Drew Lafferty has the world on a string with Big Band concert

“How do I feel? I feel like the real deal.”

 

Drew Lafferty sat in one of the several creaky chairs in the band practice room, all of which had been filled just minutes before. Over 150 people had gathered that night, April 5, to watch him and his 18-piece band perform a set of 14 classic jazz standards — old-timers made new by the sophomore cinematic arts student.

 

“Drew Lafferty and his Swing Set, Live!” the posters had proclaimed the event weeks before. It was set in black and white, just like Lafferty’s vision to transport his audience back to a 1940s soundstage. I say “back to” because, meeting Lafferty, one would think him a time traveler from 1945. He is precise with every word he speaks in an almost trans-Atlantic accent, with hardly a filler to be found. His knowledge of jazz history as a timeless cultural staple — or as the basis for popular music as we know it, according to him — transcends his age.

 

But Lafferty’s own story did not start in a 1940s soundstage. It started back home in Virginia when his mother Patty Lafferty would take him to see jazz bands in Stanton Gypsy Hill Park back home in Stanton, Virginia. The park is renowned for hosting the Stonewall Jackson Brigade Band in its white gazebo-like amphitheater.

 

That is where the seed of Lafferty’s love of jazz germinated. But the seed itself was planted by his father Chuck Lafferty, who had sung in the Waynesboro Chorale Society before he died of cancer. Lafferty, who was adopted by Chuck and Patty Lafferty as Andrew Kent Lafferty, was about four years old at the time.

 

“I put everything into Andrew after that, because he was it — he was my life after my best friend died,” Patty, who Drew’s band affectionately calls “Mama Lafferty,” said. “I tried to give him every opportunity to do whatever he wanted to do. I put him in Valley Music Academy as a toddler just to get music experience, but I didn’t want to push him into music because his dad sang.”

 

But Lafferty channeled his father’s memory on that April evening in 2018 through his father’s musical inspiration, his father’s high school class ring, even to his shirt studs on the crisp white shirt supported by old-fashioned suspenders under a tuxedo jacket. Lafferty might have worn his dad’s tie had he not worn it out. But Chuck had been well-represented in the night’s performance. Lafferty said that he sang for his father, for God and for everyone who has supported his art up to now.

 

“(My dad) is the reason that my songs have a passion to them that they do,” Lafferty said. “It’s not just him though; it’s the people that tell me they love the music, and that they hear the original singer in what I do. One person says they hear Bobby Darin in me. Someone else says Sammy Davis Jr. Another person says Michael Bublé. And I’d say the top dog is chairman of the board — ‘old blue eyes’ Frank Sinatra. You can hear in his music that he doesn’t just focus on singing the song… if you’re truly good, you’re an artist. You tell a story, and I hope that I’ve done that.”

 

The band practice room where we sat and talked was now quiet and the lights faded out if we stayed still for too long. That certainly was not the case earlier. Couples swing danced in the back of the packed room while Lafferty crooned the bouncy Jerome Kern classic “The Way You Look Tonight,” and coolly slid through the Newely-Bricusse staple “Feeling Good.”

 

Lafferty told a story with every song. Lafferty gushed about the legendary partnership between Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle in writing and arranging iconic hits such as “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “I’ve Got the World on a String.” Lafferty then painted a narrative picture of a neon-lit scene at Doc’s Diner as a prelude to his Billy Joel-esque rendition of “One For My Baby,” a soulful aside from the refrains of “New York, New York” and playful notes of “Blue Moon.”

 

But most striking was the evening’s closing piece: “Come on Home,” a 1978 song written and composed by musician Dave Boyer, who has been called “the Frank Sinatra of Christian music” throughout the years. As Drew Lafferty was obtaining rights and arrangements for each song in his set, his interaction directly with Boyer set this song apart all the more.

 

“I got the call while I was shaving in the morning and it was from Florida,” Lafferty said.

 

Boyer noted that while he still had to charge Drew Lafferty for the song, he loved what the budding entertainer was doing at Liberty and offered a reduced price on the arrangement. Drew Lafferty carried the hand-written note of encouragement from Boyer in his tux coat pocket.

 

“He knew Frank Sinatra and sang with Frank and Dean Martin on the Tonight Show,” Lafferty said, telling Boyer’s story. “Right before he made music, he was a drug addict, completely away from God. He came back to faith and started recording songs about God in the big band style of music. This song grew on me, as it’s actually about a guy coming to Christ.  My favorite line in that song is ‘I’ve been expecting your call.’ This is about coming on home; your past doesn’t matter at all.”

 

“Come on Home” was to Drew Lafferty that night what “My Way” was to Frank Sinatra — a signature left on an audience that will surely live on as long as Drew Lafferty continues to build his band and perform aside from school work.

 

Drew Lafferty and his Swing Set are slated to try out for Christmas Coffeehouse 2018, just as they did for Christmas Coffeehouse 2017 where they performed “The Man with the Bag.” Drew Lafferty himself will next be performing with the LU Jazz Ensemble on April 23 at 7:30 p.m., in the School of Music’s Grand Concert Hall.