The Dixie Down Beat Jazz Band plays what it calls “happy jazz” — music that makes band members and audience members alike happy.
And the Nanaimo-based band will be spreading happiness this Sunday (Aug. 24) during Concerts in the Park at the Transfer Beach Amphitheatre.
The Dixie Down Beat Jazz Band started 12 years ago. Their programs include authentic traditional New Orleans jazz numbers, but they tend to concentrate on the more lyrical Chicago style.
“We’re all section leaders of the Nanaimo Concert Band, which is the oldest concert band in Canada, going back to 1872,” said Ron Wood, the band’s leader and cornet and trumpet player.
The band started after Wood had gone to a jazz festival and was performing with a tenor sax player. They decided to put a band together.
Wood got into music at a very early age and started playing instruments when he was nine. His father was a musician in Vancouver, and he put Wood in the Kitsilano Boys Band. From 1950-53, the band toured Europe professionally, performing with musicians like Dean Martin and Jerry Lee Lewis and performing for the Queen of Holland. Wood has also played with Dal Richards in Vancouver.
Wood left music for a while to concentrate on his career, and he became a senior banker. After he retired, he got back into music.
“We were having a reunion for the concert band, and that’s why I started playing again,” he recalled.
When The Dixie Down Beat Jazz Band comes to Ladysmith, the band will feature Wood on trumpet, Terry Lowry on clarinet, Chris Hofstrand on trombone, Jill McElwain on piano, Terry Totzke on drums and Bruce Roberts on tuba, banjo and vocals.
They are a retired bank executive, a lawyer, high school music teachers with Master’s Degrees in music, an RCMP sergeant and a lieutenant commander in the Navy.
The band’s repertoire features more than 150 songs, some of which go back to 1818.
“We play what is pleasing to the audience, and the idea is when we are finished, you are clapping your hands and happy about the experience,” said Wood, describing what they refer to as “happy jazz.”
Wood says playing in a large band like this is like flying.
“Once you start, you are transported to another state or world, and it’s quite beautiful,” he said.
Wood says there seems to be an upswell in people dancing and doing the Lindy Hop, and that is a lot of fun.
“We used to know it as the jitterbug or jive, with a hop movement,” he said. “It seems to be catching on. We are not a dance band, per se, but they can dance to fast Dixieland.”
Some of the members of The Dixie Down Beat Jazz Band, including Wood, performed the very first Concerts in the Park show at the Transfer Beach Amphitheatre as members of the Nanaimo Brass Ensemble, and they are excited to return.
The Dixie Down Beat Band perform Sunday, Aug. 24 from 6-8 p.m. at the Transfer Beach Amphitheatre, weather permitting. Admission is by donation, and the money raised helps the Ladysmith Resources Centre Association provide a variety of programs to the community free of charge.
