FLYER

Looking for a useful economic indicator—beyond interest rates, GNP and Dow Jones trends? You might simply ask Steve Kincaid how much flying he’s going to be doing.

“I find my job is about six months ahead of the economy,” says the 43-year-old principal of Heidrick & Struggles’ Global Leadership Services. With a home in Georgia and an office in New York, Kincaid packs his bags when a big corporation wants to know how a candidate for a senior executive position might affect the corporate culture—either positively or negatively. “My goal is to help companies avoid hiring mistakes and help them maximize the people they do hire,” he says. If there are fewer boarding passes in his suit jacket pocket, this reflects a dip in corporate hiring that may herald a downturn in the economy, he explains, whereas his current busy travel schedule points to companies ramping up production.

A Delta Platinum Medallion flyer since 1997, Kincaid logged more than 200,000 miles on various Delta routes last year. But a weary road warrior he’s not. “My wife jokes that I took my current job for the plane rides,” says Kincaid, flashing an ever-reappearing boyish grin and admitting, “Yes, despite all the changes, I do still like to fly. I guess it’s the wanderlust—not being in the same office every day. Going to new places. Seeing new things.” Kincaid is a contented frequent flyer, largely because he embraces business travel, leveraging it for personal ends.

Some travelers “collect” restaurants, others take in major-league baseball games. Many an avid golfer expands his life list of postcard-perfect golf courses. Kincaid’s passion is music. As a boy, he practically wore out his Elton John records learning to play “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Daniel” by ear on the piano. These days, he moonlights as a keyboardist and vocalist in a rock and blues quintet, a bar and party band that happens to include two Delta pilots and another member whose livelihood is linked to aviation. The band’s name: Flyer (www.flyer-band.com). When Kincaid travels, his quest is musical. “You can discover some great music if you’re willing to get off the beaten path and into some small, intimate places,” he says—often, music from up-and-coming local bands or solo performers that you won’t hear on commercial radio.

He starts by ignoring the preset buttons on the radio of his rental car. “Most cities, it’s the same old stuff,” he says. “But when I go to San Francisco, I immediately dial in KFOG; in Chicago, WXRT. There’s a great station in Annapolis [Maryland] called WRNR. In Tampa [Florida], I listen to WMNF. It’s kind of like a hunt, finding something that’s different. I love discovering music that I hadn’t heard before, music that isn’t being corporately pushed or shoved down your throat.”

Whenever possible, Kincaid tries to take advantage of his business travel by getting to see some of these artists live in small, out-of-the-way clubs. “If I go to Memphis [Tennessee], I’ll go to Beale Street and listen to a blues band. There’s a great jazz place in London called Ronnie Scott’s,” he says. Nowadays, with the schedules of most bands available at their Web sites, he’ll generally check to see if an upcoming trip happens to land him in a city when one of his favorite bands, maybe Sonia Dada or The Blind Boys of Alabama, will be in town. He’s seen Sonia Dada four times—once at a bar while vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where who should sit down beside him but Keith Richards, effectively validating Kincaid’s taste in music.

Onstage himself with Flyer, Kincaid is proud of the band’s musical range: “Flyer covers 40 years worth of classics: ‘Moondance,’ ‘Brown Sugar,’ ‘Mustang Sally,’ ‘Layla,’ ‘Steppin’ Stone,’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Dream On,’ as well as [songs by] recent bands like Widespread Panic, Train and Foo Fighters.” Flyer’s lead guitarist, Mark Bradley, and its rhythm guitarist, Lex Lauletta, are not only Delta captains but also senior instructors—Bradley for Boeing 767s, Lauletta for 737s. Drummer Neil Johnson is a Lockheed Martin senior manager with the team building F/A-22 Raptor stealth fighters. And new bassist Richard Banks is an executive with SmartTrust, a Swedish company that makes software for the mobile-phone industry. The band typically practices once a month and performs twice a month—be it at a bar, wedding or party, or as a warm-up band for country music group Sawyer Brown. Late night or not, each gig helps Kincaid recharge his batteries, helps him balance work/life issues.

