In a classic folktale, John Henry laid railroad spikes for a living until his line of work was challenged by the arrival of a nail-driving machine. Its makers claimed the machine could complete work 10 times as fast as a man could.
John Henry challenged this machine to a nail-driving competition, and he won.
Reliving the battle through electronic and house music, John Henry’s Revenge is attempting to beat the disc-jockey machine that has taken over the music industry. They are performing at CityScape as part of downtown Phoenix Mardi Gras this Saturday.
The five-man group of ASU jazz students and alumni talked over pizza and beer one night last year to discuss the future of their music careers. That night, they listened to Duke Ellington and James Brown, but then changed the tracks to Skrillex and Deadmau5. This gave them an idea for their own style of music: combining jazz music with electronic music’s popularity to form a complex sound of their own.
“As jazz musicians, we love playing jazz and improvised music,” said band leader Mike Moynihan. “But so often you end up playing for a certain niche.”
Moynihan remembered Christmases in Tucson, when his father would bring out a tenor saxophone and play Christmas carols “terribly.” He fondly remembers climbing around the saxophone case as a young child, and credits those family experiences to fostering his love of music. He chose to play the saxophone while in school.
“My dad gave me John Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’ one birthday, which is just one of the best jazz records ever, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow. These guys are playing really fast,’ ” Moynihan said. “I was just mesmerized at how you could make an instrument sound like that.”
Moynihan continued his jazz music education, taking private lessons before finding a pamphlet advertising an extracurricular youth band program called Jazz Works, now the Arizona Jazz Academy.
“It was such an amazing program,” Moynihan said, “because it was kids from all over the city and you got to hang out with kids from different high schools, different places, and everybody came together and played in this jazz band.”
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Chris Pena plays keyboard in the band and tells the most awkward jokes. During performances, Moynihan and Pena are in a constant tug-of-war for the crowd’s attention. Pena was involved in Jazz Works, but never mingled or played with Moynihan because of their age difference.
Growing up, Pena remembered how the whole family would play guitars and sing together. When they weren’t playing music, they were listening to Latin jazz, salsa and Cuban music. At age 5, Pena began his education studying piano.
“It became a big chore for me,” Pena said. “Every day at 6 p.m. I would have to play the piano, and I didn’t really like it.”
In middle school, Pena took up the trumpet. One day during band class, he heard a promotion for Jazz Works. Pena auditioned on the piano, and he was accepted.
“By mistake, people thought I was better than I actually was,” Pena joked. “But I really think the reason people succeed is because of that false boost of confidence.”
Knowing what he wanted to do the rest of his life, he devoted all his time to jazz music. Pena went to ASU after high school, where he gained more skills on the keyboard and grew closer to the members of the band through music courses. He graduated in spring 2011, just in time to join John Henry’s Revenge.
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Jesse-Lee Yarbrough, the drummer, is a friendly extrovert. Surrounded by music early on, Yarbrough listened to his dad play guitar by ear and his mother play piano. When he was 12, he started playing his sister’s drum set, but his mother was reluctant to spend money on lessons.
“I begged my mom for drum lessons for like two years, but she wanted to make sure I was really into it before spending money on it,” Yarbrough said. “We didn’t really come from a rich family.”
He started taking lessons in eighth grade. By his senior year, Yarbrough knew he wanted a career in music. He studied audio and soundboards at Mesa Community College. He worked at various jobs for a couple years, saving to continue his education.
“After selling insurance for a while, I realized that I don’t need to be the best at this one thing for my life to work out perfectly the way I had it preconceived in my head,” Yarbrough said. “When I went back to playing music, I got out of my head and put my heart into playing music.”
Last Fall, Yarbrough continued his music education by enrolling at ASU, and he expects to graduate in December. Through his background in audio, he brings a way to mediate between the band and sound operators.
“It seems like when audio guys and musicians talk, it always leads to an argument,” Yarbrough said. “But really it’s a failure of communication, and they usually just don’t know how to talk to each other.”
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Jerome Salazar plays bass. He doesn’t speak much, unless it’s a punchline to a joke. Wearing basketball shorts and toe-fitting shoes, Salazar is the long-haired bear in the group and is full of one-liners. From Lancaster, Calif., he discovered music “when I was a wee lad,” he said.
Salazar remembers how much Motown his parents listened to when he was younger.
“I feel that in each song in the Motown genre,” Salazar said, “the bass line was, if not just as significant, more of a defining role of the song.”
In middle school, Salazar hung out with friends who listened to metal. When they decided to form a band, they convinced Salazar to play bass by saying, “It isn’t even hard and you don’t even need to know how to play,” Salazar said. He bought his first bass at Costco and decided to take lessons after learning on his own didn’t work out.
“Then I realized ‘Oh! You can have structure to music, and you can study stuff, and there’s more than just garage bands,’ ” Salazar said. “So I decided, ‘I’m just gonna do this jazz thing.’ ”
After joining jazz band in high school, Salazar was influenced by his instructors, who kept him interested in improving his skills. After doing well on his college entrance exams, he earned a Hispanic National Merit Scholarship and a free education at ASU. He had to maintain a 3.25 grade-point average with a minimum of 15 credit hours a semester – which he said is a feat for a music major.
“Doing that with a jazz performance degree has been a nightmare for me because I’ve had at least eight classes every semester, so it’s just been ridiculous,” Salazar said.
Salazar has pulled through and is in his senior year at ASU, playing for John Henry’s Revenge after class.
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Jacob Lauxman, the band’s guitar player, seems the most at ease when playing. Unlike the other band members, Lauxman didn’t really care about music as a kid. Much like Salazar, he was convinced by a middle-school friend to buy a guitar.
He didn’t play it for six months after buying it, but when he started getting into System of a Down and hating Metallica, he began to play more seriously.
“Then after actually playing guitar, I thought Metallica was the best,” Lauxman said.
His friends who played in the Arizona Jazz Academy were getting gigs and playing for money, and Lauxman wanted in. After joining the youth group, Lauxman developed his skills on the guitar.
“It was stereotypical when I said ,’Oh! Now I kind of get it,’ so I went down the rabbit hole,” Lauxman said.
He met Moynihan and Pena through the program, and because University of Arizona didn’t have a jazz-guitar program, he came to ASU. He is now a senior in ASU’s jazz program.
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The Mardi Gras performance is the biggest gig they’ve ever had, Pena said. They hope to arrange a West Coast tour, but are currently trying to make ends meet, one paid gig at a time.
The band’s motif, Moynihan said, is to bridge the gap between the highbrow, well-educated niche and everyday people.
“Sequencing and DJing is the new machine, and us musicians are becoming less and less important,” said Pena. “We, as a band, are trying to show the world that live music is still important.”
Contact the reporter at dmzayas@asu.edu
