From the time he fashioned a drum kit from his mom’s pots and pans as a three-year-old, music has been an integral part of Mike Holbrook’s life.

And after he passes the conductor’s baton of the Lake Country Symphonic Band (LCSB) next week, he will have come full circle in a sense.

Though he won’t be a full-time participant in the band he has grown to love, he said that when he is available, he will be playing percussion.

Holbrook has directed the band for more than a decade, after first taking the reins as the director of the Lake Country Playhouse.

That was in 2007 after Mike and his wife, Cindy, relocated from the Metroplex to a home outside Quitman.

As Mike explains, they wanted to get their family out of the big city and headed east until they could find affordable property.

The Victorian home near Quitman – that once was located at the location of the City National Bank in Mineola – captured their hearts, but also their pocketbooks.

It was a work in progress that consumed a year before they made the move permanently after renovations to the home once owned by Dr. Buchanan.

Holbrook said he was working at Lowe’s in Sulphur Springs to pay off his remodeling debt when the Lake Country Playhouse executive director’s post came open. And while he was busy keeping the Select Theater and the playhouse going, the band director left, and Holbrook added that role as well.

“It’s a family,” he says of the LCSB.

Although he notes that he challenges the band with an ambitious program, the main goal is to have fun. About the only time he has to raise his voice is to be heard over the laughter.

“We’ve done a lot of good things together,” he said.

The band members are there because they want to be. Among them are members of the Mineola High School band.

Holbrook noted the great relationship LCSB has with MISD, from providing practice space and instruments to those students, whom Holbrook believes benefit from their membership with the symphonic band.

The band represents a broad cross-section, drawing from several outlying communities and ranging in age from an eighth grader to members in their 80s.

Holbrook confesses he has always loved music, and it led him to several jobs that he described as being able to do what he enjoys while getting paid.

He was born into a military family – his parents were both drill sergeants in the U.S. Air Force – which means he has lived around the world. He went on to serve for 20 years in the U.S. Army, joining right out of high school.

His first love was percussion, from those early pots and pans (he discovered he could change the tone of the kitchen ware by adding various levels of marbles).

While stationed near Oslo, Norway, he sat in on what was an early-day garage band whose members imitated various recordings.

They were taking a break and he approached the drums and played the well-known solo from “Wipe Out.”

His formal music training began in sixth grade, when the family had returned to the place of his birth at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio. A neighbor who was an Air Force musician suggested percussionists were numerous, and he should try trumpet.

But after junior high, his band director asked that he change to the French horn as most of the members of that section were graduating.

He spent the next four years with that horn as his principal instrument, although he and some friends had a Dixieland band in which he played trumpet. He also became the drum major his junior and senior years, beginning his tenure as a director.

After basic training he joined fellow military band members at the joint Army, Marine and Navy music school near Norfolk, Va, which showed him “how much I didn’t know.”

The best year in the military was his time stationed in West Berlin, where he was exposed to incredible music and culture.

He spent much of his military-music career in Washington State and concluded the two-decade career in Fort Rucker, Alabama, where he also served as a weekend disc jockey at a small radio station and then went to work there after leaving the Army.

He claims he would still be in the Army band if not for protocols adopted to draw down the service numbers following Operation Desert Storm.

From there it was on to a radio station in Dothan, Ala. 

He met the lady who would become his wife, Cindy, online, and after a year in Vicksburg, Miss., he returned with her to Lewisville where she had been teaching.

After a stint with a media/marketing company, he landed yet another dream job as the morning show host for WRR classic radio station in Dallas. He also got to conduct the Dallas Wind Symphony during that time.

But after three years the couple decided they wanted to get out of the big city, which is when they came to Wood County in 2004.

There is no family connection with Lake Holbrook in western Wood County. Cindy teaches in the Alba-Golden School District, and Mike will soon take up a new career as an insurance adjuster. He said he doesn’t mind the travel and relates well to people.

He will direct his final concert of the symphonic band March 27 and 29 and admits it will be bitter sweet.

Based on past performances, it’s a sure bet there will be some unscripted moments as well.