By Mary-Justine Lanyon
This year’s Blue Jay Jazz Festival kicked off a day early with a master class led by Carl Verheyen and the members of his band on Aug. 26.
The first several rows at the Performing Arts Center at Rim of the World High School were filled with Rim students, brimming with excitement at what was to come.
Before they interacted with the students, the Carl Verheyen Band played their instrumental song “Clawhammer Man” and then talked about what playing in the band means to them.
“We make music live and breathe,” Verheyen told the students. “We need to listen to each other and follow. As I build it, the other guys come in. Every phrase I played was building in intensity.
“You need to find your own voice,” he advised.
The band includes Verheyen on guitar and vocals, Troy Dexter on guitar and keyboard, Federico Orlandini on bass, John Mader on drums and Hollye Dexter on vocals.
“When we are improvising,” said Troy Dexter, “we each have to listen like crazy. If Carl is doing something busy, I pull back.”
“My job,” Mader told the students, “is to make you feel the rhythm in your body.”
When asked if they had any questions, first one hand went up slowly but then many of the students’ hands shot up.
“How long have you been doing music?” was one question. The band members all started fairly young: Verheyen got his first guitar at 11. “I play every day,” he told the students. Mader started playing drums at 5 while Orlandini started with the piano at 6, then played clarinet in his school’s marching band (which drew cheers from the Rim marching band members) and bought his first bass at 14. Troy Dexter took piano lessons as a child but didn’t enjoy them; his aunt gave him a guitar when he was 12. He picked the piano back up in high school. Hollye Dexter said that she feels music and wants to express it. “It feels so good to sing.”
As for what music means to them, Mader said that he “wants to make people feel the way music makes me feel.” “Music is my life,” Orlandini said, adding he cherishes the “feeling you get when you play with other people.”
“I’ve always been drawn by rhythm,” Troy Dexter said, “the way it makes me feel. I’m always looking for the ‘hot’ notes.”
“I immersed myself in jazz,” Verheyen said. “I went down the ‘long dark road of jazz.’ If you dig it, learn it – be open to other styles.”
One student asked for tips on overcoming stage fright. “I realized it’s not about me,” Hollye Dexter said. “My job is to help these people have a good time.” Mader agreed: “I wrote on my drum head, ‘It’s not about you.’ You are a vehicle the music comes through. There’s no place on stage for the inner critic.”
“Let the music come through you,” Troy Dexter advised, adding that “it’s more difficult to play a living room concert than in an arena.” And Verheyen said, “I’m the only Carl Verheyen in the room. There’s not another guy who can do what I do.”
To that, local musician Dave Bennett, sitting in the audience, whispered, “music confidence.”
With the master class nearing its end, Verheyen asked if any of the students had their instruments with them. Would they like to join the band on the stage? Hands shot up and Kaydin Lowery (trombone); Colin Hobson (trumpet); Dustyn Figueroa (guitar); Emma Miller (drums); Diana Orozco Huidor (electric bass); Hannah Tallman (keyboard); and Levi Lamperts, Fatima De Gioia and Marhely Miranda (vocals) took their places on the stage.
They began jamming and that jam became “Mustang Sally.” As he watched and listened, a slow smile began on Verheyen’s face and quickly became a large grin.
At the first night of the Blue Jay Jazz Festival, on Aug. 27, I thanked Verheyen for having spent the time with the students and asked him what he thought of our student musicians.
“Every student had something special about them,” he said.
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