the end, when they played Strauss’s evocative “Tales From the Vienna Woods.” They played about 15 or 20 minutes of that for sure, all the musical meanderings through the woods, the rises and falls and cadences of the Strauss masterpiece.

The early evening sun gilded them, sitting there, stage center, the brass like gold in their hands, and the music drifted in time with the falling leaves, in cadence with yet another dying summer of their lives. 

And their townfolk held their breaths. And so did I. And it was so soul-stirring at every level that when they eventually finished it there was a long silence before the first thundering round of applause.

God bless the summer of 2003. God bless the Bottom Brass Bandsmen who say farewell to it better than anybody else; better than any top brass band in the world. And keep them safe.