Mr. and Mrs. Claus make an appearance at the Holiday Express concert during the Red Bank Town Lighting kickoff to the holiday season. FILE PHOTO On Christmas Eve 1990, Tim McLoone was asked to take part in a charity event for the homeless in Newark. It was a night that would change his life.
“We had a room with about 500 people in it, and all we did was give out food and some gifts and stuff, and that’s all that happened. But it was really cool. I was coming down the [Garden State] Parkway that night feeling good about having been there and I realized I was already thinking about next year. I was excited about it.”
McLoone returned the next year with a boombox and cassette tapes to liven up the event. Afterward, the lifelong musician and New Jersey restaurateur realized he could provide the real thing.
“I was so mad at myself. I’m like, ‘I’m a musician. What am I doing?’ ”
Throughout 1992, McLoone pursued his newfound passion by talking with a number of musician friends about setting up a charity event and donating the traditional gifts, clothing and hot food, but adding a unique live music element.
“Everybody loved the idea. So I made some phone calls, and on Nov. 15 we had our first rehearsal. I called all the musicians that I’d worked with over the prior 20 years and, shockingly, 17 of them showed up.”
Holiday Express was born at the moment that first group of musicians played John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” when a slapdash arrangement of lead singers and frontmen came together in harmony.
“It just sounded so pretty and everybody started thinking we could really do this, this could really sound cool,” McLoone recalled.
That first year, the group played 10 charity shows. Since then, Holiday
Express — so named because of its nondenominational focus and willingness to travel to special-needs programs, developmental centers, medical facilities, soup kitchens and shelters — has become a national phenomenon.
Drawing support from more than 1,400 volunteers and a stable of more than 100 musicians, the group will stage 60 events this year throughout New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.
To support this year’s events, the group has raised nearly $1.5 million in cash and donations from hundreds of individual and corporate donors and through the limited number of public shows and events Holiday Express stages each year.
And while the more than 15,000 developmentally disabled, visually impaired, poverty-stricken or otherwise disabled children and adults they serve love the arts and crafts, the fresh sub sandwiches, the blankets and winter coats, the main event is always the music.
Holiday Express, which draws from a pool of professional singers, guitarists, horn players and drummers, is not your everyday Christmas band.
“Bruce has played with us, Bon Jovi, all kinds of names,” said McLoone.
For the Nov. 16 event at St. Joseph’s School for the Blind in Jersey City, 14 musicians and singers took the stage, rocking out renditions of “Run, Run Rudolph,” “Happy Holidays,” “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and a highly interactive version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
More than 100 youngsters and adults, many of them visually impaired or developmentally disabled, cheered and danced along with the Holiday Express stable of costumed characters — Elmo, Cookie Monster, the Grinch, Rudolph, Frosty and Santa — between getting their faces painted and lining up for construction paper reindeer hats.
Many of the group’s volunteers, dressed in red and green elf suits, worked the crowd, dancing, singing and engaging the audience members seated in chairs or wheelchairs near the back of the room.
Sally Mease, volunteering for her eighth year, said she keeps on donning the elf suit partly out of selfish reasons.
“I get so much more out of this than even they do, I think,” said Mease, aboard the Holiday Express bus on the way to the event.
“Years ago, during a concert, I was dancing with this 30-year-old man, and I kept telling him what a great dancer he was. At the end of the event he came up to me with this little ornament, made out of pink construction paper and a sticker and a safety pin. To this day it’s my favorite ornament, and one of the best memories I have. That was eight years ago, and that’s why I’m still coming back.”
Judy Ortman, executive director of St. Joseph’s, said Holiday Express is one of the highlights of the year for her 180 kids and adults.
“This is a major event for us,” she said. “Not only are they incredibly generous and they have this whole holiday spirit going on, but they bring gifts for every child, which I think is amazing.”
Trumpet player Jerry Pashin, who has played more than 200 shows with the group, said selflessness and personal concern is the common denominator among Holiday Express volunteers.
“It’s never about you, it’s about the people you play for,” he said. “They’re not patients, they’re people. And so many things that we take for granted, these people don’t have. So often, what they have on their back at the time is really all they own. And if someone wins a pair of socks at a raffle, to them, you’d think they hit the jackpot.”
McLoone, who along with his tribe of volunteers has traveled as far as New Orleans and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and Columbine, Col., following the tragic high school shootings, said the group’s focus is primarily on segments of the population that most other charities ignore.
Indeed, every one of the volunteers can tell you about a moment that changed them: the young woman who hadn’t spoken for months suddenly singing into a microphone; the violent man smiling warmly while hugging Elmo.
It’s moments like these, said McLoone, that keep Holiday Express going.
“At this time of year, when everybody’s lives are the most complicated, when time is really of the essence, we have so many people that take part of their annual vacations in the month of December so they can do this. And I think that speaks volumes about us.
“There’s that scene in ‘Forrest Gump,’ where he’s running across the country and he turns around and sees all those people behind him,” he said. “And he’s perplexed. I’m not perplexed, I’m just extremely humbled.”
Count Basie Benefit Concert
Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Count Basie Theatre
99 Monmouth St., Red Bank
tickets: $25-$125
732-842-9000; www.countbasietheatre.org
Holiday Express Benefit Concert
Dec. 20 at 7:30 p.m.
Prudential Hall NJPAC
1 Center St., Newark
tickets: $28-$53
888-466-5722; www.njpac.org
For more information:
www.holidayexpress.org