The Band Across the Street
In Norhill, a curbside band born in the pandemic winter plays for neighbors, grandkids, and beer money
By Jim Towers, M.J.A., J.D.
I ride through Proctor Plaza Park most days. It’s where I park the motorcycle on Watson Street, stretch my legs, and let the Heights go by for a few minutes. On a Sunday afternoon at the end of January 2021, the Heights came to me as it always has and it always does.
Across the street from the tennis courts, four musicians sat in folding chairs on the strip of grass between a wrought-iron fence and the curb: a saxophone, two electric guitars, and a bass, with a PA speaker on a tripod at each end. Out at the edge of the street stood an old wooden stool holding a galvanized bucket with one word painted on the side: TIPS.
The music was down-home Southern rhythm and blues, the kind that makes a man with a coffee in his hand start tapping a sneaker against the grass without noticing he’s doing it. Behind the fence, a few kids chased a basketball. A couple in the back wore masks. Late-afternoon sun came through the oaks and laid a pattern of branch shadows across the brick house behind the band.
That house is where one of the musicians lives. The others aren’t far away. Every player in the group lives in the neighborhood, and they are friends before they are a band. They walk together and meet for coffee. The saxophonist is a retired postal worker. When I asked what the group was called, the question didn’t land. There’s no name. This is a Heights thing, not a name thing.
It started in the pandemic, when indoor gatherings had stopped and a front yard was about the only place left where neighbors could see each other. The musicians began playing outside, the neighbors began coming out to listen, and the habit stuck. Now they play a weekend or two a month. On some evenings, residents say, the crowd tops a hundred people, spread across the lawn and along the sidewalk by the courts.
A couple who live a few doors down in a 1920s bungalow were among the regulars that day.
Residents settle into lawn chairs they brought from home beneath a live oak at Proctor Plaza Park. Photo: Jim Towers / HHI
Contributed to the beer bucket.
“Oh, we love coming out and doing this,” she said. “Me and my husband enjoy seeing this regularly. We bring the grandkids when it happens on Sundays in the evenings.”
And the band played on.
The band keeps a calendar of its own, she said. There’s a Halloween show, a Thanksgiving show, and at Christmas a full set of holiday music.
Enjoying an evening out.
It's a beautiful thing to see. A city of over 4 million people, the Heights is like a little town in the middle of it. Truth is it's just another thing we do here in the Heights. It's part of living here. It's a Heights thing.
Jim Towers, photojournalist - Houston Heights Independent.
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