FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS –

Horn to be wild: Ex-punk Tom Goodkind
gets neighbors marching together
By JUDITH WILMOT

A “master of shrewd thinking” is what songwriter Chris Butler of the Waitresses, once called his friend Tom Goodkind an apt label for the punk-rocker turned community bandleader.
In the late 1970s, Goodkind’s punk band, US Ape, performed on the small, hallowed stage at CBGBs. Today, the Battery Park City resident plays larger stages out of necessity. It takes a sizable bandshell to contain the 23-member TriBattery Pops, the community band that
Goodkind founded and leads.
The idea of bringing friends together to entertain their neighbors came naturally to Goodkind, 52. A married father of two who works as a CPA,
he has deep roots in downtown Manhattan. His grandfather’s clothing store, Bert Green, was among the buildings razed to make room for the World Trade Center.
Goodkind’s rock ’n’ roll career lasted through the 1980s, when he toured internationally as a founding member of the popular neo-folk band Washington Squares. When he hit 30, he took stock of his music career,
and decided he should consider other options. “I had to work at something normal,” Goodkind says. “I remembered this teacher at NYU who said there is only one Willie Mays, but there are a lot of accountants. I decided
to get an accounting degree.”
Goodkind married his college sweetheart, Jill, and they moved to Battery Park City. He traces the next dramatic change in his life to Sept. 11, 2001.
“After 9/11, I suddenly starting talking with neighbors I had seen in the elevator for 15 years. Battery Park
City residents had to leave their apartments, and we had a real problem of knowing where to live and how to
take care of our families. All of us held on to each other through blogs, and memorized each other’s names.
… Now, we all know each other.”
He got the idea of forming a community band during a family vacation on Cape Cod.
“The town had an old fashioned gazebo band. The conductor was an older guy, and the band members
looked like firemen. They just harrumphed into the song, and played a little squeaky and out of tune.
“We sat on the lawn with family and friends all around and listened in the evening to a two-hour concert. It
was wonderful. I thought that downtown New York needed that kind of feeling around Ground Zero.”
Not long after that trip, Goodkind was helping organize a block party and needed a band. He called Lisa
Eclund-Flores, director of the nearby Church Street Music School.

She said, “Cool, just come on by and we will figure out something.’” With Eclund-Flores’ help, Goodkind not
only assembled the TriBattery Pops, but also gained rehearsal space at the school, which now lists the band
in its catalogue as one of its adult-education programs.
At the orchestra’s first rehearsal, six people showed up. “We talked for two hours, ordered pizza, and then
the band played the ?Stars and Stripes [Forever].’ It sort of sounded like the song a little bit, and it was
perfect.”
This year, the TriBattery Pops will play six performances for downtown residents. Any money they receive is donated to the Church Street Music School.
Musicians’ entire families are involved in the concerts. Goodkind says. “We have kids marching around on stilts while we play, handing out American flags.” The band has found a fitting performance space in the
Washington Market Park near Battery Park City, which has an old-fashioned gazebo.
At a Friday-night rehearsal, Goodkind bounces about the band’s rehearsal space with a rocker’s manic
energy, putting out the sheet music, which includes a march he composed. The spring in his step masks the
fact that he is not only a rock ’n’ roll survivor, but a heart-attack survivor as well.
“My pacemaker was put in this October,” he says. “I have an electrical problem with my heart, which
probably has to do with the radiation treatment for Hodgkin’s disease I had when I was 22. That’s why I went
into music instead of business. I figured I had a short lifespan.”
Goodkind waves the conductor’s baton about, and admires it with his playful smile. “I learned to conduct
from watching Leonard Bernstein’s show when I was a kid.”
Tonight’s rehearsal is scheduled for 6:30, and by seven the pizza has arrived along with three out of the 17
members expected. They happily gather chairs and music stands from the school’s various storage spots.
A tuba player, an increasingly rare type of musician in the city, comes to rehearsal, his first with the
orchestra. He is as excited to have a place to play the tuba as Goodkind is to have this essential instrument
join the community band. They begin rehearsal with the theme from “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
The TriBattery Pops’ musicians, many of them former rockers like their bandleader, accept the limits of their current lives. “We only have nine rehearsals, and [they’re] on Friday nights, because the rest of the week we have meetings or something we have to do with the kids,” Goodkind says.
“We talk a lot and then we play. If we know the songs a little, then it’s perfect. If we get too good it ruins the sense of a community band.”
The experience of being displaced and essentially on their own after 9/11 taught downtown residents about
what it means to be a good neighbor, Goodkind says.
“I thought after 9/11 that someone would come and rescue us, but nobody has even mentioned the
displaced residents. Was 9/11 a long time ago? Yes. Do we see a hole there every day with nothing going
up? Yes. Is the community closer than it was? Sure. We have been though a bad time, and we are working
class. We can take care of ourselves, but we do need guidance, and that we didn’t get.
“Downtown has become a small, tight-knit, community that takes care of itself,” he adds. “When the Tri-
Battery Pops community band started to play, everyone pitched in to help, and it has been very cool.”
The TriBattery Pops’ concert schedule is available on the Web: http://www.tribatterypops.com.

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