Rock on

On a Thursday evening, the five-man senior band at Sumner Lesson Studios in Creston jammed out to The Beatles' "Day Tripper" and The Outfield's "Your Love."

Owner Dustin Baird guided the group during practice, working with players invidividually and providing humorous commentary to maintain the light, laid-back atmosphere.

In one song, it was drummer Aaron Richardson’s job to cue the rest of the band.

“If they aren’t paying attention, just hold your sticks up in the air,” Baird said to Aaron. “You’ll be like Tommy Lee – or like you’re directing an airplane.”

At Sumner Lesson Studios, Baird offers both private lessons and group classes, which are bands he puts together.

“People can take private lessons forever and kind of spin their wheels,” Baird said. “As soon as you put them in an environment where they have to rise up, they do.”

This is the fourth session of bands Baird has held, and for each session, he usually forms two or three groups. This is the first session he’s had only one band due to people’s busy fall schedules.

Baird only plays in the bands when there aren’t enough members. He prefers to be on the sidelines, ready to help his students when necessary but allowing them to be in the spotlight.

“He’s very in tune to everyone’s (musical) parts,” Aaron said of Baird.

“But he uses all these technical terms. We don’t get that,” lead guitarist Larry Richardson joked.

The senior band, which practices Thursdays at 7 p.m., has been together since January.

“We primarily play rock music, but there’s a lot of music from the ‘60s and ‘70s – anything from Skynyrd to Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, the Eagles and Jimmy Buffet,” Aaron said.

Larry added: “It’d be a lot of work to write our own music, and we’d definitely need Dustin and Aaron’s direction on that. We’re probably better off doing covers.”

Baird has students choose the music they play, within reason.

“We decide what we’d like to try to play, and 99.9 percent of the time, Dustin has played it and knows if it’s something we can pull off within the time frame of the next show,” Aaron said.

Every eight weeks, Baird puts on a free show for the groups to perform. The next concert, which will feature the senior band only, is scheduled 2 p.m. Oct. 24 at Adams Street Espresso. Baird said every event so far has been packed.

“We have a good time,” Larry said. “Whether we do gigs or not doesn’t matter. Just getting together and jamming is good enough for me.”

The senior band members range widely in age, from 17-year-old Harleigh Bristow to 64-year-old Larry.

“We’ve got somebody young to keep the band young,” rhythmic guitarist Roger Roberts said of Bristow.

Aaron added: “The universality of music is that it doesn’t matter how old you are. You can pick it up and have fun with it.”

Each class, whether it’s private lessons or band, is $80 per month. Baird and Aaron, who teaches drum lessons part time at the studio, often form bands out of students doing well in private lessons.

“Ultimately, the goal is if (students) decide they don’t need to come down here anymore, and they want to go practice somewhere else and start a band, then great!” Baird said. “That’s what we want. Everybody wins.”