Tucked away in a metal building on a dead-end street in Jones County is a recording studio, and in that studio at all hours of the day is a former band member who was recently inducted into a music hall of fame.
Gary Branch and his wife, Nancy, have lived on East Colonial Drive since 2005, when they moved from Sarasota, Florida, following his retirement at age 57 due to a heart attack and other heart issues. He was employed with Pinnacle Towers as an antenna design specialist at that time. Prior to that, he worked with a paging company for 20 years.
The Branches were the victims of a direct hurricane hit that all but destroyed their home and led them to decide to move. Nancy Branch had relatives in the central Georgia area, and the couple headed north.
“We really hadn’t thought too much about living in Macon,” Branch noted, “but we had stopped to get fuel, and she went in to this gas station and picked up a little real estate book. She was flipping through it, and she saw this little house. She said, ‘let’s go look at this little house.’
They met with a realtor that afternoon, Branch recalled.
“My wife said, ‘Well, it needs a lot of work, but let’s take that.’ It was something we could afford; so we paid cash for it. And that was it.”
Branch, who turned 78 June 9, grew up in Arkansas and knew early on that music would be a part of his life.
“I was in a high school band,” he recalled in an interview last week. “It was just a natural for me. I just fell into it. I started playing coronet when I was 14, and then I went to playing the trumpet. I went to baritone horn. Then I went to French horn. And, the French horn was my love.”
Branch attended Arkansas State University for one year as a music major and studied French horn before deciding college wasn’t for him. He served a little over three years in the Navy, and upon discharge, he and his first wife moved to Maine. They lived on the ocean for about eight years. The death of their young son was a big factor in their divorce, according to Branch.
During their marriage, however, the couple went to the Sandbar, a little club in the town of Old Orchard Beach. That visit led to a career change.
“There was a band playing there, and the announcer, one of the front guys, said, ‘We’re looking for a horn player. If anybody knows somebody, let us know.” And I thought, well, shoot. I got my horn in the car.”
Branch introduced himself to the announcer, who took him into the kitchen for audition.
“I auditioned, and I got the job. And he said, ‘Do you sing?’ I said, ‘Yeah I can sing.’ I don’t remember what I sang for him, but he said, ‘You got the job. You’re with us.’” Branch played with the band — Rush — for seven years, 1971-78, on the road much of the time but in Old Orchard Beach during the summers.
“That’s where we were really, really popular. We packed the house, standing room only,” he recalled, adding that the group opened for Frankie Valley, the Bee Gees, and other well-known groups.
It was a family affair, Branch said.
“My wife and our child went on the road and lived in a 24-foot motor home. Even when we were in Old Orchard Park, we lived in a RV park.”
There could have been perks, however, for the musicians.
“We’d have bottles of champagne in our dressing room and motel room, or hotel room keys, you know, and things like that,” he confirmed. “And it was distracting, but we had a job to do. We were there for business, and we were in the business of entertaining people.”
The lifestyle eventually took its toll, Branch acknowledged.
“We rehearsed three to four hours a day every day, seven days a week, and we played four to six hours a night, six days a week.
“It got to where it was really, really hard work. I was in my early 30s, and I said, you know, it’s time to let the kids do this. I’m just getting too old for it — moving equipment, playing music six and seven days a week. And it was just, it was a lot, and I had lost the motivation or the love for it.”
Branch left the band and changed directions in his life.
“I went back to school, got my engineering degree in electrical engineering, and started working in paging,” he detailed. “And that worked into Pinnacle Tower Company. They were in Sarasota, and at the time, it was the largest tower company in the world.”
He worked for Pinnacle for 2.5 years before he suffered the heart attack and health issues that led to his retirement.
He didn’t immediately retire, however. Once he settled in Jones County, Branch worked for another year.
“Channel 13 was looking for an engineer to do the transition from analog to digital,” he said. “I applied for the position as a one-year project, and they hired me.”
At the completion of that project, Branch decided it was time to hang it up.
“I turned 62 by that time, and I said, ‘You know, I’m just going to go ahead and draw my retirement.’
“I’d had five bypasses. My health was good, but it’s kind of like you see the writing on the wall, and, you know, the possibilities were not as good as maybe somebody else’s that didn’t have those problems. So I took it at 62, and then I gained some disability through the VA. That set us up very well.”
Meanwhile, Branch had started building what turned out to be a multiroom recording studio as soon as they moved in the year before.
“I wanted to contribute to the music scene in Macon,” he said. “I really didn’t know what was going on as far as music in Macon, but I did know that I had not heard of any music coming out of Macon for quite some time. So I thought, well, maybe we can help some kids, help some people, some young people. And we did.”
Branch went on to say he and Mark Story — a videographer who owned a communications company — produced a television show, with 54 30-minute shows in a year.
“We would bring the bands in here, record them, run them over to his house, where he had a live sound stage, and he would video them to the audio that I would record. And we put them on a television show called Night Train TV.”
The show ran one year, in 2017, Branch noted.
“We wanted to promote entertainment,” he commented. “Anybody that had talent, we wanted to promote them.”
The two entrepreneurs began as Studio Plex of Central Georgia and later formed a corporation, Night Train TV. Branch also is the owner of Cross-Chart Entertainment and CrossChart Records.
He has individuals from time to time who want to use his studio. The singer, or band with musicians, will come in and perform, and Branch will do his work.
“It takes, generally, about a week to 10 days to do four or five songs for somebody, and I work crazy hours,” he said. “I like to do my edits and mixing and that kind of thing at three o’clock in the morning. I don’t know why. It just seems to work better for me that way. More of my creative juices are flowing a lot better at that time of night.
Branch, who is also a certified ham radio operator and member of Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES), said he definitely is not seeking work now.
“I’m doing what I want, actually retired. If somebody needs something done, I’ll charge them whatever it costs me to run the air conditioning and a little bit of money for my time, but mainly it’s for the equipment. It’s expensive.”
Branch talked about the May 4 Maine ceremony and pointed out the award is named for the two towns that are trying to recognize musicians.
“It’s called the Biddeford-Saco Music Hall of Fame,” he began. “This is the second year they’ve had it. Maine doesn’t have a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They’ve got a Country Music Hall of Fame, but they don’t have a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And so they’re trying to get this, ease this into a state recognition.”
The inductee explained that the local organization promoting the event put the word out through various media outlets. There were about 20 bands in the nomination process, and voters had to pick five.
“We came out the number one (band),” Branch beamed. “The guy said, ‘I can’t believe that people responded like they did with you guys. You had the vast majority of votes.’
“I was quite surprised, taken aback by it,” he shared, “and it made me feel good. Made me feel really good. It really boosted my morale.”
All five bands played two songs during the ceremony, and Branch said he will never forget that night.
“It was very emotional, very, very emotional. All of us said the same thing. It was like it was in the old days with all the standing ovations. We got standing ovations for both of our songs. We couldn’t see them from the stage, but when they stood up at the end of the song, it was like, holy mackerel.”
The Jones County retiree made it clear that the end result didn’t always come easy.
“We worked hard, really hard,” Branch stressed. “Our mission was to entertain people who worked their butts off. They came out to get entertained. And so, we said, ‘Let’s entertain them. Let’s make them feel good.’ So that was our mission the whole time, and if we weren’t making them feel good, we would find a way to do it.”
