Little Band Town rocks the park

As the culmination of months of blood, sweat, and tears, the North Gem music class, in the form of “Little Bang Town,” gave their end of year concert at the bandshell outside the school.

The concert was scheduled to be performed outdoors last year, but was relocated due to weather concerns.  There were no concerns this spring, as Saturday was all in all a lovely day (if a little windy).  

“This is the first in the park show.  We have tried it before and mother nature has never smiled upon us, so this is the first time we’ve really been able to do it.  I’ve dreamt about it!” teacher Hailey Hatch said.

The ten members of Little Band Town, with Hatch sitting in front of the stage to provide notes and encouragement, took the stage for a bit under two hours, covering an eclectic catalog of rock, country, and blues songs for a happy crowd.

The class is unconventional, in the sense that it isn’t really based on the theory of creating music as much as it is the most immediate experience of doing so.

“I feel like it is a little bit different than what might happen in other places,” Hatch said.  “There are all different skill and music levels.  Jackson [Welker] is new—he’s our lone freshman that showed up this year.  So we teach them how to chord, and to feel the rhythm and we train up each other.  Drums aren’t my skillset, for instance, but we all just raise up each other as we go.  I’ve been lucky since I’ve been here because I’ve got two sons that are killer guitar players and singers that kind of lead the band, and then bass is a good place to start for rhythm.  We just get together and make some music.  Day one we are playing songs, and we learn as we go.”

Student members of Little Bang Town include Rusty Hatch, Indyanna Hatch, Kimberlie Jensen, Jack Curtis, Jackson Welker, Kaly Foster, Myken Rindlisbaker, Mercedez Mabey, Daly Frandsen, and Keegin Moreland.  Most of the students took turns at the microphone, and while some stayed more or less with one instrument, others switched between several over the course of
the afternoon.

The audience arrayed their chairs, sunshades, and blankets on the lawn in front of the amphitheater, and kicked back on the lazy afternoon to enjoy a seamless exhibition of talent.  While the students have a range of experience and skill levels, you wouldn’t necessarily know it from their playing.

“We all have a binder like this,” Hatch says, displaying a thick book filled with print outs.  “We have the lyrics and we know what chords they are supposed to be playing.  And from that they all work together and pick out their parts.  Then we just start going through it an decide what we think sounds good, and we improvise it a little to make it more of our own.  It’s kind of cool.”

The class formed as a way to hold music classes with a smaller number of students participating than you would find in a school with a full band or orchestra.  In addition to the practical elements of putting on the class, it also seems to provide a means of having students “take” to music in a more immediate way.   “They love it!” Hatch said.  “We go from Eminem to Elvis and everything in between.  We kind of just go with what we think we can pull off and sometimes we stretch ourselves a lot!  We do it because we love it—we love music and we love making it.  So, we’re not going for festival competition or anything like that, we’re having a good time.”

A basic familiarity with how to create music can be a lifelong benefit.  As everyone who has ever known a pianist is aware, accompaniment is an ability that is always in demand and never in enough supply.  The same is true with singing.

“You can sing along all the time.  You can pick up a guitar or piano and chord all over.  Basically, all songs have just a few chords, and you can just make a song out of them.  You can make it way more complex—and you’ll hear some of these guys doing that—but you can also have a beginner chorder play along while Rusty is doing something complicated on the guitar.  Our skillset here is really wide.  They all come and they can all be part of the same
rock band.”

Jackson Welker said he was looking forward “to making people smile today.”  Asked about a favorite song, he diplomatically noted that “they’re all quite good!”

The performance truly did live up to its wide variety of song types, with classic rock, pop country, blues, alternative rock, singer/songwriter pieces, and more, including Fleetwood Mac, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Marshall Tucker Band, Green Day, The Beatles, Poison, Tom Petty, Cher, Eddie Rabbit, Elvis, and more.

After the concert, the crowd enjoyed food and company, and the day could not have been a nicer one to spend in Bancroft.