Friday — May 7, 2004

‘Music as Social Commentary’

West Fork Crew performs on the road

---

By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Annually, The Community School in Sun Valley sets its senior class free for three weeks in spring to work on an approved senior project. This year, for the first time, three seniors were allowed to actually pursue a music project.

Logan Koffler, Luc McCann and John Hayes, all 18, have been playing as a band called West Fork Crew since they were freshman together. Their project, "Music as Social Commentary," consisted of a road trip to Los Angeles, where they preformed in two concerts and recorded four new songs in a studio.

Presentations on all of this year’s Community School’s projects will be given over the course of the next week in the campus theater.

A committee of teachers and administrators decide what senior projects are appropriate. An advisor is assigned to each student, who must make a formal proposal, have research questions, an annotated bibliography and write a 15-page thesis on each chosen subject.

"What West Fork Crew did is what we hope students will do," Community School Upper School Director, Mark Kranwinkle said. "They have a lifelong passion for music, and they used this opportunity to explore their passion. They did a great job of research and worked diligently through the winter to get opportunities to perform," Kranwinkle said. "I can’t wait to see their presentations. I’ve seen growth in these boys, and I’m proud to have been a part of that."

Before they were approved for the project they had to fully research the music industry and what it entails, Kranwinkle said.

Finishing off the project period, West Fork Crew is taking to the stage for the community, Friday, May 7, at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum at 6:30 p.m. There is a $5 admission charge and all ages are welcome. Road Kill, another Community School band made up of middle school students, is the opening act.

Any profit made will be donated to the "Build A School" project, which seeks to raise funds for a Wood River Valley school in the mountain range on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But first the trip:

"We left Thursday, April 15, and drove to Vegas with all equipment in the back of a Chevy Tahoe," McCann said. "It barely fit all the stuff."

Sure enough, photos of their trip show not one smidgen of available space in the vehicle loaded with Koffler’s drum set, McCann’s bass guitar and Hayes’ guitars, as well as microphones, stands and amplifiers.

After a night in Las Vegas, the group drove to Los Angeles, where they played two shows at the Wash, an outdoor amphitheater at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. The shows were set up by a friend of McCann’s, Josh Stanek, who is a student there.

"We played during a giant barbecue," McCann said. "It went well. Kids were into it. One guy knew all the words and sang with us. A lot of kids knew them from our CD ‘Art of the Same Beat.’"

That CD was recorded last summer at Mountain Beach Studio in Ketchum.

The band mates stayed at McCann’s grandmother’s house in L.A.

One of the main goals for the West Fork Crew was accomplished over the course of the next week. They recorded with "this guy on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, Bjorn Schaller, who works with a lot of people," McCann said. "We found him through this guy I met during Christmas break."

Indeed, Schaller is a well-known line producer and musician in the music industry. He pushed the boys in new and challenging ways, they admitted, working them up to 12 hours a day in the studio.

Their music, which is all original, McCann described as "kind of punk rock, but not hard core. About teenage life. A new song is about taking off and heading out and what good memories we have."

All three of the Wood River Valley boys are self-taught musicians. Koffler and his brothers play together as the Ketchum Garage Band, or KGB, that played last year at Ketch’em Alive, a weekly outdoor music night in Ketchum during the summer.

On Thursday, May 13, when the students are scheduled to present their projects to the school, they’ll split up and discuss the different aspects of the joint venture, including travel, promotion and venue booking.

After the school year is over and the three of them graduate, they plan to keep playing together until the fall when Hayes and McCann head off to University of California Santa Barbara, and Koffler heads to University of Colorado at Boulder.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.