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It’s a good thing they didn’t name themselves after that mixed drink they sipped on at high noon in the middle of a Myrtle Beach summer — they’d be called the Piña Coladas.
Instead, Sandye Saintsing, Mary McGee, Patty Younts, Ellen Holliman, Betty Allred and Melanie McMillan decided “Bahama Mamas” sounded more fun.
“If you didn’t know us, you wouldn’t quite know what to expect,”Younts said.
She’s right. You probably wouldn’t expect a steel drum-playing sextet of professional women in their 40s and 50s from North Carolina jamming a Jimmy Buffett song during Caribbean night in a club at High Rock Lake.
And you probably wouldn’t look for the band’s organizer and leader to be a toe-ring-and-ankle-bracelet-wearing 56-year-old bundle of dynamite who grew up on rock ’n roll in Mississippi.
Although she and her sister sneaked headphones under their bed to listen to “Randy’s Record Shop out of Nashville, Tennessee,” Saintsing fell in love with island music as a teen-ager in 1959 after buying her first steel drum record.
“There’s something about the sound — I can’t describe it,” the lead Mama said. “It’s why most people love to hear it … . It’s got that heartbeat sound and gets you right in the soul.”
That’s when she knew she wanted to sing and play a steel drum.
“But all the lessons in the world couldn’t make a singer out of me,” Saintsing quipped. As far as playing a steel drum, she said, “It’s like a lot of things you want to do — in the meantime you grow up, get married, have three children, and the next thing you know, you’re in midlife.”
But midlife has been no crisis for her. She’s spent years successfully doing accounting work with her husband, Tommy, and his clothing tags, bags and labels business, Trim Services, as well as managing the food service operations for First Baptist Church in Lexington.
Then, in 1993, she and her friends formed Professional Women’s Roundtable. The Roundtable began as a support group for professional women, where they could discuss everything from books to social and political issues. But for most of them it became an experience of adventure and empowerment.
Among other daring expeditions in 1997, the group crewed a 43-foot sailboat out of Key West with a company called Women for Sail.
“(That) wasn’t too long before Sandye informed us that we were going to be a steel drum band,”McGee said, laughing.
In 1998, at the annual barbecue festival in Lexington, Saintsing met musician Tracy Thorton who was playing with his band Been Caught Stealin’.
“I told him I really wanted to (play the steel drum) and had some friends who wanted to do it, too,”Saintsing remembered. So she met him in Greensboro, where they began to discuss the history of the music, the instrument and where she could buy some.
Saintsing used money left to her by her mother, who died 2-1/2 years ago. She said she felt comfortable investing that money in the drums because her mother had taught all her children to appreciate music.
“Everybody still thought, ‘This is Sandye’s idea of a joke,’ ” until, one year after she ordered them from Trinidad, the lead tenor pan, the double second pans, the bass drums and the double guitar drums came in.
She invited Thorton, his wife and “the girls” over to celebrate the arrival of the drums. Thorton agreed to teach them how to play the instruments, but not before telling them the experience would be “something spiritual.”
“We really didn’t understand what he meant,” Saintsing said, “but we found out soon enough that … it’s hard work, but it’s a labor of love.”
It certainly was a labor of love for Tommy, who “forbid” his wife of 37 years from bringing “that stuff” in his house.
“He told me if I ordered them, I’d better be planning to move on,”Saintsing mocked. “But he should have known that wasn’t going to stop me.”
Saintsing, who plays lead tenor pan, wanted to move the drums out of the living room downstairs where her husband’s exercise equipment was, but he refused to make yet another sacrifice.
“But, what can you say against six women?We kind of patted him on the head and said, ‘Tom, don’t you know these things would go downstairs really well?’” They moved the drums, now including two lead tenor pans, bongos and a drum set, downstairs and his equipment into the adjacent room.
“He always starts to complain like he can’t believe we’re having band practice again, but he loves it and he loves all these women, too,”she said. “He’s gone from forbidding me to have them to actually enjoying them, and he’s proud of us.”
And they’re proud of themselves. Since September, Saintsing, McGee, Younts, Holliman and Allred — McMillan joined them on the set drums in January — have learned about one song a week under Thorton’s direction. None except McMillan, a keyboard teacher at Davidson County Schools, has a musical background.
McGee, 48, the other lead tenor pan player, is self-employed as an employee benefits specialist. Fifty-year-old Younts, who plays double seconds pans, is president and owner of a commercial interior design and space planning business. Hat-wearing Holliman, in control of the bass drums, currently works as a human service consultant with Tri-Alliance in Salisbury. And Allred, strong and silent at 58 on the double guitars, is a real estate broker.
But they all agree that, although they don’t read music, they feel like real musicians with Thorton’s expertise. Saintsing hails him “a prodigy.”
McGee knew of Thorton’s talent when she taught math and computer — long before she knew he would one day be her instructor.
“I taught at the high school Tracy graduated from in Guilford County. … Iremember, on awards day of the year he graduated, him getting an award for the most likely to succeed. The kids just gave him a standing ovation,”she said. “Music was his talent, and that’s what he’s known for. We’re very fortunate.”
Thorton was unavailable for comment about his “girl group,”all of who are “the age of his mother.” But the Mamas feel comfortable speaking for him when they say both they and Thorton have learned from their time together.
“I think we have given him an appreciation for the difference in generations,”said Holliman, 50.
The women say being good friends makes practicing 10-plus hours a week to fine-tune their skills easier; each member even has a key to Saintsing’s house so she can practice anytime she’s ready.
They’re also on their way to what Holliman calls, “band camp,” a steel drum workshop at West Virginia University from July 29 through Aug. 5.
The Bahama Mamas had no idea that the group they put together as a form of “therapy” would become so “infectious”to them and other people.
“When you do something you aren’t sure you can do and you accomplish it, it takes on a new meaning,” McGee said. “We have a new appreciation for it now.”
And their community has a new appreciation for them. So far, they have had “gigs” at a wedding rehearsal, the Lexington Uptown Spring Festival and a political campaign, where McMillan made a proclamation about where she thinks the band’s future is headed.
“We were playing at (Hugh Holliman’s) campaign fundraiser (for the North Carolina House) when some of the neighborhood friends said, ‘What do you expect to do?’ ” McMillan remembered. “I said, ‘We expect to be on Oprah. That’s our goal!’ They looked at me like I was crazy, but I was serious.”
McGee jokingly interjected, “Tracy seems to think we have an image that is marketable:middle-aged white women who play island music.”
Until then, McMillan would like to put together a package this summer and prepare take the band into schools. They’ve also been asked to perform at churches.
“Playing the steel drum takes you to another level,”she said. “When (we) play … (we) love it.”
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To hire the Bahama Mamas to play at an event, call 336-249-4313.
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