George Rodes is back in his comfort zone… that is, in a band room.

“Music is a learning vehicle,” Rodes says. “You don’t have to be gifted or talented necessarily to be involved.”

That’s the theme leading up to the start of the new school year as Rodes, Sequim Middle School’s new band director and seventh-grade choir teacher, looks to make his mark in building the Timberwolves’ band program.

Rodes is spearheading a “Tour of Instruments” from 3-6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 23, in the SMS cafeteria. Set during Timberwolf Days, the middle school’s student orientation, “Tour of Instruments ” sees talented musicians from across the area on hand to demonstrate various instruments for students interested in joining or re-joining the band program. Musicians attending the event, Rodes says, include those from the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, University of Washington, University of Southern California and Washington State University, in addition to the Sequim City Band, Port Angeles Symphony and other groups.

“It’s a neat way to get things started,” Rodes says.

Representatives from Ted Brown Music will be there during Timberwolf Days and on Sept. 6, the second day of school, for students’ music supplies and instrument rental needs.

Rodes looks to expand Sequim Middle School’s band offering this year beyond the regular class day, adding an extra-curricular drum line dubbed Timberwolf Thunder and a color guard similar to what Sequim High School offers.

Students can sign up for band or either of these after-school activities at Timberwolf Days.

A music educator with 22 years of experience, Rodes has also created a new website specifically for students at www.timberwolfmusic.org, where youths can sign up for band and choir, get supply lists, learn about individual instruments, get news and important key dates, and find other resources.

The new director has hopes to start a jazz band for seventh-and eight-grade students in coming years, and even the SMS band room itself is getting a makeover with a mural outside the room.

Even if a student is remotely interested in band or choir, Rodes says, “We can find a place, to figure something out.”

Rodes’ roots

Rodes’ music and education roots run deep: both his parents were teachers, he’s played music for decades in the classroom or in community groups, and he’s taught music for much of his professional life.

But his route to becoming SMS’s new band director had plenty of twists and turns, including a spell in his youth that saw the school band become his saving grace.

Thanks to his mom’s connection, Rodes attended a private school near Philadelphia where music was ubiquitous. In about the third grade, someone handed Rodes a recorder, and the youth took to it. By grade five, he’d latched on to his instrument of choice: the clarinet.

“I vividly remember getting involved in music; they performed all the time (at the school,” Rodes recalls. “I was very keen to it.”

But his father Nick, who ran an outdoor environmental education center, got a job in east Texas and moved the family in Rodes’ late elementary school years.

“What a culture shock for me,” Rodes says. The youth with the private school uniform, the East Coast accent and general lack of interest in football was ripe for picking on.

“It was survival,” Rodes recalls. “Band was the one thing in my day (where) I wasn’t afraid.”

In band, he says, “no one sat on the bench.”

“The rest of it,” Rodes says, “was a blur.”

A turning point, Rodes notes, was when his father, who taught biology, chemistry and physics at a high school in a neighboring town, invited Rodes — then an eighth-grader — on a field trip with some advanced placement high school students. Nick gave George an option to switch to his school, and George jumped at the chance.

“(My dad) always had a way of connecting with kids,” Rodes says.

And he kept up with band, despite a heavy spate of turnover at the band director position in his high school years. Rodes estimates he had eight different directors. “It was ugly,” he notes, recalling one instance when one director changed the band’s drill in the parking lot before the performance, then had to reset the band mid-performance in front of an audience and judges.

Rodes eventually got a good director in his senior year that kept him on track.

But after graduation, Rodes had a choice: Should he take the tack his father set in science, or pursue a career in music? After looking at the college math requirements, Rodes steered himself toward music. He enrolled at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, where he says he began learning from some of the top music professors in their fields. That led to a 12-year career in teaching at the middle school and high school levels.

With some of Rodes’ family anchored in the Pacific Northwest since the mid-1970s, however, the long-time Texas transplant decided in the early 2000s it was a good time for a change. After 28 years in the Lone Star State Rodes made the move to the Olympic Peninsula, to one of his favorite places to visit, hike, fish and go camping.

“I had a lot of draw to come here,” he says.

Heart in the music

Rodes taught for a year at Central Kitsap High School in Silverdale, but left the position as his father began an 18-month fight with cancer that took Nick’s life.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him,” Rodes says of his father. “He’s still influencing me.”

With the economy struggling in the first decade of the 2000s, Rodes took a job at Costco but still kept his hand in music, joining the Sequim City Band and the Port Angeles Symphony. A chance encounter with a customer regarding computers at Costco led Rodes to a job with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula. Rodes then served as club director of the Boys & Girls Club’s Mount Angeles unit in Port Angeles; the position fit in line with what he was used to with teaching, he says.

Two years ago, however, with his heart still leaning toward teaching, Rodes left his club director position and took up substitute jobs with the Sequim and Port Angeles school districts, filling in for band and choir directors

“It seemed like a step backwards (to others) but in my mind, it wasn’t,” Rodes says.

Last school year, overcrowding issues at Greywolf Elementary led Rodes to a part-time (0.2) position teaching music to kindergartners.

Rodes, who says he loved his position and had high praise for Greywolf principal Donna Hudson, says his goal was to give 5 and 6-year-olds a positive experience with music that would stay with them for a long time.

“It was a really cool experience getting to know the kids,” Rodes says. “I was in my zone … doing what I love. The kids reciprocated.”

Middle school move

Earlier this year, Sequim Middle School opened the position of band director following the retirement of David Upton, who taught with the Sequim School District for nearly 20 years. Rodes jumped at the chance, and was named to the position this summer.

Rodes, who has called Sequim home for about 15 years and lives here with his wife Ludmilla and son Niko, says he’s particularly looking forward to collaborating with Sequim High School band director Vern Fosket — “(Vern) was the first person I met in Sequim,” Rodes recalls — and SHS choir director John Lorentzen, to make sure there is continuity between the two schools’ programs.

One thing Rodes noticed as he began assessing what SMS’s band program looked like was the rather poor collective shape of the instruments. He says repairs for current instruments is more than the program’s annual budget, not counting addition of new equipment.

Rodes says he’s been developing a core group of community members to help out, and recently got a boost from the Sequim City Band, a group with which he no longer plays but retains connections. A recent donation of about $3,000 from the band looks to give the middle school program a real boost, he says.

“I was absolutely humbled from the response from the city band,” Rodes says.

But the new band director is still seeking support. Band instruments are expensive purchases — a three-quarter-size tuba runs about $8,000, he says — and building a program with inadequate instruments is difficult.

Unused equipment that community members would be willing to donate are appreciated, Rodes says.

“If we get four or five horns, that’s a lot,” he says.

Contact Rodes at grodes@sequimschools.org.