To FlashBack, it's always been about the music. At this point in their lives, they say thankfully, it's only about the music.

"Once, most of us did this because we had to make a living," bandleader Ron Haney said. "Now we do it for the fun, and the music."

Their blend of '50s and '60s R&B is one of the sounds to headline the first night of the Shannon Street Blues & Heritage Festival in Downtown Jackson - which despite a pancake breakfast, 3-on-3 basketball, and motorcycle and people runs - is ultimately about the music.

FlashBack is a baby boomer tale with a guitar riff between verses.

Lead guitar player Haney, keyboard player Alan Wheeler and drummer and vocalist Gary McClellan are at, or near 55. Bassist Jim Reece is 63. Lead vocalist and keyboard player Julie Rhodes will admit only to "mid-30s" but realizes that "I got this music through the radio and these guys."

All of them have 9-to-5 lives. Haney sells radio advertising; Reece, custom wheels; and McClellan, coffee. Wheeler can tune your piano, or restore it. Rhodes, who once did radio and weekend weather on television, now is a graphic artist.

It's telling that when Wheeler talks about the band's lead singer, he says proudly, "my 6-year-old granddaughter is Julie's biggest fan. She wants to be Julie when she grows up."

About three times a month they step back. Musically, spiritually and maybe for a while physically.

"These guys are so funny," Rhodes says of her bandmates. "Music makes 'em a little crazy, though I think they already were down deep ... but they can really tear it up."

Sunday mornings are a bit tougher. "My body tells me to stay in bed a bit longer," Haney said.

He also said, "Now that we're our own roadies ... we've gotten really good at finding the lightest equipment we can that still sounds really good."

Rhodes wondered how she did this a few years back "when I worked all week, then juggled TV weather and this on weekends."

Still, McClellan says playing with FlashBack is "weekend therapy to make up for what you had to do during the week."

He remembers the time he traveled eight weeks out of nine with a band and said, "If this became a job again, it would stop being fun."

The extra cash is OK, but McClellan says, "My day job gets me what I need."

Still he adds, "I've got a rat hole fund for my music money, and it's funny. I've got more drum equipment now than back when I did this for a living."

It's not fair, or correct, to call this a long-in-the-tooth garage band, just out for a few laughs and to relive some memories.

Rhodes had music scholarships at two different schools, including Freed-Hardeman University. The guys all toured at one time or another "until families, businesses and homes got in the way," Wheeler said.

Wheeler once backed up Rufus Thomas. Reece probably came as close to the "majors," playing at various times with Mitch Ryder, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, guitar legend Travis Womack and country star T.G. Shepard.

"T.G. and I still talk about once a week," Reece said. "He offered me a chance to go with him full time, but I was married and in the middle of building a new house, so I couldn't get away."

Reece said, "The wife got the house and another husband ... I found another wife, and another house."

Every now and then, there's that pang of "what might've been" but he said, "I wouldn't trade any of the memories I had ... and I love what I'm doing now with people as serious as I am about doing it well."

The band has been playing for five years, and gone through a couple of personnel changes, but is in a comfort zone.

"Music is the addiction you never get over," Haney said, "and right now the level of fulfillment is kind of indescribable. We played a gig at a new club in Lexington a couple of weeks ago, and we walked off the stage and said, 'Wow!' Those are the nights."

The band's basic bond is Haney and Wheeler, friends since first grade.

"I remember one of the first tunes we played was in '67 - The Bar-Kays 'Soul Finger' - and I was playing sax," he said. "I did this until the early '70s until I decided it wasn't going to work out. I (had) stopped for about 10 years when Ron called. Like so many other boomers, when we hit 50 we started thinking about the things we used to do."

Back to the music. Always back to the music.

"The older you get, the more texture you give to the music," Reece said, "The more the sound means, and in a way that makes it better now."

Haney said playing gigs such as the Shannon Street fest (which FlashBack last played in 2003) is exciting "because you're surrounded by people who appreciate the same music you do, and that's what brought them there."

Rhodes said it's also a chance "to be around musician friends that we don't get to see that often, because we all have different lives."

There's also a thrill in turning on new audiences to the sounds of Stax, Motown and Atlantic, Reese said.

"The kids know good music, and you watch them singing along," he said. "That proves this music doesn't die."

Wheeler and Haney re-discovered a bit of that a few weeks ago when they went to see James Brown at the Beale Street Festival in Memphis.

"He can't move like used to," said Wheeler of Brown, now in his 70s. "But the band as always was impeccable, and the music ... We saw him in '68, and I told my wife she needed to see him once before he died."

McClellan said it's still somewhat strange to play before audiences that range from younger to waaaay-too-young.

"All our rowdy friends have pretty much settled down," he said.

It also forces the band to be very upfront with club managers who hire them.

"We tell them we do Rhythm & Blues. We try and keep an open mind and play things the kids would like," McClellan said. "But don't request head-banger music. We don't play it."

- Pete Wickham, The Jackson Sun/ Jackson, TN 06/02/06

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