Tom Kubis: Hometown Boy Makes Way Back

Tom Kubis disproves the old Thomas Wolfe line: You can go home again. The 39-year-old composer, arranger and saxophonist who grew up in Huntington Beach and worked his way through the local college band scene has spent a lot of time paying dues on the road with such disparate musicians as Quincy Jones and Helen Reddy. Now he’s leading his own big band at venues around the Southland, playing his own music (he’ll be at Cafe Lido in Newport Beach today) and teaching at Golden West College.

Getting off the road has given Kubis more time for one of his great loves: writing music. “It’s a silly thing,” he said recently on the Golden West campus, “but I have a passion to write. I just have to have a sheet of score paper in front of me.”

Kubis, who has been writing since he was in high school, now has his works distributed to most of the major college jazz bands in the country by Walrus Music Publishing in Glendale. Daniel Beher of Walrus, who also owns the Seabreeze Jazz recording label, suggested to Kubis that recording some of his tunes might help prospective buyers become more familiar with the charts. Suddenly, Kubis had a record deal. The result is the recently released “Slightly Off the Ground.”

The album, Kubis’ first under his own name, is yet another milestone in the career of a guy who started out playing Dixieland on the soprano saxophone at age 11 and went on to play with such local favorites as the Orange County Rhythm Machine and the Los Angeles-based Firehouse Five Plus 2 before gaining a reputation as a composer and arranger and hitting the road.

Working for others and being away from home had taken their toll. “There was a period beginning in 1984 and continuing for about three years where I lost direction,” he recalls. “I started writing again because I had to find my sanity, and this was the only way.” The numbers on “Slightly Off the Ground,” he said, “are the tunes that I wrote on the road trying to get my brain back in line. I realized that my own writing was more important than being on the road and trying to make everybody else sound good.”

He still has some trouble finding the time and the solitude to write. Sometimes, he’ll get up in the middle of the night to compose, or he’ll seek privacy in the bathroom. “I’ll put some pillows in there and turn the shower on--the water’s great because it gets rid of any noise. The water people are going to hate me.”

A number of the pieces on the album--”Exactly Like This,” “Which Craft?” and “Alexander’s Big Time Band”--are based on standards Kubis has reworked. Take the opening number, “Purple Porpoise Parkway.” While moving along at the pace of a hopped-up roadster, a certain change of chords in the song suggests the standard that Miles Davis made famous: “On Green Dolphin Street.”

Porpoises? Dolphins? Kubis admits that he was having fun. “That was the idea,” he said. “To circumvent the title but not circumvent the title.” Trombonist Bill Watrous and keyboardist/saxophonist Matt Catingub are featured on the disc (which was recorded at studios on the Golden West campus) as well as trumpeter Jack Sheldon, who offers a hilarious impersonation of Humphrey Bogart summing up the plot of “Casablanca” (“I figured she’d be better off with Victor and I’d just hang out with Claude”) on Kubis’ arrangement of “Play It Again, Sam.”

In addition to their clever (some might say corny) titles, Kubis’ compositions follow certain patterns that, like fingerprints, identify the works as his. The tunes begin with reserved theme statements that almost immediately begin to increase in complexity and volume. Soloists, usually one from each section, are given plenty of space to show their stuff, followed by a resounding climax.

“That comes from my Dixieland background,” Kubis explained. “We play the melody, and it’s done as simply as possible. Then it goes to the soloists. Lots of big band writers aren’t interested in the soloist, but it’s very important to give them space. That’s the heart. That’s jazz.

“As the tune builds from the solo section, as all tunes do in the solo section, then it’s time to put it out there and play the shout chorus. Just like in a Dixieland tune, that’s the high point: Everything against the wall. It’s what I do about 95% of the time I’m writing.”

Like any number of musicians who have paid their share of road dues, Kubis can measure his career by how he has traveled: From tiny vans to packed buses to airplanes, vehicles mark points in his development.

He left Cal State Long Beach before getting his master’s degree in the mid-’70s to play backup for the Diamonds, the vocal group that had a hit in the late ‘50s with “Little Darlin’.”

