How Soul Juice Band Found Purpose Through Music (Part 1)

How it started..

The Soul Juice Band has been pumping out soul shaking tunes for about 8 years now. I (Dave) started forming the band in 2015 and we had our first rehearsal in Feb. 2016.

The band has its beginnings in a rather tragic circumstance for which I wasn’t prepared. I used to be a tennis player and was getting on the court to play some doubles with my friends in July of 2015.  I received a call from a police officer in Anderson, Indiana where my brother Ric lived.  I guess his neighbor asked for a well check on him and they went into the house and found him passed away in the house.  He was only 49 years old, but had been through a tremendous amount of suffering and pain in his life.  He had been on dialysis for 14 years dealing with kidney failure from type I diabetes he had since he was 1 year old.  He was also born with half of his body underdeveloped from a stroke in the womb and was never able to really use his right arm that well, even after a lot of surgeries and things when he was a kid.  He had almost lost his sight, he lost his teeth, had open heart surgery, almost had his leg amputated and been close to death on more than one occasion

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A band with a purpose…

I had witnessed my brother get teased and treated horribly as a kid growing up in a small town in Southern Indiana.  You know that kids aren’t that good to each other when they’re young and I’m sure many of those kids would now apologize if they knew all the damage they did to my brother growing up.  Me and my brother grew up pretty poor in a trailer park with a single mom who was a secretary at the local police office.  Needless to say, we didn’t have much money and most of our clothes came from rummage sales and discount dollar stores.  My brother and I usually had to warm up some food in the microwave when we got home from school as my mom was still at work when we got home.  Back then, we didn’t have cell phones, home computers or even video games to play with so we always went outside to try and figure out things to do that were fun. 

My brother and I had an amazing cast of characters that lived all around us when we grew up.  There was even one kid named Charlie Brown that lived down the street from us.  Yes, his name really was Charlie Brown…lol.  Charlie and I used to argue and fight a lot.  One time we got into an argument and he went home to his house.  I followed him because I was going to beat him up or at least try….  I was on my bike (bikes were the most important thing you owned as a kid) and rode to his house chasing him.  He went in the house then came out and started yelling at me.  I yelled back and he started saying things like “come on and get me!” and stuff like that.  I started to go after him and saw him reach behind his back to get something.  What was it?  I didn’t know so I kept running to get him.  I was going to beat him up good.  Well, what did Charlie have behind his back?  It was a bunch of kitchen knives!!!

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15 knives!

Charlie proceeded to throw around 15 knives at me trying to kill me!! Lol…. Luckily I wasn’t too close to him yet when he started throwing those things so he didn’t get too close to me.  I thought, “wow, this kid is crazy” and rode my bike away….lol.  What was wrong with this kid??!! My brother and I had so many adventures and so many stories growing up.  It’s amazing I’m not dead and nobody else died during those days cause as kids we did some stupid, dangerous things.  Our parents would just say “get out of the house” until it was dark and they had no idea where you were or what you were really doing.  Somehow you would show up alive when it got dark and prepare yourself to almost kill yourself the next day.

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Partner in crime

My brother was always my partner in crime.  Even though he was disabled, he could really throw a ball or do feats of strength with his good arm so I really didn’t see him as disabled because he could still kick my butt when I was young because he was five years older than me…. (continued on part 2).