Gardener Makes the Parks a Little Brighter by Adding a Bluegrass Sound

Dennis R. Reed spends his workday caring for the trees, plants and green grass in city parks. Other times he’s singing and writing about bluegrass.

“I enjoy music, but realistically speaking, few people are making a real living at it,” said Reed, 37, who supervises the care of landscaping in San Clemente’s city parks, where he also plays and sings bluegrass music in concerts.

Although the one-time Cal State Fullerton student was raised in Fullerton, he said: “I’m a hillbilly at heart. Most of my family is from the Ozarks, and we would go out and listen to a lot of live music at picnics when I was a child.”

That may account for him helping establish the summer Concerts in the Park series in San Clemente. He was one of the first concert performers with his Dennis Rogers Reed Band and drew an estimated 500 spectators to the free session.

Others who have performed in the no-frills park concert series include guitarist Tom Lang and the Andy Rau Band, as well as other musical acts that worked for minimal fees. Reed said he called in some favors to hold costs down.

Reed thinks that his outdoor musical performances, as well as those by singers and instrumentalists from other musical groups, provide another use for some of the 68 acres of parkland in the city.

“We’re trying to educate people about the park concert series,” said Reed, who has worked 10 years in the city and figures that he spends one day a weekend and five nights a week practicing and performing music.

He said the concerts stress “older-style American music and none of it is plugged into amplifiers. We keep the noise down.”

While he also plays and sings in a number of restaurants and clubs in Orange County and Long Beach, “the places I enjoy playing the most pay the least,” said Reed, who writes many of the songs he sings.

“In bars and restaurants, you provide a background situation,” he added. “Playing in them is not as emotionally rewarding as performing in a place where people come just to listen.”

Besides performing, Reed hopes to make his mark writing bluegrass-flavored country songs. He has two records out called “You Break My Heart in Just the Right Places,” and “Red Clay Road.”

“One of my aspirations is to go back to Nashville and meet with producers and try to get my name known,” he said. “I’d like to get to the point where I’m not just a long-distance phone call to them.”

But Reed said he’s a realist. “I know some people who make money as a songwriter, but most people don’t. You have a better chance making it as a singer,” he said.

While Reed hopes some day to make a name for himself in music, “The horticultural aspect of my life is rewarding and I plan to stay with it.”

There will be a couple of special rooting sections Friday at the Mater Dei-Tustin High School football game at Tustin. Both of them will be filled from the same family--and all of them are graduates of the two schools.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to root against each other,” said Jane Puppi, of Laguna Niguel, one of the 12 children of Mary and Tom Kelly of Tustin. “The two schools haven’t played each other in 30 years.”

The 12 children--Tom, Mary, Gregg, Coleen, Karen and Jane, of Mater Dei High, and Denise, Jim, John, Grace, Frances and Tony of Tustin High--plan to get together for a post-game celebration when backers of the winning school will share a trophy made for the occasion.

“We’re a divided family when it comes to the schools, but we’re really quite close,” Jane said. “We had a lot of fun when we were all growing up.”

The 14 grandmothers of the Assistance League of Capistrano Valley wanted to work on a philanthropic project, so they decided on Hug a Bear.

The group bought a bunch of teddy bears at a good price, put them in plastic bags and distributed them to police, fire and paramedics in South County who would give them to children in trauma situations such as a fire or car accident.

“We’re really excited about this,” said Carolyn Churm of Laguna Niguel, the group chairwoman. “We wanted to do something that had an appeal to us that we could handle emotionally.”

She said the idea is to give children quick and temporary emotional help by having something to hug.

“We just heard from a paramedic who said he gave one to a 4-year-old boy after a car accident,” she said. “The paramedic told us he couldn’t believe the response from the boy on the way to the hospital. He said it gave the boy great comfort.”