Our local schools are fertile grounds for making music. If you think back to your middle or high school days, you likely knew a handful of students who always had an instrument in hand; maybe they were in the school band, or maybe they played with other kids after school, aspiring to one day play in front of others. Those aspirations, however, aren’t just for students, as sometimes it’s the teachers in those local schools who have those same musical wishes.
Many a band from Durango School District 9-R have gotten some ink in this column, and now the same goes for teachers from Bayfield’s 10 JT-R District. That’s where local band Yes, No, Maybe formed, a group made up of three current and one former teacher from Bayfield High School and Bayfield Intermediate School.
If you go
WHAT: Original/covers of rock and blues with Yes, No, Maybe.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: The Tangled Horn, 275 East Eighth Ave.
MORE INFORMATION: Call (970) 403-3395 or visit www.thetangledhorn.com.
Yes, No, Maybe – bass player Ryan Blundell, drummer Mike Milner, vocalist Sarah Ripley and guitar player Tim Telep – will perform Saturday at The Tangled Horn in Durango.
With a common love of music, musicians seem to gravitate toward each other in the aforementioned, or for that matter, any school where teachers moonlight as musicians.
“It isn’t a prerequisite, but all of the members of Yes, No, Maybe are teachers or former teachers,” Telep said. “At the intermediate school, we have this hallway, and every Thursday morning I play guitar for the staff before we start up. The musicians eventually find each other, and we end up jamming in somebody’s garage.”
On one hand, they’re a cover band with a load of tunes from a variety of sources, and on the other they’re an original band playing acoustic blues and rock; whatever the source of songs, the goal is to play. Ask them who they like to cover and members will start dropping names, some familiar, others not so.
“This lineup, we got into it about April of last year, and we’ve had our foot on the gas ever since to get out and play as much as we can,” Telep said. “We do some original material, and a ton of eclectic covers, so we have a little something for everybody.”
Those eclectic covers include tunes from The Traveling Wilburys, James Hunter, Leon Bridges and more. If they hear a tune they like either on local radio or someone streaming service, they’ll kick it around, and if it’s worthy of covering, they will.
“If I’m working on a new cover, if it’s ready, I’ll bring it in. I’ll play it, then everybody will say, ‘I think I can do this,’” Telep said. “We do ‘Burning Down the House’ by Talking Heads. We do it in the way that we can pull it off. We have no desire to be a carbon copy, we just go, ‘Hey, we like this song, let’s toss it out there and see if we can get it up and running.’ And the more we play it, it will slowly evolve until it kind of settles in. We get it to where it has that Yes, No, Maybe sound. The same with the original material.”
There will be more of that original material on the horizon.
“I had some songs already done and ready to go, and we’ve written some new ones on the fly, and I’m going to be retiring here in a couple of months, so I’m going to have a whole lot of time to crank out some new songs,” Telep said.
Whether making music, or concentrating on their real jobs, they remain busy. While they will keep that foot on the gas pedal, it’s all about making music and having a good time.
“The rule when we come to practices, we’re not allowed to talk about work,” Ripley said. “We’re there to have fun.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
