The faint hum of lights and scratching of pencils filled the room. Glass instruments and formula sheets lined the walls like decoration, and the teacher stood at the whiteboard, his voice a steady rhythmic cadence as he explained the laws of thermodynamics with fluidity. He didn’t shout or rush; he simply delivered the information as reliably and calmly as gravity itself.
However, Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction, so when the bells ring at 4:30 p.m., he betrays the quiet life of education and turns the amp up as he performs with his band of other teachers: Smoke-N-Six Guns. Whether holding a marker or a guitar, science teacher Mr. Richard Muenich is always performing.
“I have been with the band for about 30 years,” Muenich said. “We play gigs every so often, and right now, we practice every other week or so.”
To Muenich, Smoke-N-Six Guns is more than a side project; it’s a decade-spanning partnership between him and his bandmates.
“My best friend Vance is one of the members; he’s like a brother,” Muenich said. “We’ve traveled all over the world together and started playing not so much for a job but more so for fun.”
This sense of camaraderie between Muenich and his fellow band members is pivotal to releasing the stress of a school day. While his classroom requires constant composure, focus and rigor, the band offers a space where the only requirement is to enjoy the music being played.
“I’ve been playing for many decades, so it’s become very easy and kind of relaxing,” Muenich said. “I’m good with patterns, so I learn the songs pretty quickly, and from there, it’s just rehearsal.”
This mastery of the instrument, coupled with the band’s unique circumstances as teachers and friends, allows them to do more than just repeat a melody. It gives them the freedom to experiment.
“We are not a copy band, we are a cover band,” Muenich said. “If you are going to do something in the same way someone else has already done, what’s the point?”
This philosophy is even more evident in the group’s willingness to cross genres and add unexpected twists to existing art. Most recently, they have taken the modern pop anthem, Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” and rebuilt it into a hard rock power ballad. The band aims to create “reconstructions” of songs they like in a way that is completely their own. Not a copy, not a cover, but something even deeper.
“We take songs that people know and that they remember, but we do them in our own way,” Muenich said. “We try to create our own versions of these songs.”
While the bi-weekly rehearsals serve as a hobby and a way to relax, the ultimate goal is the “performance” that mirrors his daily presentations at the whiteboard. Smoke-N-Six Guns doesn’t just play for themselves; they bring their unique genre-bending covers to the public with their next show scheduled for April.
“Right now, we are only practicing so often, but when a gig comes up, we usually ramp up our practice,” Muenich said.
Whether swinging his marker across the board like a conductor leading his students or skillfully plucking the strings of a bass on stage, Muenich understands that the laws of physics are constant, but the way in which you present them is an art form. As the amps hum to life, the science teacher disappears, replaced by a musician who knows that the best way to explain the world isn’t through formulas and arithmetic but through the smooth buzz of a bass-line.
