A band made of silver and gold

By CHARLES W. JOHNSON / News Editor for the Southern Standard

Members of the Silver and Gold Band, under the direction of Michael Chilcutt, perform at a recording session engineered by WCPI’s Bill Zechman. (Charles W. Johnson photo)

The Silver and Gold Band has experienced many changes in its long and storied history as the longest running continuously functioning community musical group in the state. Musicians have come and gone and there have been several directors over the years, but the band has endured through it all, continuing to make music to entertain and lift the spirits of the community it serves.

And now, the Silver and Gold Band has reached another milestone as the dulcet tones of its musicians will be immortalized on compact disc through digital recordings made of the group by recording enthusiast and local WCPI radio personality Bill Zechman. Zechman held the second of several planned recording sessions with the band last week.

Zechman feels the group, in its current lineup, should have its performances preserved and archived and is working toward this end.

“I’m hoping this will be a continuing project,” he said, “until we have all their material recorded.”

Zechman feels preserving an audio record of the “sound” of a community is just as important as preserving records of other aspects, perhaps even more so because of the fleeting nature of musical performance.

“The sounds in a community are part of that community’s history,” Zechman said, “like the political history, the economic history, the commercial history, the social history.”

Zechman brought in sophisticated equipment to chronicle the band’s sound. The recording was made direct to digital utilizing a Sony mini-disc recorder and a total of six strategically placed studio condensor microphones, giving the recordings a professional-sounding clarity and presence that should translate well to CD.

Current Silver and Gold Band director Michael Chilcutt feels the recordings will be an important document as well.

“I think it’s great,” Chilcutt said, “because we need some historical documentation for our band, something for posterity.”

Chilcutt said there hasn’t been much in the way of recordings of the group as far as he knows.

“It’s never been done,” he said noting there were a couple of old tapes from years back, but nothing with the digital quality these recordings will provide.

Chilcutt, well known to locals as a longtime WCHS band director, said the band is doing well at present with a good core group of loyal musicians, but said he still wants to build on the band’s current base and hopes to increase the band’s visibility in the community.

Zechman says he plans to feature the recordings on WCPI public radio, 91.3 on the radio dial, in the near future, and hopes they will eventually be available to the public as well.

“This music is in the public domain,” he said, “so I’m hoping to reproduce these and put them in an attractive little jewel case along with a written history and have these made up at a Nashville production facility and use them to sell as a fundraiser to make money for the band.”