Jim McDermott remembers when Shaler Area High School students didn’t just listen to music. They made it.
“Shaler had a long tradition for decades of having many, many rock bands at any given time,” said McDermott, 42, a 2002 Shaler Area graduate who has taught ninth grade American history there for 20 years.
There were once so many student bands that there were too many to fit into the annual spring talent show. A “Battle of the Bands” was held a month before the talent show to narrow down the field.
But then, before covid, the band scene “fizzled out,” he said. Since the pandemic, there have been no bands at the high school.
“It makes me so sad. There’s so many benefits to playing music,” said McDermott, a guitar player and singer who has played in bands since he was in high school. “Now kids are addicted to their phones or video gaming in their basement. They’re not gaining any skills.”
That’s why, beginning this school year, McDermott and fellow teacher Steve Karscig started a guitar club at Shaler Area High School.
Around a dozen students have been showing up, some bringing their own guitar or bass.
“I want it to slowly mold into a rock band club,” McDermott said. “I want to do whatever I can to help these kids not just play in my history classroom. I want them to go to each other’s basements and garages. There’s nothing more fun than hanging out with your friends and trying to get that song down and sound like it does on the album. It’s a constant game — how good can we get this song sounding? When you make it happen, it’s so rewarding.”
Karscig, 49, graduated from Shaler Area in 1995 and has been teaching English literature there for six years. He plays guitar and bass in the cover band Juniper Six.
He also remembers the student band scene — at least six or seven that were really cool, Van Halen cover bands and those into Pearl Jam and Nirvana.
“It was a weird time. It was the ’90s. There was an eclectic mix of various musical styles,” he said. “Everybody got along. Everybody talked to each other and shared stories and ideas. It was a nice little counterculture community that was at Shaler. Everybody had something to say and something to offer. It was really cool.”
McDermott proposed starting the club during a teacher’s celebration at the end of the 2024-25 school year, where everyone who played an instrument got on stage, Karscig said.
“I was on board when he asked me. Music was such a big part of my life in high school and for a lot of us,” Karscig said. “There are plenty of musicians at Shaler. They need a compass sometime.”
During a recent gathering in McDermott’s classroom after the school day had ended, he and Karscig were guiding half a dozen students through the chords for songs including The Knack’s “My Sharona,” Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine.”
With her interests lying in punk, rock and indie, 14-year-old freshman Alivia Hymowitz of Shaler said she knows most of the music they’ve been playing in the club.
“There’s still a new song every once in a while,” she said.
Hymowitz said she had briefly played guitar before, but drifted away from it. The club got her to pick it up again, when she’s not playing softball.
“It’s definitely a really fun club,” she said. “It’s definitely cool to put songs together.”
Freshman Aryanna Conklin, 15, of Shaler has been in the club since its start. While she likes a lot of different music, she says she’s heavy into metal and punk, more rock than pop.
“I’ve learned chords. It’s been difficult to learn,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot more than I could do myself.”
Hymowitz and Conklin are reflective of the club having more girls than boys, and more freshmen than upper grade levels.
“I’m excited to have lots of freshmen. It can keep growing,” McDermott said. “Our goal is to next year have multiple bands at the talent show and just see how it takes off after that.”
There also are many beginners.
“A lot of the kids were truly starting from scratch or knew two or three chords,” McDermott said.
Sophomore Zack Schwartzmier, 16, of Reserve didn’t like guitar that much when he took lessons, but he is enjoying it more in the club.
“I still don’t think I’m that good,” he said, adding he’s more interested in singing and songwriting. “I’m just hoping to at least have the knowledge I can do this and have fun with a skill I learned.”
Being in the club has gotten Conklin to play and practice more.
“I can do more on my guitar if I try harder,” she said. “I need to have more faith in myself to do it.”
Karscig tells the students to dial down their frustration and be patient with themselves.
“We’re really just running them through the basics,” he said. “We try to meet them where their skills are and help them improve on those skills.”
Karscig has seen the students’ skills grow over the school year.
“A lot of them had never picked up a guitar in their entire life. Now these kids can play riffs, parts of songs and in some cases even whole songs,” he said. “They were nervous about picking up a guitar at first. Now they pick it up right away and try to figure it out.”
For McDermott, whatever the kids want to be is fine with him. He’s thinking of adding songwriting sessions next school year.
“You don’t have to be the best at it. You have to be able to play some chords, put some lyrics together, practice your singing and, boom, you’ve got an original song that’s your song,” he said. “Maybe there’s someone else you can play your song with. There’s nothing like the excitement of being on stage.
“I want them to realize that, playing music, there’s nothing like it.”