Staff Profile: Tom Dryden
Radio and music were a big part of Tom Dryden’s life growing up. He started taking saxophone lessons in the fifth grade, and when the Beatles came along, added guitar.
“In my generation, in high school, 8-track tapes came out,” he says. “And so being around music, and liking music, and playing in bands, my friends would come to me and I could install their 8-tracks. I laugh at it now.”
He laughs, but Dryden’s life had the potential to be very different were it not for his passion and talent for music.
At 19, he was drafted into the United States Army — putting his education as a music major at Sacramento City College on hold.
But while in Texas awaiting deployment to Vietnam, he saw a sign on a wall that would change the course of his life; it read: “Audition for the 1st Cavalry Division Band.”
“I told this captain, I said, ‘Hey, I'm going to go audition for this thing,’” he recalls. “And I hadn't played for months, but I figured it would be worth a shot. And he said, ‘You can audition, but you're not going to get your orders changed.’”
Dryden decided to try anyway. He met with the bandleaders, who provided him with a saxophone and use of their rehearsal rooms to warm up.
“I spent about 20 minutes just going through scales and stuff that I knew and I was just trying to get my sound, get my chops back and get my fingers working,” Dryden says. “Until I'm like, all right, I'm ready — not going to get any better than this.”
He came out, ready to audition, but he didn’t have to — the bandleaders had liked what they’d heard; he was in. A couple phone calls and expletives from the aformentioned captain later, and his orders were changed.
He spent the next two years traveling and playing music in marches and parades and clubs. And then it was back to Sacramento to resume his education.
To make a living, he started working at a winery, and then at his father’s restaurant, tending bar. Soon, his focus on school and music fell away.
In his next years, he worked as a wine salesman, got married, and had two children. The family moved to Chico in 1986 when Dryden was offered a job managing Northern California sales for a winery. His wife happened to be job searching, so the timing was perfect.
In Chico, the final chapter of his career came out of left field years later. With a desire to take on work that was challenging and important — and with inspiration from a neighbor who worked in law enforcement — Dryden joined the sheriff’s department. He eventually became an investigator with Butte County’s Special Victims Unit, which focuses on crimes against children, sexual assault, and elderly abuse.
“It's one of the hardest jobs, if not the hardest job, in law enforcement I think,” he says. “I was a little older than the friends of mine that I worked with and they had small children at home; my kids were already grown or on their way, and so it was easier for me.”
He did that job for almost 10 years — the last four of which he specialized in computer forensics. He retired in 2010, but has continued to work for the sheriff’s department in a part-time capacity in the years since.
Music — while always a part of his life — regained prominence for him when he began volunteering as an NSPR Evening Jazz host about a year ago.
He approaches the show as a way to share the enduring vitality of jazz music with people who enjoy radio and its element of surprise.
He says he himself has been surprised at the number of people who engage with his show, and who rely on NSPR.
“I get calls from people who sit and listen to NSPR and that's it,” he says. “They get their news from NSPR, they get their music from NSPR, they get their culture, and it keeps them company. I didn't realize that.”
He says hosting has been a fun hobby, but also a real responsibility.
“I really, really admire what people do on the air and the professionals that work here,” he says. “It's really a lot harder than it looks, and so it's been a challenge and an adventure. I kind of look at stuff as being adventures — each little part of life.”