Funky, Fearless, Footloose and Fancy Free

The Seed and Feed Marching Abominable Struts to their Own Beat

By Donna Williams Lewis

They’re funky. They’re fearless. And they’ve just turned 45 years old.

They are Atlanta’s own Seed & Feed Marching Abominable, a zany community band of about 200 volunteer musicians, dancers and other assorted fun-lovers ranging in age from 13 to 90.

Founded by Kelly Morris, of the ‘70s-era Kelly’s Seed & Feed Theatre, the band marked its anniversary with its 45th appearance in the annual Inman Park Festival Parade.

Inman Park resident Laurie Hawkins, 58, has been part of this scene for 24 years as one of the band’s “Despicables” — the dancers, banner-wavers and other assorted party animals.

“It’s the most beautiful day for our 45th anniversary in our beautifully diverse neighborhood,” Hawkins said at the April 27 parade. “We have everybody in our band, no exclusions, no discrimination.”

The corporate interior designer said her fellow band members keep her coming back. “It’s really hard to have friends when you’re old, and this is pure joy. It’s our tribe,” Hawkins said. “We raised our child in this band.”

Members’ children under the age of 18 are known as the band’s “Incorrigibles.”

Marching Abominable alumni from around the country returned to Atlanta to commemorate the anniversary. Some joined the parade, and uniforms were not a problem. The band doesn’t wear them. Instead, they’re given a suggested costume theme based on each event or they can wear their tie-dye Seed & Feed T-shirts.

They dressed as superheroes for last year’s Dragon Con parade in Downtown Atlanta. For the Inman Park parade, their theme was sapphire, the gemstone for 45th anniversaries.

The band dazzled the crowd with deep blue clothing of every kind, accessorized with a crazy blur of sequins, feathers, wigs, hats, beads, fishnet stockings and butterfly wings. A couple of members marched with vinyl ’45s strapped to the sides of their heads.

They fit right into what’s billed as Atlanta’s “quirkiest” parade with other parade favorites such as the Inman Park Precision Attaché Drill Team and the Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons.

The band is led by several alternating conductors, each called “Broom.” That’s a name dating back to the Marching Abominable’s first public appearance, led by “a highstepping guy with a broom, who swept aside the crowd,” according to the group’s history.

The musicians have a repertoire ranging from Big Band standards such as Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” to more current tunes such as “Raise Your Glass” by Pink. And, of course, there’s lots of John Philip Sousa in their mix.

Trombone player Henry Slack, of Decatur, has been an Abominable since the band’s start. “We play Sousa the way other people play softball,” he said, “with the best of intentions.”

No experience necessary

Though they wow crowds with their big brassy sound, it’s easy to join the Seed & Feed Marching Abominable. There are no auditions and no marching experience is necessary. The musicians range from beginners to professionals, said the group’s manager, “The Mouth,” aka Donna Weber.

“We’ve had jugglers and unicyclists and we have a violinist in the band who marches and carries an amp on her back,” said Weber, a 32-year-old bass drummer who works in the legal industry. “We are definitely a place where if someone wants to join, we want to be a home for them and find a thing for them to do.”

Upcoming gigs

Here’s a spring/summer sampler of the band’s upcoming events. Times shown are the anticipated Marching Abominable performance times.

Saturday, June 15 — Wrecking Bar Brewpub’s 8th Anniversary Celebration. 2-3 p.m. 292 Moreland Ave. N.E., Atlanta 30307. Info: wreckingbarbrewpub.com.

Thursday, July 4 — Old Timers 4th of July Parade, 10-11 a.m., Downtown Blue Ridge, Ga. on East Main and West Main streets. Info: bestofblueridge.biz/oldtimers-parade.

Saturday, Aug. 31 — Dragon Con Parade. 10 a.m. Peachtree Street in Downtown Atlanta. Info: facebook.com/groups/ dragonconparade.

Weber is joined on the band’s five-member council by “Scribbles,” the secretary (Liz Weiler); “Bookie,” the booking manager (Patricia Pichardo); “Rostermeister,” the membership coordinator (Karen Parker); and “Scrooge,” the treasurer (Jane Monahan).

The nonprofit band plays for free for community and nonprofitrelated events. Their paid private and corporate gigs cover their general operating costs.

Putting on the ‘Blitz’

Hank Spiker, 68, of Decatur, joined the Marching Abominable during the days of its Seed & Feed Theatre performances. He played trumpet with the band for about 13 years and returns for its anniversaries.

“That group really became my family,” he said. “Once you’re a band member, you’re always a band member.”

The band still holds true to its street theater roots of Spiker’s day, including its “blitz” — popping up of out of nowhere and taking people by surprise. Most recently, the band blitzed the El Bandido Mex Mex Grill in Little Five Points during the restaurant’s Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Spiker loves those moments when people begin to think they hear a band and then suddenly they’re shocked that their ears aren’t deceiving them. “Just the surprise and the joy of that [the blitz],” he said. “Every performance is like that. It’s just a joy.”

‘I showed her!’

A tiny slip of a person decked out in blue butterflies, huge yellow peace symbol earrings and a belly dance skirt over a blue leotard, Angela Carrington, 71, swayed her way down the parade route.

