https://vimeo.com/18395020]
From the age of four, Carl Bahner knew he wanted a life in music. The only issue was that he didn’t know what instrument he wanted to play.
“My aunt had a piano and I used to sit down and punker away at the keys,” Bahner said. “I would only play ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ because it was the only song where I got all the keys down. My mom was like we have to get him into music.” Bahner stuck with music into college where he attended Lebanon Valley College. As a freshman he was a trumpet major. When he joined the marching band, he found his current instrument: the drums.
Now at 24, Bahner heads a group called The Dirt Party. The Dirt Party is a collection of musicians who submit compositions to be performed by musicians in a different part of the country.
Bahner has a very eclectic taste in music something he says improves his résumé when he is forced to play music he is not necessarily familiar with.
“Everything from [Igor] Stravinsky, to Kelly Clarkson, to Ornette Coleman,” he says. “I try to listen to everything. My approach is no matter what situation is, no matter what the music is, the style or the performer; you always learn something from it. Whether it’s what you like and want to do or what you don’t like and don’t want to do.”
The Dirt Party is something that Bahner has done since his senior year in college. Bahner started the group as his senior project and it began as sort of a funk-jazz rock band, he says.
“It was kind of a project for me to transcribe the music, get a group together, perform it, nothing too crazy involved,” Bahner said between sets at Tritone Bar and Restaurant on South Street. “Eventually it turned out that after I graduated, some of the guys in the group stayed together. We started writing more original stuff. Now, two and a half years later, it’s a completely different project.
“Now, it’s like this composer’s workshop essentially. We have drums, two different base players, guitar and three [saxophone] players from everywhere from [Pennsylvania] to Jersey; we have a [saxophone] player in Texas. What we do is we all write original music and we interpret them with whoever happens to be at the gig.”
For Bahner and the other members of The Dirt Party (gigs range from three members all the way up to 13 on stage), it isn’t so much about the publicity and spotlight that most musicians crave when they dream of being a rock star.
Instead, it’s about writing their own music, performing the music and working on improving their craft and range as a musician.
“It’s our way to take our tunes and become better performers through them, become better composers through them, getting feedback,” Bahner said. “Sometimes it works, but sometimes we stumble and fall flat on our face. But that’s how we grow and get better by trying it and if it works it works.
“This is my educational outlet. I am really lucky to not be in the school setting but still have other great players that really want to learn and try new things. It’s very hard to find, especially in the jazz field. Everybody wants to get paid, show up, play the tunes and get the hell out of there. So, I got really lucky to find a group of guys who want to get better.”
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