When I was growing up and my mother wanted to introduce discipline into my life without being heavy-handed or sanctimonious, she liked re-telling an old joke.

So there was this couple, tourists from the Midwest, taking in the sights of the Big Apple, when they came across a beatnik or Bohemian along 7th Avenue.   (Remember, this was the 60s, and we had different names for street people.)     

    “Excuse us, young man,” they asked.  “Could you tell us how to get to Carnegie Hall?”

     The man had a simple reply.

    “Practice, man. Practice.”

Oddly enough, I remembered this quip as I took in one of the most unusual concerts I’ve ever attended.

Saturday night, a friend had me meet her at a suburban church to hear a rare performance by the St. Luke’s Bottle Band.

Their penchant for schtick — old-fashioned, over-the-top humor — couldn’t disguise the fact that were good musicians and well-rehearsed.  That they took the silliness of their art quite seriously led to a very enjoyable evening.

They held a series of concerts to celebrate 40 years as a group, and, as you might guess, their instruments were mostly beer bottles, filled to different levels to create variations in pitch.  Different sections of the group would blow, or strike, or pluck their bottles to create different sounds.

I knew I was in for a vastly different kind of show when I took my seat in the church’s second floor auditorium, probably the site for Sunday School plays or maybe book lectures on social justice and Christian teachings, and saw the musicians PARADE from the back of the auditorium to places onstage where three levels of long covered tables with more bottles waited for them.

The players wore playful costumes, from bright green sequined sheaths and feather boas to Hawaiian shirts and hunting hats.  Many carried their instruments with them, which amounted to six-packs of half to near-empty brown Leinenkugel bottles (a favorite workingman’s import from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin).

Yes, indeedy, I wonder what Jesus would say.

Under the guidance of Maestro Paul Phillips, who started the group before the Reagan administration, the St.Luke’s Bottle Band performed a surprisingly wide selection; from classical melodies (like Brahms’ Lullaby and Bizet’s Farandole), to bastardized Beatles songs and familiar folk tunes.

The ensemble of pluckers and blowers were filled out with a fiddler, a bagpipe player and other instruments.  A few had pretty good voices, too, which were featured on several numbers.

Their comic timing was impeccable.  Before each piece, Maestro Phillips would coax a laugh from the audience by raising his baton in a very dramatic way, as if he was conducting a world class orchestra, not an Over-the-Hill gang wielding mostly empty beer bottles.

Between selections, he offered bits of the group’s history, and, as an ongoing enterprise of 40 years, outlasting most marriages and the tenures of countless pastors, their longevity was something they could be proud of.

Their five minutes of fame came in 1996 (I believe) when they performed a Christmas medley on the David Letterman Show. They also appeared on America’s Got Talent many years later.

Except for these once in a decade TV appearances, their state of the art whackiness has not made them a household name.  That sort of intrigues me and adds to the wonder of what they do.

There’s an old adage about dancing like there’s no one watching.  In seeing the St. Luke’s Bottle Band exhibit their collective musical talent and comedic chops, I recognize that what they do together takes repetition.  (God knows what they have to do to get their bottles to play in pitch.)

I have to wonder what it’s like to practice when shows are so rare.  Except for every other year performances at the church and striking, blowing and popping once a decade on TV, they don’t seem to have regularly advertised dates.

But I like this idea – that practicing — in order to get better or do something with greater ease, is complemented by enjoying the company of others also interested in conscious repetition.  I decided I’d love to be a fly on the wall, or fellow blower, in rehearsals.  I imagine they have a hoot!

So, my mind comes back to my mother’s quip,  “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, man. Practice.”

For all of us, a well-lived life is largely in the way we PRACTICE.  It’s the little things we attend to that prepare us for the big moments.

Practicing, and exhibiting, the fine art of silliness is no small thing.