The Inman Park afterschool art teacher is living out a dream from her youth as one of the Despicables for about the past 23 years. “I played clarinet in high school and college. I wanted to dance, but my mother was all about music,” she said. “So, I showed her!”

As a Despicable, “We wrangle people out of the way,” watch for potholes, “and we dance when we can,” Carrington said.

Another Despicable, former New York City dance teacher Ricki Abrams, is the band’s oldest member. “She just turned 90 and we got to play at her birthday party, which was so much fun,” Weber said.

Ronda Fox, 59, both a Despicable and a Broom, said the Marching Abominable is a great educational resource for the city. “It’s [a place] for developing musicians as well as a place where top-notch musicians can come to have fun,” she said.

The Brookhaven retiree’s family is one of several with three generations involved in the band. Her mother Avis Fox, 86, of Stone Mountain, is a Despicable who used to tap dance at band gigs with her late husband and still does an event or two each year. Ronda’s daughter Amalia Fox, 12, is a lifelong Incorrigible.

The band takes in new members any time and all the time, Weber said. “Whatever you want to put into it,” she said, “we’re happy to help you harness that energy.”

Join the Marching Abominable!

The band’s regular season is from Labor Day to Memorial Day, but performances are scheduled throughout the year. There’s no mandate to attend each event.

Band practices are weekly on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at the Little Five Points Arts and Community Center, 1083 Austin Ave. N.E., Atlanta 30307. Visitors are welcome. Info at seedandfeed.org.

By Joe Earle

John Beach clicked a few keys and one of several computer screens on the desk in the library of his Paces Ferry home displayed a map covered with scribbled words highlighted in magenta.

The scrawl covered the screen like graffiti on a city wall. The brightly colored words marked locations where nearly two centuries ago surveyors had spotted significant trees when laying out land lots in Buckhead. Beach’s computer laid the locations of the trees over a modern map of the area.

As the 64-year-old Beach sees it, this combination of old and new maps can be the start of something. He’s president of the Buckhead Heritage Society. When the mapping is done and published, local students, members of garden clubs or other neighborhood volunteers can use the resulting new map to track down any of the “land lot” trees that have survived the decades of development and bad weather since that original map was drawn. Why go to all this trouble for a few trees? “These trees are part of the history of Buckhead,” Beach said. Besides, they have something to say about the Buckhead environment, and about what was there before.

Part of the appeal of studying history, after all, is making connections between the present and the past. It lets us see just how we got from there to here. Beach thinks history as something that helps create a sense of place. “It makes me feel more connected to an area to understand what’s happened in the past,” he said. Beach is about as connected to Buckhead as anyone can get. His family has been in Atlanta for generations and his resume sketches a portrait of an oldfashioned Buckhead Boy: he grew up near the Bobby Jones Golf Course; went to both Lovett and Westminster; and lives in a house he says once was owned by noted Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett. Beach’s computer-screen-topped desk sits in a study that once was Garrett’s, the writer known for producing a definitive, multivolume study of Atlanta’s history. Beach even owns the web address “BuckheadBoys.com,” although he said it now only whisks visitors to the website for his construction company, Paces Construction, which started in 2002 (he was in computers before that) and specializes in renovating older homes.

Beach said he’s interested in combining his lifelong interest in history with his background in using computers. “I’s hard to explain,” he said. “I like the [intersection] of old and new,” he said. “I like using technology to track and visualize history…

What personally excites me is finding new ways to use historical scholarship to make better decisions moving forward. In my mind, coming from a computer background, it’s about collecting the information and making it actionable.”

Things may change, he said, but there’s often a pattern beneath the changes. “Think about Buckhead right now,” he said. “198 years ago, this was the Creek nation. The United States signed a treaty with the Creek nation transferring this land to the U.S. government and then to Georgia.”

Soon the Creeks were moved out and new settlers moved in. Over the generations since, he said, Buckhead has repeated the pattern: new people move in and displace residents who had been there before. “That’s a continuous process that has happened,” he said. The trick is to recognize it and learn from it, to figure out how to mix old and new and keep both side by side.

“Buckhead means something different to different people,” he said. “It wasn’t all built at the same time … so we get a broad array of house styles, which makes it interesting to me in trying to figure out how to preserve it, or parts of it. We do not want to see Buckhead becoming Anywhere USA, with a lot of 8,000-squarefoot mansions. ”

That may mean keeping tabs on old things, such as the oldest trees in the forest. They’ve survived a lot, after all. Once found, they may be able to help new residents figure out what to hold on to.

By Judi Kanne

Gary and Kathy Livengood have learned to love life on the road.

“We just do whatever we can when we want to,” said Livengood, a retired Lockheed engineer who shares a Marietta address with his wife, Kathy, even though the couple spends much of their time traveling from campsite to campsite and living in their travel trailer, which they’ve nicknamed “Bertha.”

Like many seniors, the Livengoods have fallen for the allure of recreational vehicles, a class of traveling homes that includes several types of campers and which fans often call simply “RVs.” Freedom and affection for national and state parks has a lot to do with driving the overall appeal of the homes-on-the-road.

According to RVs Move America (2017) data, Georgia benefits from the RV industry with a total direct economic output of more than $402.4 million. Of the 407 RV related