Jump Up and Get Down!

Springing Forward with the Bryan Brothers at Indian Wells

I write to you from an anonymous Starbucks in Indio, California, whose sole merit (other than the kind barista, who told me I looked like I was “going somewhere,” a compliment I don’t exactly understand but do appreciate) is that it looks like every other Starbucks in the world and, therefore, provides a distraction-free environment to write my first Letter from the Questhouse that isn’t actually from the Questhouse.

We are here in the desert for the BNP Paribas tennis tournament. Every day, Damien and I run the gauntlet of traffic, parking, immunization check, and ticket line to park our keisters on hard plastic seats in the desert sun and watch in wonder as the greatest tennis players in the world battle on the courts. Damien, who is several rungs higher in the Angelic Choir of Tennis than I am, studies their games, shoots super slo-mo videos of their serves, and even searches for the model names of their rackets with his binoculars. I just watch the blur in awe, happy to be surrounded by others who love the sport.

Our visits to Indian Wells are strictly about tennis. We eschew the many temptations of the region, (apart from one blowout dinner at the magical Wildest restaurant, which I highly recommend, especially because they found my wallet in the parking lot and stayed open late to return it to me) choosing instead to spend our dollars on mediocre stadium chow and fifteen dollar Coronas so that we can stay close to the action. Our only diversion during the weekend is early morning pickup tennis of our own on the dusty public courts down the street from our motel. 

But my favorite event of this trip wasn’t professional tennis at all. It was the joyous, playful performance of the Bryan Brothers Band, formed by a pair of handsome middle-aged mirror twins named Bob and Mike, who happen to comprise the greatest doubles team of all time. 

The Bryan Brothers Band played on the lawn outside the stadium twice during our visit, and Damien and I attended both performances, a remarkable testament to their entertainment value, given that we had our choice of nine tennis matches to watch instead. True, Bob and Mike brought in some musical ringers, including Jim Bogios, the drummer from Counting Crows,  and James Valentine, guitarist for Maroon Five, but as a band they are delightfully second string.

What’s so great about the Bryan Brothers Band? Oh, let me tell you. They are having FUN. They all smile ear-to-ear and seem amazed to be on the stage. They watch each other, the way a good band should, and I have to believe the mirror twin energy of the brothers infects the whole lot of them, because they are synchronized in that special “so tight they can be loose” way that good bands have. Their dad is a highlight, for sure. He jumps around the stage, beats his tambourine, shakes his dad booty and tells dad jokes and sweet stories about his sons. In fact, dad jokes are pretty much the ethos of the whole band, along with natty Palm Beach-inspired polo shirts and a generosity of spirit that is beautiful to behold. They bring folks, especially kids, up on the stage to dance; at some points the crowd members outnumbered the band. They send grinning emissaries around the crowd to give free t-shirts to the feistiest dancers. (Did we earn free t-shirts with our feisty dancing? Do you have to ask?)

Their musical style is eclectic in all ways but one: every song is the fastest, funnest, grooviest song of its era, whether it be ‘fifties rock and roll, ‘nineties hip hop (Did we “jump up and get down”? Do you have to ask?), Prince or Neil Diamond or Brittany Spears. 

Bob and Mike are not alone. Plenty of famous people have musical side projects. Another tennis player you may have heard of, John McEnroe, aspired to be a professional rocker after he retired from tennis, and he still plays gigs sometimes. So many authors have bands: Jonathan Lethem, Nick Hornby, Steve Martin (or perhaps you think of him as an actor, and music is his third-tier genius?) and, my own personal dream band, Stephen King and the Rock Bottom Remainders. I envy King’s musical career almost as much as his literary career, which is saying something. Actors also love to rock: Carrie Brownstein, Bruce Willis, Zooey Deschanel, Jared Leto. Does Bradley Cooper have a band? He should! 

When they’re not kissing babies or raising money for their next campaign, politicians also love to play.  What do John Kerry and Mike Huckabee have in common? Hint: it ain’t their stances on climate change. Both played in cover bands–Kerry in a band called The Electras (after the car, not the complex), and Huckabee in a group called Capitol Offense, a DC band which, Huckabee contends, “offend[s] just about everybody.” Then there’s our friend Beto, poster boy of 1990s post-punk anomie. RBG loved opera, a passion she shared with her personal friend and political foil, Antonin Scalia, and had some cameos on stage, though I don’t believe she actually sang.

Why do so many people love to play music, when it’s clearly not what they’re best at? 

Damien and I are also members of a band (Honeytone), and I admit that I sometimes wonder whether it makes sense, at our ripe old ages, to hunt down gigs, arrange practices, and schlep around the county to play old hits less competently than the people who made them famous. 

The Bryan Brothers Band answered my query with an emphatic, “Heck, yeah!” Live music, whatever the genre, whether we’re in the crowd or on the stage, bonds us, makes us smile, synchronizes our breath and our heartbeats, teaches us how to count and how to feel. This weekend, in the desert twilight, as hundreds of us boogied, beaming and unmasked and giddy with our freedom, music quenched the deep thirst for connection we all felt in the two-year sensory desert of the pandemic. Swaying shoulder to shoulder with teens and millennials and gen xers and boomers, belting the words to songs from all our generations, was the Spring-forward, post-pandemic sacrament we all need right now. 

A couple of weekends ago at our little gig (coincidentally, also at a tennis venue), I sang some rock songs from the late ‘sixties. A new friend of mine thanked me, saying, “When I came back from Vietnam, those songs saved my life.” I’m a generation younger than he is, but those songs saved my life, too, which is ironic, because, in so many cases, fame and its temptations took the lives of the artists who created them.

That’s another thing I love about cover bands: we aren’t getting our panties in a twist about being the best, because our music is always a tribute to our betters. In addition to watching the Bryan brothers rock out this weekend, I also witnessed a pantheon of tennis players smash rackets, talk smack about themselves (which I could hear, because our seats were sometimes that close!) and otherwise act like their performances were the center of the universe, which to them, of course, they were. 

The Bryan brothers? They were just having a good time.