Brandon, Nellie and the big blow

Maybe you’re in school, playing in the band. A trumpet, a sax or flute, even drums could be your instrument.

And maybe you’re wondering if when you graduate, there will be a continued relationship with that instrument.

Well it’s true that lots of them get sold to music stores or on Craigslist, handed down to siblings or otherwise disposed of. But there are times when that school instrument, the one you carried through long Mardi Gras parades when you thought your lips would freeze or your arms fall off, can come in handy.

And that’s what happened to Brandon Robichaux, once a prized trumpet player at South Terrebonne High School’s Million Dollar Band From Gatorland, who could blow the signature “Iron Man” tune at football games, and loved playing his trumpet so much that upon graduation he kept the music alive. His companion was Nellie, and when he tried to hit the high notes he would urge her in his mind “come on Nellie you can do it!”

“I used to play 6 or 9 hours a day,” he said. How did his parents deal with it?

“Eventually it sounded good. I would go outside and play toward the marsh and you could hear the sound travel all the way to Montegut from here in Chauvin.”

He headed to LSU, majoring in music and serenading Tigers rather than Gators. For a while he actually wore the tiger suit. But there was still a lot of quality time spent with Nellie. Until college ended.

Once that happened the question so many band members face was right there in front of him. What will become of this trumpet, this companion who saw him through so many years of education, games, parades and interminable hours of practice.

He put Nellie up on a shelf in 2004, two years after graduation from LSU.

A lot of changes came after that. Brandon had worked as a car salesman, disc jockey, and hospice equipment delivery person.

Most recently he has become an apprentice electrician and finds it to his liking. That’s a good thing because Brandon, who traveled from Bayou Little Caillou to Baton Rouge and then California, traveling to Missouri from there with his bride, needs to make a good steady living, what with two little boys and all. He and the family live in the bayouside home where he grew up.

Nellie remained forgotten until some of the guys Brandon works with said there were some events that would require musical talent from among them to step forward. Brandon volunteered his trumpet skills.

And so, on Monday at about 6:10 p.m. He gently removed the brown leather case that had been Nellie’s sepulchre, buried as it was behind old clothes.

When the case was opened it smelled exactly as it always had, the aroma of valve oil and the carpeting inside. Nellie had gone from silver to black in color, tarnished but not beyond repair.

He put the trumpet together, checked the spit valve, oiled up the valves and then, fingers at the ready, Brandon placed his lips against the cold brass of the mouthpiece. Through pinholes he made on the sides of his mouth, Brandon drew in breath. And then he breathed Nellie to life.

“I played,” Brandon said. “I just played chromatic scales up and down. It felt like my lips were jelly, not muscled like they used to be. I tried my high notes. Believe or not I had the high notes still. Not super high but high enough.”

Brandon and Nellie are going to spend quality time together again, not six hours per day but a lot of time nonetheless, as he gets ready to make music with the co-workers.

And he has learned a life lesson.

“The music never goes away,” he said “It’s always there. Even if you think it’s gone it’s always there. People should do that. Now. Today. They should get their old instrument out and play it. See how they feel after. I’m glad I did. So far.”

After he made the first notes Brandon’s sons, Aiden and Luke, ages 5 and 3, besieged him, and Nellie.

“They said they want to learn how to play,” Brandon said. “Unless I want to pay for lessons I guess I’ll have to teach them.”