By Brandon HENSLEY

Almost daily, Jere Mendelsohn will put on a record by The Beatles. In this age of warped egotism and what it takes to navigate the music business, the famous quartet helps remind him why he started playing music in the first place.
Music used to have a mystique, he explained. The way his generation soaked in what rang out from transistor radios resonated in a way seemingly incompatible with the 99-cent download, buy-my-merch-on-Twitter-and-check-my-Instagram culture that has run over the industry.
Instead, Mendelsohn, who teaches English at Verdugo Hills High School, is a back-to-basics kind of guy. The singer-songwriter grew up in a time when, as he puts it, “You couldn’t go online and see what your favorite guitar player had for lunch that day.”
On Mendelsohn’s new album, Old Sins, Long Shadows, the guitarist seeks to capture that ineffable feeling of days gone by when a certain chord, riff or drum fill recalled a special feeling for the listener.
He’s not into making pastiches of The Rolling Stones or Roy Orbison – though the riff on his album’s title track sounds like the former and the vibe on “Mr. Plan B” feels like the latter – but those are just two of the many older artists he’s inspired by. Mendelsohn loves the craft of classic songwriting; his views on the shift in how newer artists are promoted are a different story.
“When I came up, it was about being the best musician you can be as opposed to being the best entrepreneur,” he said. “Now younger players come at it from the standpoint of, ‘I have to be a marketing executive concurrent with my musical style.’”
Mendelsohn will play The Rose in Pasadena on Sunday at 6 p.m., opening for Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. He calls it fitting as his first ever gig when he graduated from Musicians Institute was opening for Peter York, also of The Monkees.
Pianist Darice Bailey, drummer Ed Eblen and bassist Brian Netzley were the main contributors to Old Sins and Long Shadows, which Mendelsohn said took two years to make. The life of teaching by day, playing gigs and recording an album by night, isn’t for everyone, but as long as Mendelsohn has a 5-Hour Energy in hand, he’s fine.
“The playing part never feels like work. It’s the driving two hours after work to a gig that can be challenging,” he said. “I love it too much to stop.”
His students are impressed he can play guitar, joking that they’re always flabbergasted he can do something other than bore them. While the guitar was always in his blood, it was teaching that came to him out of necessity, to provide for his family. Mendelsohn has since used music in his daily lessons, like teaching the 12-bar blues structure for poetry. He’ll also take in those “geeky guitar kids,” with whom he identifies, during free time because he knows the power of playing music at such a young age.
Mendelsohn and his band will try to capture that feeling on Sunday, and all the other shows he hopes to play afterward.
“We’re going to go out and play like we’re teenagers. We’re just going to have fun with it,” he said. “My playing’s better, my singing’s better, my approach to the music is more refined, but it’s the same person that’s still alive in me,” he said.
For ticket information on Sunday’s show, visit https://tikly.co/events/2072/. For more information about Jere Mendelsohn, visit jeremendelsohn.com.