Music, he’s found, provides the perfect counterpoint to putting his Ph.D. in clinical psychology to work parsing the management skills and track records of successful executives. “I’ll assess the individual on all sorts of personality characteristics,” Kincaid explains. “They spend about eight hours with me, starting with doing questionnaires online or about two to three hours in a face-to-face interview with me. No matter the indu - Delta SKY Magazine

By Donna Harris
Cherokee Tribune Staff Writer

Take a couple of pilots who play guitar, add a guy who builds fighter jets and pounds the drums and throw in a psychologist on keyboards and a medical technology student on bass, and you've got one healthy, high-flying rock band.

Flyer, a quintet of aviation-oriented musicians, covers the gamut of rock and blues dating back as far as the '50s. They play the vintage tunes of Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Eagles; the Southern rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and The Allman Brothers; the working-class songs of Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp; the smooth sounds of Journey and Elton John; and the classic hits from Bill Withers, The Temptations and Chuck Berry.

"The music we do sparks a lot of memories and puts everybody in a good mood," said Lex Lauletta of Woodstock. The captain and senior training instructor with Delta Air Lines plays acoustic and electric guitars and harmonica. "We play the late '50s danceable music to the stuff of today as well."

The other "flyboys" making up the band are Mark Bradley of Roswell, also a Delta captain who plays guitar; Neil Johnson of Marietta, senior manager of product control for the F/A-22, the new fighter jet being built at Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Co., on drums; Steve Kincaid of Roswell, a psychologist and vice president of consulting for Right Management Consultants who "flies a lot," on keyboards; and Dave Lester of Athens, formerly of Cherokee County, who is studying medical technology at the University of Georgia, on bass.

All members sing except Lester so there isn't a designated lead singer, Lauletta said.

"It's just, 'OK, who can sing this song?'" he said.

"We're five guys who really enjoy playing music," said Lauletta, 46, who relocated from Orlando, Fla., to metro Atlanta seven years ago. "We wanted our music to be 'Hey, this band is pretty good,' instead of 'For a bunch of pilots, you guys are not bad.' Despite all of our day jobs, we are professionally serious about the music and the band. This is a professional hobby for us, but we don't rely on paying our mortgages with what we make playing gigs."

Bradley, who has played in bands for years, said Flyer is "all about having a good time."

"We're a little bit older group so I think we have the right perspective," he said. "No. 1 is we do it for fun. When we originally started, we started with no real goals necessarily in mind. Just do it for fun."

The band of 40-somethings took off eight years ago through a chain of friendships.

Lauletta, who flies a Boeing 737, and Bradley, a Boeing 767 pilot and instructor, have been good friends since they were freshmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Both were Navy pilots who ended up living in the Atlanta area and working for Delta.

Johnson and Bradley met at a ball park while watching their sons play baseball, and Lester met Bradley at church. The trio and another guitar player who moved away started the band and played their first gig in 1996. Lauletta joined about a year later.

The newest member, "Dr. Steve," came aboard one and a half years ago as the result of his wife working with Johnson's wife.

Choosing a name for the group turned into a bigger deal than the members expected. They tossed around names like Midlife Crisis and Inside Out, both of which were taken by other bands, before Lauletta suggested Flyer to represent their common aviation background.

The unique talents each member brings to the band blend perfectly to create a powerful sound, Lauletta said.

"A big part of our sound is Neil Johnson," he said. "He has a really incredible singing voice. Mark has a lot of driving guitar solos. Steve is just a great musician. He hears it in his head and can play it. He knows what a note sounds like before you hit it. Dave is doing his bass thing, and my role is more rhythm guitar."

While the band plays rock 'n' roll and performs in clubs, don't expect to see five long-haired guys covered with tattoos and body piercings.

"People look at us and say, 'You guys are nice guys,'" Lauletta said. "We're real normal people, and we feel like we're lucky to have this in our lives. It's good to have something you really love to do."

The band tries to average two to three performances a month, many of them being private parties "everywhere from a Peachtree City subdivision to BridgeMill," Lauletta said.

"You can't beat having a live band over a deejay," he said, adding they've played neighborhood events, birthday parties, fraternity parties, summer bashes and fund-raising galas. "We know we're going to have a good time, and we want to take everybody along with us."

The band also plays local clubs and restaurants like the now-closed Sports World and Hemingway's on the Marietta Square, which "went over real well," Lauletta said.

"No venue is too big or too small," he said, adding he expects Hemingway's to become a regular gig. " - Cherokee Tribune