Apple Valley High School

Musical journey brings area grads back home

It all started with a note posted on the bulletin board at Schmitt Music in Burnsville.

JP Bouvet was a sixth-grader when he answered Mike Linden’s homemade “drummer wanted” ad nearly a decade ago.

Since then, the two have joined forces in three bands – starting with the pint-sized prog rock trio named Y? – on a musical journey that now finds them rooming together as students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

“That’s the only time I’ve ever answered a bulletin board ad, and it’s kind of changed the course of my life,” said Bouvet, a 2009 Lakeville South High School graduate.

He and guitarist Linden, who graduated from Apple Valley High School in 2008, will be making a return to their old stomping grounds this month to perform three Twin Cities concerts with their current band, The Super Pilots.

The jazz-funk-rock quartet includes Bouvet and Linden’s Berklee classmates Jason Weiss on bass and Dave Mackay on keys. Their mini Midwest tour opens with club shows at Big V’s in St. Paul (Aug. 13) and Whiskey Junction in Minneapolis (Aug. 14), and concludes with a set at Burnsville’s Art & All That Jazz festival on Saturday, Aug. 20, from 4 to 5:30 p.m.

It won’t be the first time Bouvet and Linden have taken the stage in Nicollet Commons Park for Art & All That Jazz. Before The Super Pilots, they were in The Penguins, a jazz-fusion quintet that included high school friends Stephanie Wieseler, Bobby Homan and Dan Rosenbush.

The Penguins played Art & All That Jazz in 2009 and 2010, but college has landed the group’s members in different time zones – Wieseler joined Bouvet and Linden on the East Coast while Homan and Rosenbush stayed in Minnesota – and Bouvet reports that The Penguins are no more.

“It was awesome while it lasted, but we’ve all kind of gone in different directions,” he said.

More about The Super Pilots, including tracks from their new EP “What Am I?”, is at www.thesuperpilots.com .

Andrew Miller is at andrew.miller@ecm-inc.com.

Apple Valley's Volk and Gross Win National Wrestling Titles ...

More than 4,000 high school wrestlers competed in July in the 41st annual ASICS/Vaughan Cadet and Junior Nationals —the world's largest wrestling tournament, held at the FargoDome in Fargo, ND.

When it was all said and done, none of them achieved the success that Apple Valley High School wrestler Gannon Volk achieved.

Volk captured Cadet National freestyle and Greco-Roman titles at 91 pounds. In April, he won the Cadet Nationals Folkstyle title in Cedar Falls, IA, to win the coveted USA Wrestling Triple Crown in the Cadet division, meaning he won national titles in all three styles of wrestling.

Folkstyle is the style in which American youth and high school wrestlers compete. Freestyle is a more open style, while Greco-Roman involves only upper-body moves. Freestyle and Greco-Roman are styles used throughout the world and in international and Olympic competition.

Volk was the only wrestler in the nation to achieve the feat this year; in the history of USA Wrestling, only 10 wrestlers have achieved triple-crown status.

The Cadet and Junior Nationals in Fargo is the premier high school wrestling event in the country, said Andrew Hipps, senior editor and owner of Minnesota-based intermatwrestle.com , a website that covers wrestling on a national level.

“The nation's best high school wrestlers put it on the line in Fargo,” said Hipps. "It’s a grind. ... Champions have to win 10 or more matches over three days. The arena is filled with college wrestling coaches who are looking to land recruits, so it's a great opportunity for high school wrestlers to get noticed by college coaches." [["validates_presence_of",{"message":"Please enter your email address."}],["validates_length_of",{"too_long":"Your email address must contain between 5 and 100 characters.","maximum":100,"allow_nil":true}],["validates_email_format_of",{"message":"Your email address is not properly formatted. Mind giving it another shot?"}],["validates_uniqueness_of",{"message":"The email address you entered is being used by another member. Please try a different address.","client_can_validate":true,"exists_url":"/users/exists?email="}]] [["validates_presence_of",{"message":"Please enter your password."}],["validates_length_of",{"too_short":"Your password must contain between 4 and 40 characters.","too_long":"Your password must contain between 4 and 40 characters.","allow_nil":true,"minimum":4,"maximum":40}],["validates_format_of",{"message":"Your password may contain only letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens. No emoticons, please. :p","with":["^[a-zA-Z0-9\\_\\-]*?

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