“That was the van tour,” Kubis explained. “We played Reno, Las Vegas and all the biggies like Elko and Cheyenne, Wyo.”

It led to other opportunities. One of the musicians with the Diamonds, Bobby Bryant Jr. (whose father is the well-known trumpeter Bobby Bryant), got involved with a tour Quincy Jones was putting together in 1976 for his big band and the Brothers Johnson. Kubis came out to the audition and ended up with the first alto chair.

“That was a bus gig,” said Kubis. “We started in L.A. and ended up in Hartford, Conn., with stops in places like Dallas and Madison Square Garden. It was exhausting and just too much. The bus trips were like four or five hours a day, with 43 people on the bus, 43 cranky people. We had to sleep on the bus and everything. I just couldn’t hack it.”

One day, Kubis let the road manager know how he felt and said he was going to quit. That night, he got a call from Jones. “It was just like hearing from God. He said, ‘Hey man, I know how you feel.’ He was just so down to earth.”

Kubis agreed to continue the tour, but, using money he had earned playing Dixieland at Disneyland, he started to take the plane with Jones and the other principals between performances.

“Quincy would see me on the plane with score paper and say, ‘What have you got there?’ So we got talking about be-bop and the recording of big bands, some very interesting conversations. It was very inspirational. He didn’t show me anything technically, but he’s a guy with a great attitude for music and that was nice to see.”

But, as Kubis seems continually to discover, there’s no rest for the weary. The week after the Jones tour ended, he got a call to play saxophone and to write for Helen Reddy. “I said, ‘I can’t go back on the road, I just got off’! And the guy’s begging me, ‘You’ve got to go, you’ve got to do it.’ I finally agreed. I’d done the van, I’d done the bus, I finally got on an airplane and didn’t have to pay.”

Kubis continued working with Reddy on and off until the early ‘80s but without much satisfaction. In 1978, he decided to look for more stable work, something that wouldn’t take him so far from home. He’d been giving a few saxophone lessons and enjoyed working with students. Why not teach? The first place he went looking was Golden West, where he was hired to teach composing and commercial music.

But even teaching took its toll. Kubis, who was commuting from Northridge to the college in Huntington Beach, also was doing casual gigs and was trying to write. He finally burned out. “I went from being fairly green to getting in over my head teaching full time. I was putting so much time into it that I wasn’t writing anymore. I was kind of lost.”

Shortly after he left Golden West, another call came, this time from singer Bobby Vinton, who wanted help reworking some of his old material and coming up with new singles. “He told me that he wanted to hire me and just spend all the time in the studio, period,” Kubis said. “We’re going into the studio ? Those are the magic words.”

They didn’t get Vinton back to the top of the charts (though “the remake of ‘Sealed With a Kiss’ got to No. 1 in Hong Kong,” Kubis claims). Still, the gig had its rewards. “It was a great experience,” Kubis said. “I spent a lot of time with synthesizers and the computer. (Vinton) spent a lot of money to go into the best studio, using the best musicians and the best engineers.”

All of which was just what Kubis needed. When he went back to Golden West, the college had added recording studios with synthesizers, sequencers and computers, and Kubis was in a great position to teach their use. Today, he teaches 15 hours of classes a week on the campus, including composition, arranging and the use of synthesizers, computers and other electronic gizmos. He also directs the school’s Recording Jazz Band.

The Vinton job had yet another reward. Last year, Kubis married Vinton’s keyboardist at the time, Carol Jolin (who, actually, he had been hired to replace. They both ended up working with Vinton, Jolin playing the piano parts, Kubis adding background synths).

“It’s an old story,” Kubis said. “Carol and I got very close on the road, as the road makes people do.”

Kubis intends to continue teaching, writing and leading his band. He doesn’t foresee himself becoming a big name--”I just don’t have that star mentality”--but after all those years writing and playing for others, he seems to have found his niche. “I don’t see myself getting on the bus ever again.”

The Tom Kubis Big Band with Jack Sheldon plays today at 11 a.m. at Cafe Lido, 501 30th St., Newport Beach. Admission: $12.50. Information: (714) 675-2968.