Kayla Renelle will always remember something her brother asked her about Voluntary Hazing, her 12-piece ska band.

“You have talented musicians,” he began. “Some are classically trained. So why are you playing ska?”

Of course, Renelle had to write about the experience. She also pieced together other odd comments people made about her band. One friend said the horn players were amazing, but they couldn’t dance to save their lives.

“I feel like every ska band has to do a song about ska,” Renelle says.

“Why (You in a Ska Band)” was the first original tune Voluntary Hazing wrote, back in May 2019, about a month after forming. The song is on the band’s debut EP, Crossroads, released in January 2020. 

The band’s story began a few years earlier, when tenor sax player Thomas Narveson formed the SJSU Ska Ensemble alongside Alex Quick and Gabriel Perez. At its height, as many as 50 members were coming and going, most from SJSU’s music department and marching band.

“Everybody kind of knew each other,” says trombonist Ryan Heisinger. “It wasn’t completely random people, which made it fun.”

At the time, Narveson wanted to create a high school class or after-school program that would teach kids music through forming rock bands. The SJSU Ska Ensemble was his pilot program, and he’d bring in charts for songs. At every rehearsal, they played Reel Big Fish’s ’90s ska hit “Sell Out.”

The ensemble dissolved when Narveson moved to the Pacific Northwest. But in early 2019, when Heisinger needed a band for his recording class, he gathered up the members of the Ensemble that had consistently showed up to rehearsals. Together, they tracked a cover of Panic! At The Disco’s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”—always a crowd-pleaser at their regular “Ska Ensemble Listening Hours.”

The recording came out great. Soon, the band adopted the name “Voluntary Hazing,” began working on new material and started gigging off-campus. In “Why (You in a Ska Band),” Renelle sings she “wrote this song the other day / to finally give our Reel Big Fish covers a break.”

Even by ska band standards, Voluntary Hazing is a large group. They began with 11 members, then bumped up to a dozen after Narveson moved back to San Jose and joined. Filling out the group are its seven-piece horn section (two trumpets, two trombones, three saxes), which they use to their full advantage.

“It makes it a lot of fun when it comes to arranging,” Heisinger says. “We can do anywhere from three to seven individual parts, so it gives us a lot of flexibility.”

The group managed to play Art Boutiki on Jan. 31, 2020—the day Crossroads was released—and fit in a few more shows before COVID-19 shut everything down. Once socially distanced, they didn’t rehearse or record in person again until May 2021. 

Instead, they got good at remote recording, releasing a handful of songs tracked piecemeal in 2021, like a cover of Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” for Lonely Ghost Records compilation Wow! Now That’s What I Call the 90s: DIY Edition (a benefit for MusiCares COVID Relief Fund). In June came an original called “Skemsco,” about their melding of ska, emo and disco, and in September a cover of Pat The Bunny’s “I’m Not a Good Person” for the Keep On Loving, Keep On Fighting comp, a benefit for Trans Lifeline assembled by well-known ska-memer William Schuster (co-founder of The Bands I Like Only Charge $18).

Voluntary Hazing begin 2022 with two more releases, a cover of Blink 182’s “First Date” for the Prevent Cancer Foundation benefit Fate Fell Short: A Blink 182 Compilation (released last week), and the original “Reciprocate Some” (out next week).

As a 12-piece band, every member’s relationship to the genre they play is different. Some are hardcore fans, others are more casual. All of them, however, find that the scene that they are now a part of is large and growing.

“[When I was young], hearing ska, it had the same ideals of the hardcore punk scene, but they had horns in it, which is what I liked. It was like a guilty pleasure thing,” says alto sax/violinist David Sanchez. “This is re-sparking where I left off with my interest in ska. It’s awesome.”

voluntaryhazing.bandcamp.com

Everyone deserves a sweet treat—and the chocolatey goodness of Willy Wonka hits just the right spot. Opening this Tuesday, the Center for Performing Arts hosts the new musical Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, a wacky journey of delights through Wonka’s illustrious factory. Performances will include hit Broadway songs from the original film (shout-out to Gene Wilder), including “Pure Imagination” and “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket,” as well as a new score from the songwriters behind Hairspray.

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
Tue, Various Times, $29
Center for the Performing Arts, San Jose

Not many bands land their biggest hit on their ninth album, but REO Speedwagon proved the rare exception with 1980’s Hi Infidelity. Released at the tail end of the year, it became the biggest selling rock record of 1981, landing the band a #1 hit in the arena-sized power ballad “Keep On Loving You.” This sound would come to define the band, equally noticeable in their second #1 hit, the very, very ‘80s sounding “Can’t Fight This Feeling.” Tender piano intro? Check. Big, wet drums? Check and check. Soaring guitar solo? Buddy, don’t get me started.

