A night out sounded good to Steve Sage. But having been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in August, and having just completed six months of chemotherapy, he figured it would be a short one.
“They told me it was going to be a benefit concert and that people would play,” said Sage, a lifetime musician and longtime popular music teacher at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.
What he didn’t know until he got to the jam-packed Empress Theater in Vallejo on March 13 was that the benefit — “Songs for Steve” — was for him. There were more surprises.
With family, friends and a smattering of the thousands of students who passed through his Rock, Rhythm and Blues program looking on, a stunned Sage was joined on the stage by Lamplight, the garage band formed by a group of Concord 10-year-olds in 1966. Which is where Sage’s magical musical tour began.
“I was in a little garage band with my friend Charlie Reed,” Michael Hurwitz, one of the organizers of the Empress Theater benefit, said Friday in Sage’s Lafayette studio. “We wanted to get Steve in the band. But he played trumpet. The songs we were playing at the time didn’t have any trumpet in them.”
Hurwitz offered to give Sage guitar lessons. “I was the drummer,” Hurwitz said, laughing, “but I knew all six chords.”
Sage got a paper route in order to buy an electric guitar and amplifier. When the band members hit El Dorado Middle School, they were hired to play at school dances.
“We got $35,” Sage said. “Split five ways is $7 apiece. For $7, you could go down to Dana Plaza and get sick on licorice.”
“We knew from then on we were always going to be involved in music,” Hurwitz said.
After graduating from Concord High School in 1974, Sage played professionally “seven nights a week” for several years. It was while he was attending the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles with Hurwitz that he was told, “It’s not enough to be a professional musician. You have to educate.”
Sage, 60, a Lafayette resident with a wife and adult daughter, refers to the advice as “a tipping point” that led him to DVC, where he implemented a curriculum that exposed his students to professional musicians and live performances — some of which counted as final exams.
“Before he wrote that program, nothing like that had ever existed,” Hurwitz said.
Corinne Kelly credits Sage’s class with providing a community for her after her husband died. Encouraged to interact with other students who were forming groups, Kelly joined one as a backup vocalist. When the lead vocalist quit, Kelly took her place and found herself singing in public venues.
“Steve just had us so trained,” she said.
Back to the benefit. Lamplight hadn’t played together since 1971. Some of the members hadn’t seen each other in more than 40 years. A couple flew in from out of state.
“I think the dream every musician has is to play again with their first band,” Hurwitz said. “That was my gift to Steve.”
Sage’s first thought was more practical.
“What are we going to play?” he asked.
Like old times, Lamplight powered through a handful of songs, one of which can be viewed on Sage’s online GoFundMe account. That account, with a goal of $75,000 to offset medical expenses and lost income, has reached nearly $40,000. A silent auction at the benefit raised about $30,000 (a Paul Reed Smith guitar signed by the members of Journey fetched $3,500).
Three days after the concert, Sage had surgery for sciatica. He says he is “hopefully on the road to recovery” from his cancer.
Hurwitz liked what he saw at the benefit.
“Chemo takes the energy life cycle right out of you,” he said. “When Steve walked into the event, his immediate reaction was bewilderment. But very quickly that switch turned on, and I saw in him the light that chemo had taken away.”
Do you have a column topic for Gary? Contact him at 925-952-5053 or gpeterson@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/garyscribe.
