Punk 101: Wyatt Fenner
For this week's Staff Pick Playlist, we enlisted our studio intern, Wyatt Fenner to curate a playlist, and share a little about what initially ignited his passion for music. Wyatt has been an intern here at Flat Iron Recording for the last three years, and a student of ours (Rock School and private lessons) since he was ten years old. We love having him as a part of the Flat Iron family, and can't wait to see where his talent and creativity take him in life.
Wyatt Fenner, 2018
Click the pic below to listen to Wyatt's spotify playlist, and read on!
Punk Rock: 101
I fell in love with punk at a very young age. It has a special place in my heart and thrives through every fiber of my mohawk, into my band tees, all the way down to laces that keep my big Doc Martens from falling off. It’s been said I’ve loved music since before I was born, kicking at my mom's stomach while she’d be listening to Soundgarden or The Smashing Pumpkins (thanks mom & dad).
Not to be biased, because I love many different genres of music, and completely urge anyone reading this to go and explore the vast catalogs of musicians everywhere, but Punk has probably had the deepest impact on my life to date.
Due to finding all these connections, I found friends who were experiencing this stuff just like me and before you knew it, I was in a band. I’ve been in 3 serious bands since my freshman year of high school, and am still in two of the three currently. As I was saying earlier, I’ve loved punk since I was young. I started, like many kids in my age group, listening to Green Day and Blink 182. But when I started to listen to stuff that my parents showed me; bands like The Descendants, The Ramones, and The Clash, I began exploring. I started with with my parent's collection of records, but as I got into middle school and high school I started to develop my own taste of music based off of a few bands I fell in love with in elementary and middle school. Bands like Green Day, Blink-182, The Foo Fighters, Everclear, The Descendents, and The Ramones. To this day I am constantly finding new bands I love, and discovering all these connections between bands, recording studios, and record labels.
Being in these bands has taught me a lot, but if it weren't for the Rock School program and Flat Iron Recording taking me in with open arms as they did, I wouldn't be in the same place I am now. Growing up, I had a hard time identifying myself, and I, like most kids, tried many things to figure out what I was in to. In 5th grade I quit soccer, decided I was pretty much over sports, and joined the Rock School program.
Wyatt Fenner, 2013
That program has taught me a lot about a band's dynamic, helped me meet people who enjoyed music as much as I did, and even some who liked the same music I did. It’s given me an outlet to look forward to every week, and honestly helped me become a better musician. Rock School helped me through so much and helped me develop my personality. This launched me out of middle school and into high school where I ended up taking a break from Rock School, but it was also when I started my first band on my own.
This band was comprised of myself, my friend Alec who was also exploring music, his friend Anthony who he knew from jam sessions, and Thomas who I had met in Rock School. We just jammed for about 9 months before we decided we wanted to start playing shows. Then on came the Rapid City Punk Rock Reunion.
It has been 30 years since the first official punk show in Rapid City. There have been two previous reunions. The first one, I was like two years old, and the second, was between my 7th and 8th grade year of middle school. This also launched me into more curiosity, leading me into the true world of punk rock. My 8th grade year was the year I really transformed. Like I said, it launched me into high school. It made me want to start my band Someday Best and start going to shows and get involved in the scene in Rapid. The last reunion was the most important, I really saw what punk rock was. It showed me the love, the family, the friendship, the emotion, and the billions of other things that come out of Punk Rock. It was my parents and all of their friends hanging out and playing in their old bands and doing everything together like they were still in high school. There was so much joy in every direction I looked and I realized that I wanted that.
So here we are two years later and I’m still in Someday Best and now a band called The Pelvic Woo. I’m an intern at Flat Iron Recording, still do Rock School, I’ve had a radio show for a little over a year now, and I’ve been working hard at bettering the musician I am.
So I encourage you dudes, young or old, if you are reading this, to take a listen to this stuff and hopefully further explore into the deep/vast catalog of punk rock from here. It has taught me so much and has so much to teach the world.
