Five Dads and a Band

If you ever drive down Munsee Drive in Cranford and hear loud music coming from a basement, it may not surprise you that a band named Munsey Drive is practicing there.

What may surprise you is who's playing. That's because right now, they're on their Mid-Life Crisis Tour.

Cranford dads Jim Mustillo, Terry Hunter, Rob Lento and Dave Scher started playing together in 2007. Back then, the name of their band was The Great Escape.

"It gave us the opportunity to get out of the house," Hunter said.

Now you can catch the band playing covers of the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan - to name a few - at bars and music festivals throughout Cranford and Garwood. Mustillo and Hunter perform both guitarists and vocals, Lento is the bass player and Dave Scher is the band's drummer. A friend of Mustillo's Tom Herbert also recently joined the band.

"We really like to play so even if we just get together and play on the deck, acoustic music, it's fun," Hunter said.

But being in Munsey Drive is more than just fun for the Cranford dads, whose children range in age from high school age to 23 years old. They say playing in the band is an outlet for them, now in the middle stages of their lives.

"Instead of buying a convertible, we're playing in a band," Mustillo said.

It also reminds them of their younger days. All of the band members have been playing since they were kids.

"As we get older, it lets you reconnect with your past but also get together with friends you don't see anymore," Hunter said. Although none of the band members is from Cranford originally, they all are from the immediate area and have quite a local following. Many of their friends from high school and college will come see them play in the Cranford area.

The men, in a way, have fatherhood to thank for bringing them together.

Mustillo said some of their wives met through a mother's group.

"One said 'Oh, my husband plays guitar,'" Mustillo recounted. "'Oh, so does mine,'" the other wife said. The wives put the men in touch with each other.

Mustillo said later one day he was picking up his children from school and mentioned to another father that his band was looking for a drummer.

Well, that father was Dave Scher.

"His eyes light up," Mustillo recounted.

Scher said he had a drum set in his basement on Munsee Drive. So that's where the band later met to practice and, as the story goes, ended up changing its name to Munsey Drive. Mustillo said they decided to change the spelling of the street for the band's name in order to differentiate it from the street.

If you want to catch the band playing, you can often see them at the Crossroads restaurant in Garwood. They will also be playing at a music festival in Cranford in September.

But if you miss out seeing them sometime soon, don't worry. The band members say they hope to play well past their Mid-Life Crisis Tour. They say they plan to play together for as long as possible.

"There's not an ego situation like in younger bands and we're not playing for money or else we'd be broke," Mustillo said. "So, I don't really see it as an issue at all."