When high school student Chad Toffy is not designing zines mocking his gym teacher for supporting ICE or distributing underground newspapers blasting Montesano High School administrators for their complicity in what he calls “the evils of the Standardized Testing Industrial Complex,” the sophomore trumpet player devotes his seemingly boundless reserves of creative energy to music.
And according to sources who have witnessed his frenetic performances with his school’s jazz band, marching band, wind ensemble, and a side project with sludge metal legends the Melvins, Toffy may just be the next Jello Biafra.
Montesano High Jazz Band Director Sam Robinson attested to Toffy’s musical chops, while acknowledging that his mischievously confrontational approach to political activism has made Toffy some enemies amongst the band program’s booster club.
“I’ve never worked with a young trumpet player who was as quick a study of Miles Davis pieces,” Robinson said, “And yet, Chad’s melodramatic grandstanding rubs some people the wrong way. I suppose his prolific musical output and penchant for pranksterism are what remind aging punks in our community of the former Dead Kennedys frontman. He could have just quietly refused to sell fruit snacks for the marching band’s Disneyland trip fundraiser without live-streaming his 3-day hunger strike. But he wanted to protest band kids being coerced into what he feels are exploitative schemes that normalize child labor.”
Bill Wesley, the father of a Montesano High senior who is a member of the school’s drum line, hopes to get Toffy to join his son’s punk band, Three Chord Monte.
“I couldn’t understand how some fifteen-year-old kid got hooked up with the Melvins, but when I saw his marching band arrangement of ‘Honey Bucket’ had students moshing in the bleachers at the homecoming football game, I realized this little dude is a badass,” Wesley said. “But if he’s really his generation’s Jello Biafra, he should be doing gigs with more than just four bands. Besides, right now, the country could use a new rendition of ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ with a wicked ear-piercing trumpet solo!”
At press time, Toffy announced he may take a hiatus from his school’s music program during his junior year to embark on a spoken word tour.