REO Speedwagon
Sat, 8pm, $49+
San Jose Civic, San Jose

As self-described proprietors of “disgusting music from Tokyo,” Kruelty have perfected a righteous combination of heavy hardcore and death doom, possibly the most “skull t-shirt” combination of four words one could put together. The band is definitely heavy as hell, with sinister growling vocals over bluesy chord progressions and a relentless double bass kick. Joining them on the penultimate date of their US tour are San Jose/Taipei-based death metallers Ripped to Shreds, whose own brand of heavy old school death metal inspired by East Asian history has emerged as the South Bay heavy sound to get hip to.

Kruelty + Ripped to Shreds
Sat, 8pm, $20
The X Bar, Cupertino

In a night full of emotion and celebration, Hawaiian legends Keola Beamer and Henry Kapono bring good times, crisp vocals and legendary island music to Saratoga’s Montalvo Arts Center. The two Oahu natives sing love ballads, play classic slack key hits and have long been heavy hitters in the Hawaiian music scene. Beamer, now 70, is renowned as a master of traditional slack key guitar, and Kapono, now 72, rips just as hard. On Saturday, they perform da kine music, bringing aloha and mana to the sistahs and braddahs of the South Bay. Hana hou!

Keola Beamer & Henry Kapono
Sat, 7:30pm, $62
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

This Saturday, Community School of Art and Music honor MLK’s birthday with a free online event: Bay Area jazz bassist Marcus Shelby performing selections from his 2011 album Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The album interweaves originals like “Memphis (I Am a Man)” with spirituals like “There is a Balm in Gilead” and compositions like Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus,” about Governor Faubus’s attempt to keep Little Rock Central High School segregated in 1957. In between selections, Shelby speaks about the importance of music in civil rights movements.

Marcus Shelby Quartet
Sat, 7:30pm, Free
Online Event

“People think the Earth is flat again,” Chris Porter begins one bit, before quickly losing his patience. “Have you ever seen a lunar eclipse? Has it ever just been a line across the moon?” This weekend, the Kansas-born comedian, best known as a finalist on season 4 of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, comes to the Improv for five shows. Since his stint on NBC, he’s appeared on Comedy Central Presents and released two specials on Amazon—Ugly and Angry and Man From Kansas—and has toured the country’s comedy club circuit. Now’s the chance to see what Porter’s been cooking up during the pandemic.

Chris Porter
Fri-Sun, Various Times, $20
The Improv, San Jose

Nothing warms the soul quite like the blistering riffs of heavy metal, and Uproar Brewing Co. promises to live up to its name when it ushers in the weekend with a full roster of rockers. Experimental metal outfit Gürschach (pronounced grr-shock) have been shredding across the Bay since 2015, and celebrate the release of their new album, Hypnotic Disasters, this Friday. East Bay Thrash band Frolic and SF’s In Spades open the evening, and psych-tinged weirdos White Fuzzy Bloodbath will get every headbanger in the room psyched for the headlining set of this all-ages show.

Gurschach
Fri, 8pm, $10
LVL Uproar, San Jose

This writer is utterly devastated to realize that early 2010s music has now come around for its time in the nostalgia spotlight. The once forward-thinking jams of MGMT, STRFKR, Foster the People and alt-J now bring listeners back to a simpler time, when one could dance with friends and do crazy things like “leave the house without getting sick.” The glistening synths, bright guitars, slinky rhythms and carefree lyricism of the time are now a tonic to the low morale that has become our norm—but an electric torch burns on at The Ritz this Thursday.

Electric Feels
Thu, 9pm, $20
The Ritz, San Jose

Jack Harlow isn’t afraid to ask bold questions of his listeners, such as in his song “WHATS POPPIN,” which dares to ask—what is popping? The answer of course is “Jack Harlow’s career,” as the man has been on a meteoric rise to the top of the rap game since his 2020 debut That’s What They All Say. Based on streaming numbers alone, it is statistically difficult to not be exposed to Harlow’s tasteful beat choices and trance inducing flow. He’s collaborated with everyone at the summit of today’s pop music, but his signature style needs no accompaniment when he brings the party to San Jose.

Jack Harlow
Thu, 8pm, $34.50+
San Jose Civic, San Jose