Jon Mark Beilue: Between Rock and a Hard Place

WTAMU offers a 'School of Rock' class for budding rock musicians

So will Randy Ray, West Texas A&M University’s director of broadcast engineering and associate lecturer in mass communications, see himself each Tuesday night as a bit of a Jack Black, the actor who stumbled into teaching young musicians in the hit comedy movie, “School of Rock”?

“I hope not,” he said. “I hope I’m not that obnoxious.”

But Ray is teaching a course this semester through the Extended Studies program that certainly will have its own beat – a rock and roll beat, at that. Beginning on Tuesday nights from Jan. 29 through March 5, Ray will teach a class loosely titled, with a nod to Jack Black, “School of Rock.”

It’s the ABCs for those who, if not wanting to be the next Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger or Don Henley, at least want to begin performing live with a group and look good doing it.

“If you’ve ever dreamed of being in a rock band, I will show you all the different things that entails,” Ray said. “A lot of people don’t realize what all goes into a band. I hear young people say, ‘Yeah, we’re forming a band.’

“And I think, ‘Well, good luck,’ because there’s a lot of work going into it, things that people don’t think about.”

Last year, Andrea Porter, WT’s director of Extended Studies, reached out to Ray to see if he wanted to teach a course through the department. He was asked if he wanted to repeat a popular class he taught on two British icons – The Beatles and Christian author C.S. Lewis.

Ray said he’d like to let a little more time go by before teaching that again. Porter called again this year with the same request.

“So I just threw it out there – how about ‘School of Rock,’ and explained my ideas,” Ray said. “I was in the business for 15 years. I didn’t know if they’d go for it, but they liked it.”

As of last week, Ray was still working on the curriculum, but it will be a combination of meshing on-stage music with off-stage issues.

“We’ll talk about the importance of working with other musicians and how that can be challenging,” he said, “and the importance of the bass player, the key board player, the drummer, and the importance of the front man, the lead singer.”

They will discuss stage presence, spend time in a recording studio to look at equipment, the logistics of moving equipment and the cost of equipment.

“There’s just a lot of things that go into forming a band and performing that people don’t think about,” Ray said.

No one on campus knows that better than Ray, who spent 15 years in Nashville before returning to WT in 2002 to begin teaching.

Ray got his degree from WT in 1984 in radio and TV. He was part of Power and Light, the first rock band to play in Mary Moody Northen Hall in 1983, and he jokes might be the last one.

 It wasn’t long before Ray, who grew up in his native Pampa playing bass guitar in various bands, got the music itch enough to move to Nashville.

He was initially an audio/visual engineer with some of the biggest names in music. Ray would later connect with two Amarillo friends, and the three with one other, formed the Christian rock band Legend Seven.

They earned a coveted record label, would twice tour Europe, cut two CDs and had several top Christian singles before breaking up in 1994.

After that, Ray remained in Nashville where he managed Sunset Studios, at the time the largest sound stage and recording studio in the South. Ray worked with Lynard Skynyrd, Garth Brooks, Peter Frampton and Neil Diamond, among others.

In 2000, he began teaching at nearby Middle Tennessee State while pursuing his master’s degree. Two years later, he had an offer to come to WT as an instructor/engineer in the communications department. He, wife Anita, and children Rachel and Luke came to Canyon.

“I knew if we were going to get back to the Panhandle and be around family, this might be the only opportunity to do that,” Ray said, “and it was one of the smartest decisions I ever made.”

So what Ray offers in this course is real-world experience, which students love. He’s not teaching theory, but what was sometimes the practical school of hard knocks for him.

“Oh, absolutely, that not only applies to this course, but every course I teach at WT,” he said. “That’s one of the things I love about my job is to tell real-world experiences and be able to share what it is like in the media industry, in film, music and publishing. Those experiences make me a better teacher.”

The music industry, just about like any industry, is changing quickly. What may have been true for the longest time – groups needed a record label to get noticed – may not be true any longer, but now there are different obstacles.

But what Ray wants “School of Rock” students to realize is like anything worth attaining, getting there is hard work.

“They need to know how time-consuming it is,” he said. “I’ve said this before – and it’s true – with any person who wants to be in any kind of entertainment, you literally have to be obsessed about it. You have to pour your heart into it.

“It takes a lot of time to get to the point where you are good enough to perform in front of an audience. You think about the two hours on stage, but how many hours of practice went into that, how many hours of travel, buying equipment that people don’t notice. The tip of the iceberg is the actual performance.”

In a crash course over six weeks, Ray will show his “School of Rock” students as much of the rock and roll iceberg as he can. In the time allotted, as the Eagles still sing, the class will “Take It To The Limit.”

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu.

—WTAMU—