Oakmont Lions band engages in acts of service through performances

For members of the Oakmont Lions Club Good Time Band, rehearsals and performances are filled with laughter and music. Worries are left behind for a couple of hours.

For its listeners, the band offers an escape from the mundane.

Laura Amos, 61, of Oakmont, the band’s director and vocalist, equated the group to a team that “has a lot of wins.”

Lions Club member Gary Rogers, 67, one of the band’s founders, referred to it as a “family that never fights.”

Despite its Oakmont name, the band features 16 members from a host of communities including Verona, West Deer, Mars and Jeannette.

Members — some in the Lions Club, some not — range in age from 32 to 80.

The ensemble features a flute, trumpets, alto and tenor saxophones, a bass guitar, drums, a tuba, a baritone horn, a piano, a trombone and a French horn.

Amos said the group had to cut off sign-ups because it was getting too big, too quickly.

The band began to form three years ago during Oakmont’s annual Christmas parade, where the Oakmont Lions enter a float each year. That year, members decided they wanted the float to feature holiday music, Rogers said.

After exploring a few options — including a speaker, a generator and a good old-fashioned radio with the volume turned up — Rogers began asking who played an instrument.

Rogers, an Oakmont resident, has played the baritone horn since high school. In his adult years, he played for the Delmont Concert Band and, after a short break, picked the instrument back up for the holiday parade.

“As it turned out, there were five of us who played instruments,” Rogers said. “We had a trumpet, a baritone and there was a keyboard. We rode on the float and played Christmas carols. … We had so much fun we said, ‘Let’s keep going.’ ”

And so the Lions Club Good Time Band was born. Members began rehearsing in Rogers’ garage.

“In the winter, we froze, and in the summer, we baked,” Rogers said.

The garage housed their rehearsals until last year, when band member Dave Barr, 74, of Verona retired from Duquesne University’s music program, opened a piano tuning and repair studio and invited his bandmates to practice there.

Members gather at the Verona studio each Monday night to run through set lists.

The group plays a variety of covers ranging from Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington to Bon Jovi, Sister Sledge and Michael Jackson. The group found most of its members have settled nicely into the jazz genre.

“It’s Western Pennsylvania,” Rogers said. “You have to have a polka, so we have a polka.”

Since its founding, the band has evolved into an entity of the Lions service organization.

“We felt we could use this band as a community service,” Rogers said. “We decided we would go to nursing homes and senior care facilities and play music for them.”

The band has performed at senior care homes in Penn Hills, Plum, Oakmont and Verona. The group began attracting other nonprofit gigs, including playing for Riverview’s Relay for Life and a tee-off event at the U.S. Open golf tournament.

They pride themselves in engaging with audiences with jokes and anecdotes in addition to playing music.

Rogers said the bonds that have formed are what keeps the band successful.

“A lot of us were acquaintances when we started,” he said. “We’ve become such good friends doing this.”

The production is completely funded by the band members, Amos said. Everyone pitches in for sheet music and instrument repairs.

Amos became involved as the band’s director shortly after its creation. She has been teaching private vocal and piano lessons in Oakmont for more than 35 years.

Her role in the group requires her to wear a few hats.

“I help get our balance right, our rhythm,” she said. “I make sure everybody has what they need as far as music and the different things that come with a group of musicians.”

Amos attributed the band’s almost instant success to Rogers’ dedication to the community, the band members’ talent and bonds with each other.

“We have a good rapport, and we laugh a lot,” Amos said. “The world is so crazy right now. We like to keep it light and music-centered.

“I think our light shines when we perform.”