The American Cancer Society’s Redmond/Kirkland Relay for Life happens June 7-8 from noon Saturday to 9 a.m. Sunday at Redmond High School (RHS) Stadium, 17272 NE 104th St. Teams and individuals will walk the track in honor of a friend or family member who has cancer, is a cancer survivor or lost their life to cancer.

Events at the Relay can be highly emotional, but to celebrate the victories in the battle against this dreaded disease, there’s entertainment, too.

Jim DeJoy, who teaches English, science-fiction and film classes at RHS, will be a part of that, in his “alter-ego” as drummer for the classic rock trio The Evin Rudes. The band will perform at 5 p.m. Saturday.

DeJoy has been playing music about 35 years and has been in this band for 10 years. “It’s more for the music than for money,” he said. “We only play Fridays and Saturdays a few times a month. It’s a lot of fun.”

He doesn’t tell students about his gigs but sometimes information leaks out, mostly from the music teachers, he said.

The Evin Rudes play hits from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Their repertoire includes The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Grand Funk and John Mellencamp.

Among DeJoy’s best memories as a musician was doing warm-up and back-up duties for Mitch Ryder at the 2001 Issaquah Music Festival. When he tells students about it, they often don’t know who Ryder is, until he mentions the song “Devil in a Blue Dress.”

He added, “lots of good musicians are here underground, but I couldn’t have done this job (teaching) for 30 years without music as an outlet.”

Which is not to say he doesn’t enjoy teaching.

He likes presenting American literature such as “The Crucible,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and more modern works such as Sherman Alexie’s novels. And in his film classes, they study units on political movies, Westerns, movies about brothers and more. His classroom is filled with movie posters and student art including tributes to long-departed, but not forgotten actors James Dean and Steve McQueen.

Classic rock, classic movies, it’s all good stuff.

To learn more about The Evin Rudes, visit www.theevinrudes.com.

Also performing at the Redmond/Kirkland Relay for Life on June 7 are Brickhouse (1 p.m.) Indy Cabaret Rock (3 p.m.), a mix of local youth talent (4 p.m.) and Redmond/Kirkland heroes Shotty at 6 p.m.

For details about the Relay, call 1-800-ACS-2345, visit www.cancer.org or e-mail the local event chair at elbecker@gmail.com.

Contact Redmond Reporter Reporter Mary Stevens Decker at mdecker@redmond-reporter.com or (425) 867-0353, ext. 5052.

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