Searching for ‘Weekend Warriors’

Never forgiven yourself for laying down that electric guitar and microphone to pick up a plumber’s wrench?

Still rue the day you sold your drum kit to pursue a career in industrial engineering?

The International Music Products Assn. may have just the thing to ease your regret.

The trade organization’s mushrooming “Weekend Warriors” program, coming soon to a trio of music stores in Southern California, is for all those would-be Claptons and Costellos out there who set aside their musical passion because of career, family or other obligations.

Aimed directly at aging baby boomers with free time on their hands, the five-week program, which operates in some 50 musical-instrument retail shops throughout the country, enables anyone who pays the registration fee to form a band with other participants.

With the aid of a coach, each group spends four weeks rehearsing its favorite songs on equipment provided by the store before performing in a showcase concert for family, friends and other interested parties at a local nightspot.

“It’s basically for people who were into playing music before they had to go make a living,” says Larry R. Linkin, president and CEO of the sponsoring organization.

The program, on pace to expand to as many as 100 sites before the end of the year, originated 3 1/2 years ago at Skip’s Music in Sacramento, where owner Skip Maggiora was so sure “Weekend Warriors” would be a success that he built a studio and hired a coach before he launched the series.

Since then, Maggiora has put together more than 200 bands and licensed his idea to the International Music Products Assn., which was formerly called the National Assn. of Music Merchants. NAMM, as the organization is still known, spread the idea across the country and is about to kick off an extensive publicity campaign.

“Each round we get a few more people back into playing music,” says the 49-year-old Maggiora, who says he played in bands in the ‘60s that opened Bay Area shows for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Doors. “After 15 or 20 years of not playing, they get the experience of being back on stage and feeling young again. . . .

“I stick a tuned guitar on their back and count off, ‘1, 2, 3, 4,’ and they’re back playing music. And their eyes light up. It’s what they’ve been looking for: a way to get back into it.”

Musical-instrument retailers across the country--including World Music in Simi Valley, Gard’s Music House in Glendora and La Habra Music in La Habra--are hoping that the program will spark that same feeling in other idle musicians. After all, one of the program’s main objectives is to lure boomers back into music stores to purchase new equipment.

“This is a generation that never wanted to give up its youth in the first place,” Maggiora says. “A lot of us are never going to be too old to rock ‘n’ roll.”

* “Weekend Warriors” is offered at La Habra Music, 1885 W. La Habra Blvd., La Habra, (562) 694-4891; World Music, 1826 Erringer Road, Simi Valley, (805) 526-9351; and Gard’s Music House, 848 S. Grand Ave., Glendora, (818) 963-0263. Cost ranges from $75-$100 per person.