Reuniting with the Leader of the Band

I was introduced to Dan Folgelberg as a child, on the highway in the back seat of a car with 14 hours standing between me and Grandma's house. It was dark, my brother was asleep, and the mile markers couldn't come fast enough.

There's a whole genre of music in my head defined by long car trips stretching across the midwest. Kenny Rogers, Elton John and Dan Fogelberg are some of my earliest musical memories. This was an era of cassette decks, and my Dad only brought so many tapes on a particular trip, so often I'd hear the same albums over and over again. As such, these songs are also some of the most deeply etched musical memories that I have.

Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band" is one of these. Although my taste in music was somewhat underdeveloped and unrefined at that early age, even then his clear, crisp vocals and fingerpicked guitar melodies stood out amongst the others. Mostly I remember the chorus, with Fogelberg's multilayered vocal harmonies adding power and urgency to lines like "the lead of the band is tired, and his eyes are growing old." The next line evokes the most colorful memory, because my young mind imagined "his blood runs through my instrument" rather literally -- and specifically, through a tuba.

But, to borrow from another line from the song, it took me years to understand. Throughout my teen years, the whole genre of Car Trip Music became something of ridicule, standing in stark contrast to my taste in much harder music like Metallica. During that socially awkward time I also had no interest for love songs, which characterized most of that class of music. It wasn't until early adulthood that I returned to that era of music with a renewed appreciation.

This paralleled a renewed appreciation for my own father, which is the subject of the song. Mostly listening to the chorus, I'd always envisioned him singing about his school band leader, although the verses make it clear enough that it's about his Dad. This is literally true: it was written in tribute to his father Lawrence Fogelberg, who was in fact a musician and a band leader.

As a teenager, my relationship with my father was strained. Nothing too dramatic in comparison to many families, though there were a couple moments. He worked Marketing, and I was a Scientist-to-Be. The career my Dad had chosen seemed like the polar opposite of my destiny. It seemed like we had nothing in common.

Now, I find myself in Marketing myself. Over time, I had shifted from science to engineering to technology evangelism. I work at a big corporation just as he did, and I see things from a much more mature and sympathetic perspective. Every year, I realize how much more I am like my father than I ever realized: not just in career path but in personality, mannerism, and humor. I also realize looking back that everything my father did during my childhood was to give me and my brother the best possible start in life. And that includes all the moves we made around the midwest (as he pursued new work opportunities) resulting in the aforementioned car trips to Grandma's.

When I hear the words "Leader of the Band" now I realize the double meaning. The Band is the Family. The Instrument is me, and I'm proud to have my fathers blood running through it.

I am a living legacy, and his song is in my soul.