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King’s English Band plays only for fun
By CAROL AUSTIN
Battalion Reporter
From the very back table,
through the thin haze of smoke, I
could see the band take the stage.
Saturday night’s crowd was a row
dy one at Grin’s, but the band didn’t
seem to mind.
Stage lighting was provided by
neon beer signs and pinball
machines.
“Have a beer, everybody!” The
washboard player hollered, and the
band broke into “Ragtime Annie.”
For a bunch of English teachers,
they weren’t bad.
They are the King’s English
String Band, composed of eight
members of the English Depart
ment here.
They apparently don’t mind
being seen swilling beer in public.
“If we were in it for our dignity, we
wouldn’t be here in the first place,”
says Dr. Dennis Berthold, banjo
player and vocalist.
Their motto—festivitatem habe-
mus (we have fun)—is a believable
one. Dr. Doug Street the wash
board player, never looked that
happy arguing the merits of C.S.
Lewis in Children’s Lit.
Just how did they get there in the
first place?
Beginning one evening at Gene
and Marynell Young’s home as a
social affair, they discovered that
collectively, they all knew the same
relatively obscure tunes.
Natives of Borger and Phillips,
Texas, the Youngs were high
school sweethearts. “The towns
were a mile apart, which made it far
enough to be romantic and close
enough to be handy,” Marynell
said.
It was in graduate school in Ten
nessee that they picked up the old
Irish and Appalachian fiddle tunes,
as did washtub bass player Mal
colm Richardson, whom they met at
the Univeraity of Tennessee.
"That’s the other UT,” Marynell
said.
Washtub bass is a strange in
strument for an opera buff to fiddle
with.
But, “We all have our musical
quirks,” Dr. Sylvia Grider, limber-
jack and spoon player said. Grider
is a folklorist, with a PhD in Folklore
from Indiana University. She cur
rently teaches folklore and fresh
man English.
Photo by Ken Herrera
The King’s English String Band, composed of eight members of the English Department here,
play their own style of music at Grin’s Beer Garden.
Berthold, on the other hand,
attended the University of Califor
nia, and as a summer job, was the
Los Angeles travelling playground
folksinger. He received his PhD in
American Literature from the Uni
versity of Wisconsin and came here
in 1972. A self-taught banjo and
guitar player, he has a voice like the
archetypal seafarer he analyzes in
his Literature of the Sea.
The band’s “What You Do With A
Drunken Sailor” was rousing.
Dr. Doug Street sang an old Irish
ballad with a brouge so thick that I
was transported to a Christmas
long past with me grandfather, Har
ry Finnigan, singing ‘round the
piano.
Street was in a number of folk
groups in California in the 1960’s,
playing drums, banjo, guitar and
washboard. Alas, he couldn’t fit the
guitar into the car on the way to
Nebraska for graduate school, but
after a long search, he found an old
brass washboard in a junk shop.
“I think I paid a buck and a quar
ter for the cobwebby thing, and
stained it mahogany. It’s classy
now,” he said.
Clint Machann, guitarist par ex
cellence, is the Old Ag of the bunch,
having received his M.Ed. in 1970.
He currently teaches Victorian liter
ature.
Apparently, The King’s English
doesn’t worry about the prestige of
its bookings, having played
Machann’s Czech family reunion in
Snook last Saturday.
“We had plenty of beer and bar-
beque and dancing, and it was real
ly fun,” Marynell said.
Having a good time is the primary
reason for the band playing any
where. Usually asking about one
dollar to cover expenses, such as
new strings and babysitters’ bills,
they have played at the Backstage
Restaurant, Grin’s and last year’s
Bryan Chili Cook-off.
Last but not least is penny whist
ler Rose Norman. A technical writer
in Geological Oceanography and
wife of Malcolm Richardson, she
plays a recently acquired penny-
whistle and spoons and she and
Richardson dress alike on stage.
It’s obvious they’re having a
good time up there. The lyrics get
drowned occasionally by the pool
players’ jubilant shouts, but that’s
because I’ve seen one of them
make three trips to the bar for more
Heineken Dark.
Various secondary reasons for
playing — helping preserve a tradi
tional music form, exposing stu
dents to a different kind of music,
working off a little tension or just
showing people that English
teachers are human too — they’re
providing good entertainment.
And when they break into a rol
licking “Stay All Night, Stay A Little
Longer,” I feel as if they really mean
it.
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ocus
THE BATTALION
Focus is published every Thursday
as an entertainment section of The
Battalion.
Policy: Focus will accept any stories,
drawings or photographs that are
submitted for publication, although
the decision to publish lies solely with
the editor. Pieces submitted, printed
or not, will be returned upon request.
Deadline is 5 p.m. the Thursday be
fore publication.
Contributing to this issue were:
Lee Roy Leschper Jr., Doug Gra
ham, Carol Austin, Lynn Blanco, Ken
Herrera, Keith Taylor and Mark Han
cock.
Editor: Beth Calhoun
On the Cover: Football is not just
another sport in Aggieland. It’s a way
of life. Here, a band member whoops
after an Aggie score. And some
Aggie fans believe in starting their
young Aggies early — sometimes
before they’re born. For more photos,
turn to pages 4 and 5. Photos by Lee
Roy Leschper Jr.