Tower Topics ~ Summer 2001

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Playing in a band is a 'Formation Issue'

Chris Darby doesn’t look like your stereotypical seminarian. Wearing a dark ponytail, tattered jeans and a distant smirk he looks more like a social rebel straight out of the ’60s.

He sings lead and plays guitar.

Jon Baxa’s barrel chest, buzzed hair and goatee are more night club bouncer than parish priest.

Drums.

And then there’s the glue that holds them together, Phil Rabbitt, lead guitar. Behind the warm smile and boyish features is a seminarian who likes his music loud and wants to perform his brand of folk rock in bars.

Formation Issue: Chris Darby, Philip Rabbitt, Jon Baxa

On a Friday night in May this unlikely trio’s musical dreams came true when they took the stage in St. Michael Hall as “Formation Issue,” performing nine original songs and a set of cover songs for faculty, staff and fellow students.

Darby first conceived the idea of a band three years ago as a freshman, but could never find anyone as committed to the idea as he was. Enter Baxa. The freshman showed up with a trap set and a dozen years of experience, including numerous appearances in international marching competitions. They asked bass guitarist Eric Huard to join them, then the soft-spoken Rabbitt revealed his guitar “hobby” and something clicked.

“I didn’t know if things would mesh,” said Darby, ever the pessimist. “Just because you play guitar doesn’t mean you should be in a band.”

But it took only an hour to bring a smile to his face. “It felt right,” he said.

Darby, a self-taught guitarist who can’t read music, wrote six songs. Rabbitt wrote two and former seminarian Marco Bacalla wrote another. The group began practicing three times a week.

“It developed really quickly and we knew we wanted to take it somewhere,” said Baxa. “We fit together almost perfectly.”

Unlike all the tales of rock groups bickering and fighting, the three bandmates were easy-going and open to each other’s ideas, said Rabbitt, who’d never played in a band before. “It helped that Jon was a trained musician and could give us advice,” he said, adding with a laugh, “It’s hard for me to keep a rhythm or sing on key or keep time or anything like that.”

But the fun came to a sudden halt at Christmas break. Huard decided to leave the seminary and on their return to school, Rabbitt and Baxa found that their instruments and sound equipment had been stolen.

“It was pretty devastating,” Rabbitt recalls. “I was just numb.”

The pessimistic Darby thought it was over. But insurance came through for Baxa, and the insuranceless Rabbitt borrowed a guitar from a classmate.

By April, the resurgent band felt confident enough to take a huge step. Driven by Darby’s ambition, they took a tongue-in-cheek name, an inside joke (“No one outside the school will know what we’re talking about,” Darby laughs), and dished out $400 for time in a St. Joseph, Mo., recording studio. They walked out 10 hours later exhausted and holding a nine-song CD.

Two weeks later they rented sound equipment and were under lights in front of 100 seminarians.

“I don’t think this whole thing hit home until that concert,” Darby said. “That was a great feeling.”

“I think we surprised some people,” Baxa noted. “I think they thought we were going to be a garage band and really loud. Those same people came up to us afterward and complimented us.”

Whether it’ll serve him as a future theology professor or not, Rabbitt says he learned a lot from his short stage career.

“I learned about being in a band, about being open to other people’s ideas,” he said. “I learned about being dedicated to something and being responsible to other people.”

Formation Issue is truly a rock group now. They’ve broken up.

Next year, Darby will leave Conception to work in the Christian Appalachian Project in Kentucky. He hopes to continue writing and performing on the side. In June, Rabbitt is going on to theology school at St. John’s University in Collegeville, but hasn’t ruled out some moonlight band work in the future. Baxa will be the lone returnee and students are already asking if he’s going to resurrect Formation Issue with new musicians.

The trio will miss its sliver of rock-n-roll nirvana, but Baxa says that’s the point.

“It wouldn’t be worthwhile if we didn’t miss it.”

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