![Kathie and Dave Bailey. [Photo by Diane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News] ()](https://giftsnap.shop/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/NEWS_301239966_AR_-1_WQZWJACECYUY.jpg)
Kathie and Dave Bailey have learned to live — and love — in the moment.
Dave, original guitarist with the band Chantilly Lace, received a diagnosis of bone cancer, compounded by other health conditions, Dec. 6, 2013.
“They gave him a year to live,” Kathie said softly, remembering that dark day at Olympic Medical Center.
Still in the hospital, Dave proposed to Kathie, and they were married Jan. 4, 2014, in the critical care unit.
The nurses served as bridal attendants. Someone fashioned a bow tie out of cardboard, and a member of the surgical staff had the credentials to perform the ceremony.
The Baileys then went on a journey of chemotherapy, including time at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance last summer. They’re back home now in Port Angeles, where each day, they turn to each other to renew their vow.
“I love you, today,” Kathie and Dave say to each other.
Then, on many mornings, Dave picks up his guitar. In his living room, warmed by the fire and watched over by a picture of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, he plays the music he loves: Rolling Stones, Beatles, all the classics Chantilly Lace used to do.
On a recent Sunday, his former bandmate Chuck Darland and his wife Janeane were over at the Baileys, watching the Seattle Seahawks game. Dave announced, “I want to play.”
As in with the band, no matter that it broke up last year.
“It’s in my blood,” Dave said in an interview earlier this week.
“This cancer is not as bad as it should be,” he added, and after a blood test Tuesday morning, Dave said he’s close to remission.
This Saturday night, he will get his wish. Chantilly Lace — Dave on lead guitar, Darland on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, David Schaumburg on bass and guest drummer Craig Dills — will reunite for a gig at Castaways Restaurant and Lounge, 1213 Marine Drive.
Classic rock will fill the place from 8 p.m. till midnight — and there will be no cover charge.
This isn’t a benefit concert. It’s a chance for Dave and friends to do what they love to do.
“They’re awesome. Have you heard them?” asked Kathie.
She and Dave got married after 25 years together, so she’s seen a lot of Chantilly Lace.
Her favorites?
“Little Red Rooster,” the Willie Dixon song made famous by the Rolling Stones; “Sweethearts Together,” from the Stones’ “Voodoo Lounge” album, and certainly the Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.”
“Chuck [Darland] started Chantilly Lace about a hundred years ago,” Dave quipped.
In fact it was a mere 30 or so years back when the band began amassing a repertoire of rock, from their namesake song, done by the Big Bopper, lots of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison and Righteous Brothers.
Dave didn’t stay in the band; guitarist Chris Stevens succeeded him by the time Chantilly Lace played its farewell concert at Fort Flagler State Park in August 2013.
The group also reunited for one evening last spring when the Junction Roadhouse, now the Dam Bar, hosted a fundraiser for the Oso Fire Department in the wake of that town’s March landslide.
Darland also suggested bringing Chantilly Lace’s members back together for a show benefiting the Baileys.
But “being the modest person he is, Dave asked us not to,” said Darland.
Chantilly Lace’s long history on the North Olympic Peninsula includes a pair of “Peny” awards bestowed by former Peninsula Daily News music columnist John Nelson: one for favorite longtime band and one for best repertoire.
Nelson said he presented those awards in 2003 and added that Chantilly Lace helped inspire him to start writing his column back in September 2002, which he continued until last summer..
Nelson and the band share the “KLMA” — Keep Live Music Alive — mantra.
Back home at the Bailey household, Kathie is doing everything in her power to nourish her mate: a nutritious diet, vitamins — and a heart always ready to listen to that guitar.
Music, she said, “is his life.”
