School of Rock’s hands-on instruction gives students more than the ABCs of do-re-mi

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This article was published 25/06/2016 (3619 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s Saturday afternoon, and in a space high above Corydon Avenue, a band is rehearsing. You can hear it from the street. After a scrappy version of Queen’s We Will Rock You, the group works on AC/DC’s TNT — a song that came out roughly three decades before most of these musicians were born.

The band is called Late for Detention, and its members range in age from eight to 11. They are the kids from the Rock 101 program at School of Rock Winnipeg, and they will be opening for the older kids in the Performance program, who will play Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall in its entirety at the West End Cultural Centre on Thursday. The show starts at 7 p.m. and tickets are $5 at the door.

Late for Detention is not exactly nailing the chromatic scale in TNT. “We gotta work on that ending,” says their instructor, Mike Reis. “Hey — who’s letting their guitar ring out while I’m talking?”

They get it on the third try, their slight, shy drummer — made even more diminutive by his kit and giant ear protectors — dutifully counting them in. They practise their vocals for The Wall; they’ll be singing the choir part in Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), naturally.

“We don’t need no education…” they intone, perfectly. Most of them have the lyrics memorized already, which satisfies Reis. Rehearsal is over, and they file out and let the “big kids” in to rehearse The Wall. Spray-painted on the wall in the stairwell is a little motivation, borrowed from AC/DC: For those about to rock, we salute you.

It’s two weeks until showtime, and some of the kids in the Performance program have only been playing their instruments for a few months. The space is filled with nervous, excited energy. They range in age from 12 to 18, and almost all are clad in that time-tested uniform of band T-shirt, jeans and Doc Martens or Chuck Taylors. They unpack their instruments and get to work, separating out into jam spaces plastered with posters to work on different songs. And they sound excellent.

Most people are familiar with the 2003 Richard Linklater film School of Rock, which starred Jack Black as a struggling musician who fakes his way into a job as a music teacher at a prep school and attempts to lead a band of fourth-graders to victory at a local battle of the bands. (It also holds up, apparently: When I ask 12-year-old Jari Pedersen if he’s seen it, he responds, “Only like five or six times. It’s so good.”)

But the School of Rock is a real place that predates the film. It was started in Philadelphia in 1998 by a musician named Paul Green. The ethos was simple: you learn music by playing music. The idea caught on: School of Rock is a bona-fide franchise, with more than 140 schools in nine countries.

School of Rock Winnipeg is one of just five such schools in Canada. It’s been operating out of the former Sugar Mountain space since March and has 50 kids, but it can accommodate 250. School of Rock Winnipeg provides group and individual instruction on a basic rock ‘n’ roll setup — bass, drums, guitar, vocals and keyboards — though other instruments are welcome. There are four core programs: Little Wing (yes, after the Hendrix song) is for three- to five-year-olds, Rookies is 6 to 8, Rock 101 is 8 to 11, and Performance is 12-plus. Adults can also take individual lessons.

The Performance group will play public live shows at real music venues every few months. The Wall will be their first.

“The Wall is the perfect initial show because it’s so epic,” Reis says. “Most people have heard the record at some point in their life. People have seen the movie. It’s so iconic. At the same time, so much of what the kids are into now grew off a tree (for which) bands like Pink Floyd and records like The Wall planted the seed. A lot of them listen to Green Day and My Chemical Romance and Foo Fighters. These bands all put out concept records now, and it’s like, ‘Well, this is the original concept album.’

“Also, with no disrespect to Pink Floyd, the songs are easy to play,” he adds.

Musical education is not limited to learning an instrument at School of Rock Winnipeg. It’s all about setting an achieveable goal with a maximum result, Reis says. Get a kid playing, and you’ll get them excited.

Reis, 37, one of the school’s general managers as well as one of its seven instructors, is a veteran of the Winnipeg music scene, having played in bands since he was a teenager. He was approached by School of Rock Winnipeg’s owner/president, a local surgeon by the name of Darrel Drachenberg. “He’s one of the busiest surgeons in Winnipeg,” Reis says. “But he’s also a closet metal freak. He’s like this crazy, super-talented, technical guitar player.”

The origin story goes like this: Drachenberg was at a medical conference somewhere in the States, and he saw the School of Rock logo on a building. Once he learned more about the concept — group lessons with an emphasis on live performance — that was it: he had to bring it to Winnipeg.

The concept was also attractive to Reis. School of Rock allows kids to play music as a band, learn music they actually like and want to learn, and make friends they wouldn’t have made otherwise in the process — all in a safe, inclusive environment. Another big draw is the fact that it’s serious but informal; Reis and his fellow instructors are more like mentors or cool older siblings than teachers.

Jessica McEachern plays lead guitar in the Performance group; she happened to be looking for guitar lessons on the day School of Rock Winnipeg opened. “I was looking for something that wasn’t super-formal because then it would be a chore,” says the bespectacled 17-year-old, who loves Alice in Chains and anything Jack White-related. “I didn’t want to take something I really liked and make it not fun.”

Another upshot? “You’ll make friends,” Jessica says. “It doesn’t matter who you are, you’ll make at least one new friend.”

Phoenix Iwanchuk, 16, is a green-haired singer in an AC/DC T-shirt who exists on a musical diet of Pat Benatar, Joan Jett and Juliet Simms. She and McEachern go to the same high school, but didn’t become friends until School of Rock Winnipeg, which Iwanchuk discovered via Instagram. “It’s a second home for me now,” she says. “You can always come here and learn something new. I’m just so happy I found it.”

Pedersen, the 12-year-old guitarist who has definitely seen the movie School of Rock, picked up the six-string at age eight. “I’ve met a lot of new friends, I’ve gotten a lot better, and they inspired me to get into rock,” he says of his time at School of Rock Winnipeg. He’s a country guy, too.

This is not, however, his first band. “I tried that once — we made one song and then I don’t know what happened,” he says with the kind of weariness usually reserved for an aging lead singer gone solo. “We started not playing as much and then I started making music on my own.” This time out has been much more positive.

Josh Guralnick, 16, has been playing guitar for three months. He’s into very technical metal, so Reis has started him off slowly, with Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. School of Rock Winnipeg has expanded Josh’s musical palette, as well as his skills. “I appreciate music more, even if it’s not my taste,” he says. “I know how hard it is to make a song.”

Alexanne Soble, 17, is a singer and guitar player who, like Phoenix and Jessica, has been at School of Rock Winnipeg since its inception. She’s a blues and jazz girl who loves everyone from old-school Nina Simone to new-school ZZ Ward. She’s got big post-School of Rock plans: she’s auditioning for the jazz program at the University of Manitoba in February. “It’s been really awesome to play in a band,” she says. “I’ve always just been playing by myself.”

It’s not just the kids who leave School of Rock Winnipeg inspired.

“The kids are great,” Reis says. “You don’t realize it, but all of a sudden, you become invested in each kid individually. You know their name, you know what’s going on in their lives. You ask them how that test was, or how soccer is going. You want to see them succeed. I think that helps with their reception of the place. They’re bringing full focus and engagement. Their excitement for the place is limitless.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti