Mitch: I play steel pan, I play in a steel pan band here, and been in that for 16 years, I guess 17 years.

That's unusual for Wyoming to have a town with a community steel pan [band]. But you know what steel pan? They're the ones that came from Tobago and Trinidad. They're the big metal. Yeah, incredible sound. Yeah, we have a community steel pan band. We've actually played in the Basque parade, played Basque music on a steel pan, which is really unusual.

Nancy: That's amazing. Yeah, wonderful. So how long have y'all been playing together? 

Mitch and Steven: About 40 years, yeah, 40 years.

Steven: Yeah. I remember when we first kind of started. 

Mitch: Well, we first started dancing.

Steven: Dancing! 

Mitch: I've been playing all my life. I don’t know how long has Steve played. We've known each other about 40 years. 

Steven: I played a little guitar in high school, and then kind of just went from there. I really like gospel music. They started up Cowboys for Christ meetings, and I went to that…met some guys, and then we started playing at a fellow’s house. Every Friday night we played at his house and we had ice cream and pie for dessert. 

Nancy: And that sounds, that sounds nice. Good times, yeah, so from gospel to Trinidad and Tobago steel, steel pan music. That's really great. I love the range of that. It's wonderful. Do y'all have a memory of any particular event or time that you were playing together? 

Mitch: There hasn't been too many bar fights or things thrown at us. I can't remember, Steven? 

Steven: We had went one time at the Heritage, up there on the hill Heritage Park. We played for them up there. 

Mitch: Was that when the Bozeman trail, yeah. Cattle Drive from Texas came through. Headed from Montana, they had a big event up there. We just play for fun.

Aubrey: And you mentioned Mitch, you mentioned that it was, it's unusual to have a community band. Why is that?

Mitch: Well, in the first place, it's, it's, I guess it's not unusual to have community bands. They're all over. They're usually brass, you know. They play Americana music stuff. There's a gentleman that lives here and has for a long time. He's well known, David Romtvedt. He's a writer. David is very musical and has contacts worldwide in the music world, and he started a nonprofit here, and through the nonprofit idea, they organized and purchased a set of steel pan drums. And that set costs around this was—this was almost 20 years ago—costs almost $35,000—then. And you can't go down the street, go into a music store and find a steel pan just not, not in this part of the world. So they had to start from scratch. And so they got a whole set and started it. He started it. He's now, he is still the leader of the band, the band master. He was poet laureate from the state for a while. 

So that's why it's here, the community band, and it's open to anybody. So I've played in it from the inception. And there's very few of us, there's only three of us that have—and it takes about 15 people there, it can accommodate that many players— there's only three of us that have stayed with it. Well, plus David and otherwise, people come and go, you know, we're always looking for people. If you lived around here, we'd be courting you. 

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.