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| 3/27/2010 8:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Phillip Fajardo has performed with such musicians as Larry Gatlin and George Strait. |
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KEEPING THE BEAT
Recognized drummer recovering after brain surgery
By CLAY COPPEDGE
Special to the Leader
These days Phillip Fajardo finds himself returning to his first musical love, the guitar. A respected drummer who has kept the beat to some of the country's most recognizable songs over the better part of the last 40 years, Fajardo, 62, is as apt these days to pick up a guitar as he is to take that familiar position behind the drum set.
"There's a lot of healing in the guitar for me," Fajardo said. "It's like I get these downloads when I'm playing. It soothes me."
Fajardo needs this healing time to recover from brain surgery that was performed at Seton Medical Center Williamson in Round Rock just last month. That came after he was misdiagnosed at another hospital following a seizure he suffered at his Georgetown home in October of last year. Fajardo was initially told he'd suffered a massive stroke, and then informed that he had a brain tumor, one that most likely would kill him.
While waiting for surgery, Fajardo suffered another seizure while he and his wife, Debbie, were at a movie theater in late February. He had recently signed up with the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, which helps Austin musicians receive affordable health care. Since HAMM provides primary health care through the Seton Family of Hospitals, he and Debbie had the ambulance take him to Seton Williamson.
What had seemed at first like a milder seizure than the one he'd experienced in October quickly turned into a major episode at the hospital.
"At least we were in the right place if something like that was going to happen," Debbie said.
Dr. Robert Buchanan, a neurosurgeon with the Seton Brain and Spine Institute, was on call at Seton that night. He realized that Fajardo needed immediate surgery but there was another complication: Fajardo's heart is basically turned upside down in his body; his aorta and pulmonary artery are flipped.
A cardiologist was called in to stabilize Fajardo's heart so that the delicate surgery could be performed.
"The other hospital never diagnosed the heart abnormality," Dr. Buchanan said. "His heart is completely flipped. The first doctors to look at him missed it."
Fajardo has had the heart condition his entire life but it probably has nothing to do with his perfect sense of rhythm and timing that made him a natural drummer. "It's like he has a perfect metronome inside his body that helps him keep the beat to any kind of music," Debbie said.
Growing up in Amarillo in the '60s the son of a musician, Phillip took guitar lessons on an old lap steel guitar and sang in the choir at the church. When he messes around with the guitar today, he often lays it flat and plays it like he would the lap steel that he learned on.
Fajardo's music career took a backseat to sports by the time he was a teenager. He was an accomplished enough running back in high school that he was able to accept a scholarship offer to play for the University of Houston. It was on the football field that Fajardo met another high school hot shot, Larry Gatlin, who would end up playing a key role in Fajardo's music career.
By the time he was through with football, Fajardo had again focused much of his attention back on music. He moved to Austin and lived a house just north of the state capital with other like-minded musicians where they played music around the clock and listened to the new sounds that were developing in their adopted hometown.
"Three bands lived at that house," Fajardo said. "We had an early morning jazz band, a rock and roll band and a band that played country and country blues. That was when the Cosmic Cowboy thing was starting. Willie [Nelson] was playing at Big Gill's in Round Rock because he was like the rest of us, just looking for a place to play."
Fajardo's ability to keep the beat put him in demand in a city that was already brimming with musicians. He was a member of the house band at Castle Creek on Lavaca in downtown Austin where he played with everybody from David Bromberg to Lighting Hopkins. In time he hooked up with a young singer songwriter named Jimmy Buffett.
"Jimmy was pretty folksy in those days," Fajardo said. "He was more of a storyteller than he was anything else, and that was part of the charm. He'd take 15 to 20 minutes to introduce a song because he had to tell the audience all about the song, where he was when he wrote it and why he wrote and everything about it. That was one of the great things about being in that first band of his. He had this great rapport with the audience."
Fajardo eventually hooked up with his old football pal, Larry Gatlin, and moved to Nashville. He played with Gatlin for seven years and stayed in Nashville for 10 years. He returned to Texas and played for several years with George Strait, both on stage and in the recording studio. Since then he has played with the late Don Walser, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakum, Kinky Friedman, Willie Nelson and others. He's also one of the musicians who contribute to the Gospel According to Austin brunches at various spots around town.
The music career is on hold now while he recuperates from surgery. He's confident that it's only a matter of time until he can get back on stage and be part of the blues, country and gospel music that means so much to him.
"Dr. Buchanan is real positive about it," he said. "I do have some problems with the left side of my body. The tumor was on the right side of my brain, which controls the left side of the body. Sometimes I have to tell the left side of my body what to do instead of just doing it naturally. It's probably going to be a little while before my brain and body work together again."
Though recovery is one day at a time and he's on a hiatus from his music career while he recovers, Fajardo sees several silver linings to his situation. He's grateful for the help that HAMM has provided and grateful that such a delicate and complicated surgery could be performed at a facility close to home.
Dr. Buchanan said Fajardo's case illustrates the value of having a state-of-the-art neuroscience center in Williamson County.
"In the past, he would have been transferred to Austin or somewhere else," he said. "Now we can do this kind of work right here in Williamson County. This is a good example of what that can mean."
In the meantime, Fajardo fools around with the guitar and still sits down at his drums every day to measure his progress. For Fajardo and his family and friends, the beat goes on.
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