A wave of music swept over Canyon Del Oro High School 15 years ago and left something in its wake. More than a dozen Dorados from that era are playing locally, nationally, overseas and on the radio, in TV commercials and on video game soundtracks.
"For a bunch of high school boys, they were really good," David Thatcher, the school's assistant principal and athletic director, said of the musically obsessed classes of the late 1990s.
Now a CDO administrator, Thatcher was teaching world history there in 1997 when the school's music scene was swelling. "They played people's house. They played downtown. They would play anywhere, anytime that they could."
Metal, punk-rock and garage music of the day captured these young musicians. Nirvana, Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, The Misfits and Slayer ruled.
The music just didn't affect CDO's student musicians. In 1995, the student government started Dorado Stock, a student-run music festival that showcased student bands.
It's been reduced to more of a one- or two-act talent show in recent years, hardly resembling the festival of the late '90s and early 2000s.
Lucas Gillan, a 2004 CDO graduate and now a Chicago-based jazz drummer and songwriter, remembers when competition fueled the concert.
"For a couple of years it was a big enough thing and thriving scene that over 30 bands would audition, and a bunch wouldn't make it," he said.
The scene went far beyond Dorado Stock and student parties.
The same year Dorado Stock began, Skrappy's Youth Collective opened, giving the students an avenue to sculpt their live performance for the school concert or a bigger stage.
"We used to ask friends to let us play their birthday parties," said 2000 graduate Mike Pedicone, who plays drums for My Chemical Romance (that band's "Bulletproof Heart" debuted at No. 32 on the Billboard Charts.) "None of us were getting shows at the Rialto or Congress. And Kathy from Skrappy's would always ask us what day we wanted to play at Skrappy's."
Kathy Wooldridge, founder and owner of Skrappy's, remembers when CDO players and bands became a presence at the all-ages venue.
"Those are my boys," she said. "They came whether they were playing or not. And that's part of being a musician. That's how you build your fan base."
Skrappy's first location was on Oracle Road near Prince Road. It later migrated downtown, moving further away from Oro Valley.
But parents were willing to chauffeur their long-haired, baggy clothed teenage children and their friends.
"It was hard to get downtown," said Holy Rolling Empire's Dave Mertz. "But our parents were pretty rad, were supportive and impressed that we were playing shows when we were only 14."
CDO had more than 3,000 students in the late '90 and early 2000s - almost double the current enrollment - but there was a connectivity and tightness among the students.
There was no open-enrollment at CDO back then, said assistant principal Don Enright. "They would go to elementary school, middle school and high school together," said Enright who started teaching at CDO in 1997 . "To make music, I'd imagine it takes a close and personal relationship like the ones they were making."
Mike Pedicone and Noah Harmon (The Airborne Toxic Event) started playing music together in fifth grade. Orin Shochat and Mertz (Holy Rolling Empire) started in sixth grade. American Black Lung members Gabriel Sullivan and Eric Parisi played their first talent show in eighth grade while their bandmates Phillip Holman and John Saczko also began playing together in eighth grade.
"We were all one community," said Saczko who along with three other people founded the all-ages venue The Living Room after graduating from CDO in 2000.
"We all played in bands together. I'm glad we are all still doing it. You have to do what you want to do in life. Be you and stay that way," he said.
Saczko still plays with former American Black Lung member Parisi in the band The Guys in New York City.
Wooldridge said Skrappy's no longer draws as many CDO students as it did in the school's musical heyday, but she's not too worried.
"I have faith that we'll get some CDO boys in here again soon," she said.
Nicholas Scala is a University of Arizona student apprenticing at the Star. He also graduated from Canyon del Oro in 2007. Contact him at starapprentice@azstarnet.com
