You're Never Too Old to Join This Marching Band

Sometimes second acts are something new and different.

But who says there's no going back? Definitely not members of the Get a Life Marching Band, whose trombone, tuba and trumpet players, dancers and color guard are happily reliving their high school or college marching band days.

Since Bob Pulido and John Lind started the Portland band 15 years ago, this adults-only group of 100-plus marching band enthusiasts has performed around the country, including representing Oregon in Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration parade.

"For us it's like a second childhood," says Janet Tolopka, one of the band's alto sax players.

I caught the band in action last weekend at the Multnomah Days Parade in southwest Portland. The route for this annual festival parade is less than a half mile long, but band members played like they were marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. The dance team and flag-twirling color guard led off in spangled attire. Next came the woodwinds, brass and percussions players, all bopping in time to "Thriller" and "Brick House."

Aside from calling themselves a marching band, there's not a lot this group of 30- to 70-year-olds has in common with precision marching machines such as the band at Ohio State University. For one, band members don't worry about how straight their lines are and the repertoire is more classic rock than John Philip Sousa.

"We got rid of the regimented stuff," says Tolopka. "We don't emphasize marching perfectly because a lot of people are older and they just want to do it for fun. We probably have more fun than anyone watching the parade."

The Get a Life Marching Band is an offshoot of a larger Portland music ensemble called the One More Time Around Again Marching Band. That band, which has been around since the mid-1980s, has more than 500 members ages 18 to 85 and plays mainly at summer events, including in the annual Portland Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade.

Pulido and Lind started Get a Life because they wanted to play all the time. Get a Life does 15 to 20 gigs a year, including parades, special events and the occasional wedding.  Band members visited Mickey Mouse at Walt Disney World and in January marched with music producer Quincy Jones at an music industry convention in Anaheim, Calif. Right now they're getting ready for the Pendleton Round Up rodeo in eastern Oregon in September. Come February, they'll be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

For the 2009 presidential inauguration parade, band members got up at 1 a.m. to ride a bus from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. It was so cold that valves on the brass players' instrument froze. But the chance to see the president and Michelle Obama moving in time to their music from the parade reviewing stands was worth it, Tolopka says. "It was cool to look up and see Obama not that far away. Many of us had never seen a president," she says.

When they're not marching or practicing, Get a Life members are attorneys, engineers, high school band directors and other professionals. Tolopka works for a local government waste management department and her husband Steve, the band's music director and a tenor sax player, works at Intel.

Though they love music, band members don't take themselves too seriously. Almost as important as playing is deciding where to have dinner after. "We're very much into eating," Tolopka says. Each year the band comes up with a new food-related motto to put on T-shirts and its website. The 2010 motto is "May the Fork Be With You."

Almost makes you want to go out and join a band.

SecondAct contributor Michelle V. Rafter overs business and workplace issues for a variety of national publications. She is based in Portland, Ore.

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