The Tuba Story

Back in 1991 the Brasshoppers went off to Texas to perform for ten days in the Houston International Festival - nice work if you can get it. The festival even gave us our own hire cars - apparently that's the American way. On the day of our big gig (most of the others were acoustic street gigs) our then tuba player, Keith 'Tank' Sharples was in one of the hire cars with his instrument in the boot when they were shunted by a following vehicle. Sadly the tuba was a wreck and certainly not playable that evening.

After the initial shock of seeing his beloved instrument crushed to half the size that it should have been, our search for a tuba began - not a problem in a city the size of Houston one would imagine. We contacted the festival organisers asking them if they could find a tuba we could borrow but stressed that it should be an E flat not B flat instrument. Confident that one would show up we comiserated with Tank ...talked about insurance, instrument repairers, mouthpieces ... you know - comfort talk for tuba players.

The afternoon wore on and still no word. Finally we called the festival. Apparently there were plenty of B flat tubas in Houston but E flat tubas were more of a European thing but they still had a few more ideas. The show must go on as they say. By this time the rest of the band had gone to set up in the venue. Tank went in search of Dave Powell, tubist with Loose Tubes who had just from London with instrument and was convinced that he played an Eflat. With one hour to go before the performance we imagined that this was the last avenue to explore and hoped that it would not turn out to be yet another cul de sac. But of course it was! We sat down beer in hand with an air of resignation. To make matters worse there were only three people in the audience (literally!).

More to amuse himself than for any other reason, Toby started to explain the preceding events over the PA to the audience and jokingly asked if anyone of the three could lend the Brasshoppers a tuba. You are not going to believe this . One of the three audience members got up and said that yes he could lend us a tuba as he was a tuba collector. He lived 20 minutes away and at that time had 95 tubas in his house - Eflat Boosey and Hawkes - no problem. Honestly folks as I [Toby] write this down I still find it incredible!