Sean C. Morgan
The sound of weeping guitars and blues shredders rings throughout the home of Steve Magnolia and Edie Wilcox in Sweet Home.
Guitars, carrying the autographs of blues musicians Magnolia has known and met throughout decades, adorn the walls.
It is a lifelong love that keeps the couple busy and with a friendship and connection that carried them into volunteering in a variety of ways throughout Sweet Home, particularly with the Sweet Home Police Department.
Community Services Officer Gina Riley “pretty much knows if she needs something, she can call me,” Magnolia said. “I was in on the speed trailer quite a bit.”
Magnolia, 62, and Wilcox, 55, can be found at just about any SHPD event, eight or nine times a year, such as the Public Safety Fair, Shop with a Cop, Downtown Trick or Treat and parades; and they help out behind the scenes with Peer Court, data entry and office work at the station.
Magnolia, who is a drummer, harmonica player and vocalist, said he had known Tim Riley, Gina’s husband, for a very long time through the music scene. Riley filled in on drums at a major gig with Magnolia’s band at one point, which was a key to them getting connected with the Police Department.
Magnolia, who ran a music store in Lebanon and Albany for a decade, also puts those skills to work as a volunteer. He provided sound equipment to the Albany Veterans Day parade for 10 years as well as to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor memorials held on the Linn County Courthouse steps.
He has provided sound for Sweet Home Auditorium Remodel Committee events, and Chamber of Commerce events such as Chips ‘n’ Splinters and the Awards Banquet. Recently he has also run sound for the Singing Christmas Tree.
He recently installed a new PA system at The Woods Roadhouse, where plans are under way to begin hosting live music. He also volunteered at the Elks Lodge and helped straighten out its PA system.
“It’s kind of nice to give something back,” Magnolia said, and he wants “to try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Most of the time, I enjoy doing it. It’s kind of fun to do.”
Since retirement, he has continued to play gigs with his blues band, backing off a bit in recent months due to some health concerns .
“I do some of the jams,” Magnolia said. “So I still keep my fingers in it. It’s just something I’ve been involved in since I was a youngster.”
Magnolia grew up in Rochester, N.Y., where he had family members serving in law enforcement and a father who played bass in local bands.
He learned to play drums with his father, Magnolia said. He would be practicing and then tell Magnolia, “I need a groove. Give me a groove and no fills, no nothing. Just be my metronome.”
He loves singing and playing, he said. “I like working with musicians. It’s a rewarding thing when you get four or five people and you’re all on the same page. When things work like a well-oiled machine, it’s fun to do and it’s very rewarding.”
Wilcox and Magnolia served as volunteer stagehands for two years with the Oregon Jamboree.
And they partnered in 2012 to bring the Harvest Moon Festival, a blues festival, to Lebanon. That’s something they both want to try to bring back in Sweet Home.
Magnolia said it was a wonderful event, but they lost money on it.
“There are things we will do differently,” he said.
They love staying busy and being involved.
“If you get to a point where you just stop, you will get old before your time,” Magnolia said. With music, “staying in it keeps you moving. It keeps you from stagnating. It allows you to continue to grow.”
Stagnating with nothing to do but sit around with a remote, “you will grow old fast,” he said. Being involved with the community, music and younger people “keeps me growing. Being busy, just being out and doing that stuff, keeps you young.”
“Because of my physical disabilities, my mind is busy, and I cannot sit around,” Wilcox said. “I’m going to go until the day I die. I may have to slow down physically, but you won’t stop me.”
“Your body’s telling you to slow down, but your mind won’t let you,” Magnolia said.
Magnolia came to Sweet Home via California. In Rochester, a city of 350,000 at the time, Eastman Kodak employed 75,000 people. Xerox employed another 50,000. Those two companies were the heartbeat of the city.
After high school, Magnolia went to work for Kodak as a design drafter in facility engineering. In the mid-1980s, he moved to San Diego, Calif., to take a job with General Atomic making uranium and thorium fuel rods for nuclear reactors.
Then he went to work for Honeywell as a civilian at a submarine base designing launch and return systems for torpedoes under contract to the U.S. Navy.
“Honeywell was more fun,” Magnolia said. “We actually went out on the ocean and did test runs with the military.”
In 1993, he moved to Corvallis to take a job with Hewlett Packard, where he worked as a chemical mixing technician. He stayed there until he opened his music store, Magnolia’s Audio and Music, in Lebanon in 1999. He moved it to Albany in 2000.
“I could not find a music store that really wanted to service a customer,” Magnolia said. “They didn’t want to deal with the personal touch.”
Playing in bands, “I couldn’t find anything (in the area) I could actually call a good music store,” he said.
Magnolia said he took the customer service seriously, accepting calls after hours, for example, from musicians who might need a set of strings or other equipment at gigs.
He got a good 10 years out of the business – until 2008 when the economy tanked.
“I kept it on life support until 2010 when I realized it’s not feeding me – I’m feeding it,” Magnolia said.
He tried a couple of other things after that, but with coronary problems, he called it a day and retired in 2014.
He came to Sweet Home around 2013 after remodeling Wilcox’s home.
Wilcox said she met Magnolia in 2007.
Magnolia was a deejay on Tuesday Blues Day with KLOO radio in Corvallis and Wilcox called him to try to sell him her Oldsmobile after she heard him talking about the cars on his show.
She encountered him again after buying a guitar and visiting his store. Her sister was learning to play harmonica, and Wilcox needed her guitar restrung.
“He now says I chased him until he caught me,” Wilcox said.
Their first date was the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival. Their second was a trip to San Diego to watch a Charters-Jets football playoff game – they were there for the Chargers. Wilcox went on her first “blues cruise” in 2011 with Magnolia.
Magnolia has two children, Steven Magnolia and Jennifer Pulliam. He has two grandchildren, Chandler Rowan, 15, and Henry Pulliam, 3.