2018-19 Guide To Yellow Springs

27 Y e l l ow S p r i n g s N ews the Guide to YelLow Springs y 2018 - 1 9 y  a woman in jazz, back again y • Left photo by Robert Hasek; right photo from news archives By Diane chiddister After an absence of 17 years, Tucki Bailey, a well-known area musician, returned home to the village in 2017. She moved from northern California back to Yellow Springs, where she makes music and teaches students in her West Whiteman Street home. Not long after returning she headlined the Dayton Jazz Festival with her band, the Vagabonds. Coming so soon after her move, head- lining the festival was a lot to take on. Bailey originally called to find out if she could play a set at the event, the new iteration of Women in Jazz, where Bailey performed regularly. But the festival needed a headliner, and the manager asked if she could do it. Bailey said yes, although she had to scramble. First, she had to assemble a local group of musicians. Next, she had to come up with a set list for a group that hadn’t yet performed together (although several were old friends and colleagues, including keyboard player Carl Schum- acher, who is also Bailey’s ex-husband.) And most of all, she needed to practice her sax, which she hadn’t performed on for five years. But only a week before the event, Bailey was undaunted. “You know what, I’m going to kick ass,” she said. “I get to play my horn!” Playing her horn is what Bailey wanted to do a lot when she moved to California 17 years ago. But the economy had taken a downturn. Work dried up, and Bailey took what she could get, mainly playing piano and keyboards. She made a living, but didn’t get to play her horn. But she loved the Bay area and it was home, the home where she grew up years ago. Bailey was only 15 when she got her first gig at a club in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, where she had to lie about her age. “I had to act mature,” she said. She had fallen in love with music as a child, although her family wasn’t espe- cially musical — except for her grandfa- ther who played the trombone. Bailey studied piano and flute and when she was a teenager her music teacher asked her to perform with him on his gigs. She took him up on his offer, and they ended up with a regular gig in the touristy Giardelli Wine Cellar every weekend, where Bailey, who hadn’t yet discovered the saxophone, played flute. Living the life of a professional musi- cian at such a young age was a challenge, but Bailey wouldn’t have it any other way. “It was my love,” she said of music. “I didn’t have much of a social life. But I always had a buck in my pocket.” In college at San Francisco State, Bailey discovered the jazz band and the saxo - phone, and she fell in love all over again. She continued performing, and in the heady early ’70s she practiced her horn at Golden Gate Park. And for a while she played with Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe & the Fish. Bailey was performing at a Sausalito gig when a friend, Bruce Schumacher, brought his younger brother, Carl, to see the band. The two became friends and later Bailey asked Carl, a keyboard player, to join the band. He lived close by and used to give her rides to their gigs. After a while, the two musicians became a couple, living together in San Francisco and making a life as musicians. But one night their big old house was ravaged by fire, and Bailey barely had time to grab her instruments before finding safety. The last thing she grabbed from the house was the picture of legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker on the wall. Devastated by the fire, the couple decided to move to Yellow Springs, where Schumacher, the son of local musician and music teacher Mary Schumacher, had grown up. So they moved back to Ohio in 1981, and their daughter, Tess, was born in 1984, the same year that Bailey performed in the first Women in Jazz festival. She continued performing for the festival’s next 20 years. After leaving town, she still came back to play in the festival and to serve as musical director and perform for Yellow Springs Kids Playhouse. Bailey is now launching a local busi- ness teaching music, offering instruction in piano, sax, flute and voice, ranging from classical to popular to jazz. Back home, she knows that music will see her through. “I am blessed,” she said. “I love music. And I get to play my horn!” 1 Tucki Bailey, at left, sitting in on sax with the band Devil’s Backbone at PorchFest 2018, and right, at the keyboards at a jazz performance in 1987 in Kings Yard. BENT I NO’S BE Pizza o f Y e l l o w S p r i n g s DINE IN • CARRY OUT Fri & Sat: 11 am–11 pm Sun–Thurs: 11 am–10 pm 107 ½ Xenia Ave. 767-2500 CALZONES•BREAD STICKS PASTA•WINGS •HOAGIES HAND-TOSSED AND THIN CRUST PIZZA•SALADS•GYROS DELIVERY 7 DAYS A WEEK — 11 am–1 pm & 5 pm–close mvpottery.com 145 hyde rd, ys 767-7517 MIAMI VALLEY POTTERY