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There's something about the idea of "getting the old band back together" that can inspire a certain amount of eye-rolling. Usually, it means the former members of "the old band" were unable to equal its success with subsequent projects. Usually, it means some older dudes are making a vain attempt to recapture the feeling of the glory days. Usually, it means those guys are out of ideas.

Usually.

But sometimes, there's a pretty good reason for getting the old band back together. Maybe there's still persistent fan demand. Maybe the passage of time has bred in the musicians in question a desire to revisit and reevaluate the work of their collective past, not out of any desire to cash in, but rather as a sort of closure.

Or maybe the old band's number one fan just really needs to see them again.

Semi-legendary Tampa Bay outfit The Headlights, a group that garnered national notice when former Byrd (and former Bay area resident) Roger McGuinn tapped the act to back him onstage and in the studio back in the early '90s, is dusting off its catalog of jangly Americana for a highly anticipated one-off reunion gig at Gulfport's Catherine Hickman Theatre. The motive isn't money, or attention, or kick-starting stalled music careers; all of the band's former members enjoy satisfying post-Headlights personal and/or musical lives. The motive, basically, is an opportunity to help out a friend.

"I think we'd waited long enough … and this was a good reason to get back together, because Craig was our biggest fan," says guitarist/singer Steve Connelly, who, in addition to being hands-down the most in-demand sideman in the Bay area pop and roots-rock scenes, runs St. Pete's Zen Recording Studios. "He followed us everywhere. He used to listen to our stuff in the hospital. He had board tapes."

The "Craig" Connelly refers to is Craig Gilbert. He has been a functioning quadriplegic since a 1989 automobile accident, but he was a regular presence at hometown Headlights shows from '89 until the group dissolved as 1994 became '95.

"He always used to come see the band," remembers bassist Scott Dempster. "The first date we did with McGuinn, in Atlanta, he drove all the way up to see the gig.

"We were contacted by his sister in January, she wrote me and Steve a letter. He'd taken a turn for the worse, had some physical and psychological problems … since we hadn't been playing, she wondered if we could get together, said it would really lift his spirits."

Gilbert first saw The Headlights on February 4, 1989, at a tent party outside Hyde Park watering hole MacDinton's.

"I was just a guy in the crowd. I got the bug early, literally one song into the set," he says. "They're just the greatest band the world has never heard. At the time of Hootie & The Blowfish and The Lemonheads, [the music industry] missed out by not signing The Headlights."

It was easy for Dempster and Connelly to put this weekend's reunion together – the two are currently playing in a new female-fronted pop band called Too Many Subplots that recently debuted to a packed house at Dunedin Brewery. The other Headlights, drummer Danny DiPietra and singer/guitarist Steve Robinson, both still reside in the Tampa Bay area (Robinson recently released an excellent album of melancholy, sophisticated Britpop called Away for the Day). According to Dempster – who works for the city of Clearwater and this year will head up a music-oriented summer camp for kids called Rec 'N' Roll – the band's mid-'90s demise certainly wasn't acrimonious. More than anything, it was the result of the realization that the band had run its course, and peaked with the McGuinn gig, which saw The Headlights touring the States, appearing on The Tonight Show and opening for The Grateful Dead in Chicago.

"It just sort of fell apart," he recalls. "We didn't get together and say 'it's done.' It was like, after doing all the stuff we did, we were playing a bar on the chicken wing circuit and we're like, 'what are doing here?' It was more like an understanding than a formal breakup, no fights or anything. It was like fruit dying on the vine."

There was also the fact that the shifting climate of popular music at the time wasn't exactly nurturing for an act with such a classically timeless pop-rock sound.

"The hip-hop thing was really staring to break out," Dempster says. "Nobody seemed to care anymore whether or not we were around, if we were playing. Now, the time's kind of right for our music, what we were doing, probably more than ever."

In addition to a long set of original Headlights material – which might include some new stuff – this weekend's shindig will also feature various members' current projects. Too Many Subplots will open the show, followed by a solo set by Robinson before the other three members join him onstage.

While raising some money for Gilbert is definitely one of the reasons this whole thing came together, showing him a good time is the main point. But that doesn't mean the members of The Headlights can't get off on doing their thing again, and Dempster says they definitely are.

"I've never been this excited to go to rehearsal and stuff," he says. "I think everybody kind of misses each other. We're really good friends as well as bandmates, and it's just good to see everybody again.

"We will definitely be well-rehearsed," he adds with a laugh. "But it's kind of like riding a bike. It comes back pretty quick."

For his part, Gilbert is just glad to have an opportunity to see one of his favorite bands again.

"They're good guys. For them to volunteer to do this on my behalf says a whole lot about them as people. I'm just looking forward to an overdue reunion," he says. "Anything that comes out on the benefit end is icing on the cake. I've got friends flying in from out of state, coming down from Gainesville. We've been waiting for this for a long time."

SCOTT.HARRELL@WEEKLYPLANET.COM

This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2005.