The ol’ pro leading one of Iowa’s best bands
Our columnist has been following Heath Pattschull since he spotted the rising star in the high school jazz championships back in 1991. Pattschull has delivered on all the promise he showed back then.
JEFFERSON, Iowa – Told you so.
Actually, what I told you in a column 32 years ago in the Des Moines Register was that Heath Alan Pattschull, then a senior at Cedar Falls High School, was one of the best high school musicians Iowa had ever produced, especially if we’re talking jazz musicians.
Now, at 50 years old and based in Des Moines, Pattchull has delivered on that early promise.
He is one of the best and busiest band leaders in the state. Blues, rock, jazz, swing, country, soul, theatrical, even a spiritual now and then. He and his various groups can do it all.
Lauren Vilmain and Heath Alan Pattschull performing in Jefferson on Saturday.
He is the consummate professional performer – engaging with his audience, chatty and fun. If he is ever profane, he is only lightly so and will probably roll his eyes in apology, too. In other words, he fits very well on your town square or in your favorite restaurants and nightspots. You’ll be entertained. You won’t be embarrassed.
On Saturday, he brought his new band, “Heath Alan & The Deep Roots” to our town of Jefferson for a two-hour midday concert during the “Art in the Garden” festival in the beautiful Thomas Jefferson Gardens of Greene County, just off the southeast corner of the courthouse square.
They were an absolute smash. The festival crowd was riveted. Passers-by were lured in by the high-spirited sounds. Kids were dancing on skateboards on Chestnut Street just outside the gardens.
I believe this may become the best band I’ve heard and seen Pattschull assemble.
Pattschull at what he does best.
He’s the leader, of course, playing a couple different saxophones, guitar and for a couple numbers doing percussion with a stiff brush and tambourine. And two other old pros give the band a real steadiness – Erich Gaukel on bass guitar and John Mattingly on keyboard.
Four 20-somethings bring high-level music educations to the band – guitar player Jack Curtis and drummer Andrew Gjersvik, both recent graduates of Drake University, as well as two from the famous Juilliard School in New York City, trumpet player Nate Sparks and baritone sax player Anthony Orji.
And splitting vocals with Pattschull is another Drake music grad, Lauren Vilmain, who also sings with the highly-regarded “NOLA Jazz Band” in Des Moines. She’s sensational.
“I’m not knocking anybody else I’ve ever played with, because I’ve played with all kinds of great musicians,” said Pattschull, who has his own music degree from the University of Northern Iowa. “You know, some of them were self-taught, played by ear and never learned to read music. Having these people in this band who come with music educations, it’s letting me do more composing again – putting notes on paper. I can do that, come in and hand them a score, and they can all do it right away. It’s just another level of music.”
So Pattschull brings all his professional experience, as well as his music education to the band’s leadership. And his early family background, which he describes as always loving but often rough, made him a prodigy.
His grandparents on one side of his family were church organists, and on the other side were instrumentalists. His mother was a singer in touring blues bands.
This artwork by iconic Cedar Falls artist Gary Kelley will be on the cover of Pattschull’s new album.
Some of all that will be told in the songs on a new album Pattschull has just completed, “Light Blue Hiawatha.” It’s named for the bicycle his grandmother Sandra Jones Page rode all over the northeast Iowa town of Nashua in her middle adulthood.
“She rode that bicycle to help herself cope with the tough things she had going on in her life,” Pattschull said. “She inspired me in a lot of ways. I learned a lot from her. And, truth is, the reason I wrote these new songs and put the album together is to share the stories and the lessons with my own kids.”
I first met Pattschull in 1991 just after he had electrified the big audience for the Iowa Jazz Championships at the Des Moines Civic Center in Des Moines. He starred on alto saxophone for the Cedar Falls High School Jazz Band, which finished runner-up to a great band from Sioux City North High School. But the highlight of championship night was Pattschull’s closing solo in his band’s performance, and it brought a standing ovation from the crowd of 1,500.
Intrigued, I drove to Cedar Falls a few days later to interview him, and learned that his parents had split, were living out of town, and Heath was staying in his own apartment.
We gave young Pattschull big time coverage when he starred in high school.
“You just don’t see stage presence like his in many teenagers,” I wrote back then. “He bounces, he sways, he swoops and he boogies. He puts his face into it. There are times when you wonder whether his head or his Yamaha is going to explode first.
“Hot? Certainly,” I continued. “Maybe hotdog, in a delightful way.”
Jazz music, he told me then, “is great. The literature of it is terrific. But for the average audience, that’s not enough. You’ll put ’em to sleep if you just stand up there and play it. You’ve got to get into it. It’s the emotion you put into it that makes it come alive for them.
“I show a little soul on stage, and when I do, it’s not something I learned in a textbook. It’s real. I’ve lived it.”
Pattschull won a full-ride scholarship to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, home of one of the best college jazz programs in America. He had terrific experiences there, getting playing time with some of the great professional bands doing shows in Vegas. But he saw enough of the lifestyle in music’s big time that he decided to return to Iowa and finish his college education at UNI.
In his young adult years, he wrote songs and toured with “Bob Dorr and the Blue Band,” and by now has played with many other regional bands, too. He’s been inducted twice in the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
One of the trumpet players in that long-ago Cedar Falls High School band was Pattschull’s girlfriend, Beth Graff, a year younger. They eventually married, and now have children Dylan, 24, an Iowa State graduate who is marrying in two weeks, and Sarah, 21, who is nearing graduate from Iowa State.
Makin’ it fun, all along the way.
The Pattschulls have emphasized a solid home life, despite all of Heath’s music. The schedule became easier when he retired after teaching 25 years at the Johnston Community Schools, where he was the “transition coordinator,” working to help students with disabilities get ready for college, jobs or supported living.
Heath Pattschull, I’m happy to report now, is as good a guy as he is a musician.
You could tell it when he spoke to the crowd during the concert here Saturday.
“You know, I really like Jefferson, I really do,” Patschull said in one break between numbers. “I’ve played here many times. I like your promotion of the arts. You’ve put sculptures on the square. Art on the rooftops downtown here. I like what you’re doing in development for the future. I thank you for inviting us. And if we can ever do anything for this town, you let me know.”
--
You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.
--
Other members of “Heath Alan & The Deep Roots” are shown below here during their performance in Jefferson.
Lauren Vilmain, with Heath Alan Pattschull on guitar and Nate Sparks ready to come in on trumpet. Barely visible to the left of Vilmain is keyboard player John Mattingly.
Veteran bass player Erich Gaukel and drummer Andrew Gjersvik.
Jack Curtis plays guitar.
John Mattingly on keyboard.
Nate Sparks on trumpet and Anthony Orji on baritone saxophone.
—
Wow! Thank you for telling us about the lovely day in Jefferson. I am so sorry to have missed the magic. Thank you, as well. for introducing a couple of old people to Heath Pattschull and the talented people in the band. I love his name. His parents must have looked at him and said "He's definitely a jazz musician"! We will be looking for the new album with the awesome cover art.
Heath is a fantastic musician! Thank you for writing about him again. Another great artist and musician you are fortunate to have in your beautiful community is Chad Elliott. I hope you get to know him. His musical partner, Kathryn Severing Fox, is celebrating her debut album with Chad on Wednesday at the Temple Theatre in Des Moines. (They’re playing as the Weary Ramblers at the famous Byron’s in Pomeroy tonight.)