Justin Kautzman is not a person who does one thing.

On August 15th, his band Black Shepherd will play the Westport Art Festival from 11 a.m. to noon at the Westport Marina, day one of a two-day festival that runs through the 16th. This time, his teenage son Connor will be behind the kit. Connor, a student at Ocosta Junior-Senior High, has sat in with his dad's other project, the Pajammin Band, for a few gigs, but this summer he's been stepping up as Black Shepherd's drummer.

Black Shepherd

Black Shepherd is the project most people around Grays Harbor would recognize Justin's name from, a heavy blues-rock band built on songs he writes himself, words and music both. The name goes back to Korea, where Justin was stationed in the Army. He was playing solo and trying to pull away from the country covers everyone locally back home wanted. He'd gotten into Black Sabbath and Black Label Society, and he had a shepherd dog at the time. Black Shepherd started as a name only he and a couple of friends knew, something he brought with him when he started playing regularly at Westport VFW's open Friday nights, hosted by Steve Markham. That's where he met drummer Steve Stoken, and the two of them started building the band around Justin's originals.

Mike Johnson drummed for Black Shepherd and also engineered a lot of their recording. He was as much a creative partner as a rhythm section. Between the two of them, the band got weird in ways Justin clearly loves telling stories about. One song came out of an experiment where they rolled Dungeons & Dragons dice to generate the notes and build the melody. The result landed somewhere near a Rage Against the Machine song that is about Halo, the video game. By Justin's account, it's still one of the most fun songs they play live, and the crowd yells the title ("Kill the Elites") back at them every time.

Justin has played nearly every kind of room this stretch of coast has to offer: two borrowed parking spaces on a waterfront street, a Cinco de Mayo/May the Fourth taco party in the VFW's echoing back building with the loudest metal bands he could find, and a city park show in South Bend that happened to be sharing a field with a state softball tournament. It's the same advice he would give any young local musicians just starting out. "Get creative and play anywhere you can!"

Somewhere in the middle of all this, and maybe the future of it, is Connor. He's the kid who, at five years old, used to wander out of his room to correct his dad's songwriting.

Justin has an instinct to build something out of whoever's around, and whatever's on hand. In fact, he has another band where that is the entire premise.

Pajammin Band

There's a rule in the Pajammin Band. No practice. No set lineup. No rehearsal. Sometimes you don't even know who's showing up until they walk through the door. That's not a mistake. That's the whole point. A one-night band.

Justin started the Pajammin Band a few years ago out of pure necessity. He was handling bookings and promotions for local bars around Hoquiam, Aberdeen, and Westport, connecting bands with venues, helping with social media and graphic design. Every now and then, a call would come in about a gig falling apart, and a bar would say on a Wednesday, "Hey, do you have a band that can play Friday or Saturday night?"

The honest answer was usually no. That's a hard thing to pull together on short notice. But Justin had something almost as good: a phone full of musicians who could figure it out.

"So one day I was just like, 'Hey, I'm gonna call three or four of my friends that I know can play music, and we'll put a set list together,'" he says. "And we're just gonna tell everyone we didn't practice. This was last minute. The band canceled. We're here. This is what you get, and you get it how you get it, because we have not ever done this together."

It was a hit. People loved it.

The pajamas were his idea too, a way to make it more fun than just another cover band. Why not wear pajamas to jam with musicians from completely different acts, figuring it out together, live, in real time? It's part performance, part controlled chaos.

The Pajammin Band is never the same band twice. Sometimes it's three people, sometimes six. Singers rotate through the songs they know, everyone's phone propped up with a chord chart pulled off the internet, and, hopefully (it usually does), it comes together. You get the drummer from one band and the guitar player from another, and when you put them together you get something nobody could have planned. That's the show.

The rotating cast of musicians has included: Larry Cowles, Mike Peterson, Aaron Vessey, Anna Sora Kim, Steve Krauth, Honey Joe, Amy Graham, Connor Kautzman, and Terrish Bilbrey, to name a few.

Apparently musicians want in on the fun. "I've had people say, 'Can I get a turn in the Pajammin Band? How does that work?'" Justin says. "And I'm like, someone just needs to have an opening, and a reason to call the Pajammin Band."

The Pajammin Band doesn't just play bars. It's played fundraisers and schools too, including a benefit for the South Beach Tsunami Wrestling Team, The Ocosta School Band, and a preschool show at the Washington Elementary building in Hoquiam that's become its own small tradition. For the first preschool gig, Justin got a call and had about three hours to find a band. He rounded up drummer Larry Cowles, and the two of them played, filtering their normal bar set down to whatever felt cleanest for a room full of three- and four-year-olds. The kids ended up down on the gym floor, helping Larry hit the drums, stepping on Justin's foot pedals, and dancing to Judas Priest.

The school asked Justin back the next year. He didn't have anyone free, so he played it solo. The year after that, he brought Steve, a Pajammin Band regular who has kids of his own and knows exactly what lands with that age group. And this most recent year, Justin finally had the full lineup available, the version of the band he knew would work. Terrish Bilbrey, one of the rotating front people, was an easy call; she's the kind of performer who gets out into the crowd and moves, and she had four-year-olds dancing with her the whole set. Terrish wants everyone to know, “Justin is a great contributor to the community through music.”

Off Stage

By day, Justin teaches adult basic education, high school completion classes, and some GED work at Stafford Creek Corrections Center, through Grays Harbor College, the same college where he earned his own teaching degree. He spent four years subbing in Hoquiam and Aberdeen schools first, chasing music programs when he could, before landing at Stafford Creek. He didn't set out to teach in a prison specifically; he just knew he liked teaching adults more than kids. "I definitely don't wanna teach math to middle schoolers," he says, only half joking. His goal is to help inmates realize that learning can be fun and fulfilling, and to give them tools to keep learning and build confidence.

Before the classroom, Justin served in the Army, stationed in Texas and then Korea. He was playing music the whole time, using on-base recording studios in his off hours, making songs and videos with whoever was around.

Not long after his service ended, his brain stem herniated. Justin mentions it almost in passing, the way people do when a story is too long and too personal for a straight line. It's not clear what caused the injury, and the Army said there was no proof it was their responsibility. His legs stopped working; he was in a wheelchair, and then he relearned to walk at the same time Connor was learning to walk. "We would go out together," he says. "As far as his little legs could take him was as far as my broken legs could take me. We could rest at the same time."

He can, by his own description, function like a normal adult these days.

On August 15th, he'll be on stage at the Westport Art Festival, and this time, Connor, now a teenager, will be the one keeping time behind him.

Justin Kautzman, Grays Harbor's Music Community Connector

Black Shepherd

Pajammin Band

Off Stage

What Happened at the Meeting- July Edition