A Sedona band had a homecoming Oct. 18, playing the Sedona Performing Arts Center for students of Sedona Red Rock High School.

The Oak Creek Band is fronted by two SRRHS alumni, Daniel Watters and Jenna Cunningham. Make that Jenna Watters now, as the former classmates, longtime friends and current bandmates got married Sept. 10 at Indian Gardens Park in Oak Creek Canyon.

The band’s tour served as a working honeymoon. They worked their way from San Francisco to San Diego before turning east to Phoenix, Flagstaff and Sedona.

The Oak Creek Band plays an eclectic mix of alternative, indie rock and folk with heavily lyrical lines, but also has songs that dip into funk and border on bluegrass.

The band played for Sedona Red Rock High School’s fifth period in a concert set up by humanities teacher Karyl Goldsmith.

“It was a lot better response than we were anticipating,” Jenna Watters said. “I remember that we used to heckle all the acts that came through. But we got a good response.”

Watters said the band has heard a lot of positive feedback from the students via social networking sites like Facebook.

Backing the Watterses in The Oak Creek Band are Steve Rogers on bass, Seth Evans on accordion, banjo, keyboard and vocals, and former Sedona resident Paul Morris on guitar and keyboard.

The band has about six drummers who sit in until they find a permanent player. Former Sedona resident Adam Wolin had played with the band in California. Sedona drummer Lou Moretti has most recently joined the tour for its final Colorado portion.

The band is effectively home now, but playing gigs in the mountainous Colorado towns of Vail, Breckenridge and Telluride.

The Oak Creek Band played the old SRRHS auditorium in 2006, years before the Sedona Performing Arts Center was built. Jenna Watters said the new performance hall has better acoustics and visual aesthetics.

“I would love to see an orchestra in there,” she said. “They should get the bigger acts that come through to play there.”

Jenna and Daniel Watters have a long history in Sedona’s music scene.

Daniel Watters started playing music as soon as he got his hands on a guitar around age 10. He studied jazz and composed jazz arrangements in high school, and twice played in the Arizona All-State Jazz Band and the annual Sedona Jazz on the Rocks Festival.

At the same time, he was the front man and lyricist of several local rock and ska bands.

Jenna Watters has been singing all her life, beginning in church. When she was a junior in high school, she quit the basketball team to perform in the SRRHS production of the musical “Bye Bye, Birdie.”

The two were friends throughout high school but had never performed together. They were asked to sing together for their graduation ceremony in 2005, and chose to perform Simon & Garfunkel’s 1970 classic “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Daniel Watters played the inaugural GumptionFest arts festival a month later with Morris’ band Liquid Theory. Watters also recorded his first solo album “The All Day Dreamer’s LP” in Richard Salem’s studio and released it in Sedona.

Daniel Watters said he and Jenna hung out over the summer before heading off to college, she to Arizona State University in Tempe and he to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She said she and Daniel kind of pursued music together half-heartedly, performing together a few times during that summer.

Jenna Watters left college after a year and traveled Europe. During her sojourn, she and Daniel Watters began to write music long distance via correspondence.

Jenna Watters returned to states and moved to Denver. She said after Daniel graduated from Loyola Marymount, he wanted to live in the same state so they could continue collaborating musically, so he joined her in Denver.

The pair soon formed a band, finding their bandmates via Craigslist. In terms of a name, Oak Creek was a big part of their lives, and the name stuck, she said.

Jenna Watters said they soon moved in together as platonic friends, living as roommates for months before they began dating. They started getting romantically involved slowly, Jenna Watters said.

“We didn’t want a relationship to interfere with us creatively or professionally,” she said. “But we listened to our hearts.”

The pair continued to play, perform and tour together as their relationship continued to strengthen. In September, the Watters tied the knot and hit the road again.

“After getting married, after writing and being creative together, it’s a sweeter thing than we expected,” Jenna Watters said.

The band has returned to the Sedona area often, most recently playing in a tour gig at a West Sedona bar on Sept. 23 and the Love4Amanda fundraiser in July. The concert benefitted Amanda Coughlin, a 20-year-old SRRHS alumna recently diagnosed with cancer. Jenna Watters said the Cunningham and Coughlin families have been longtime friends.

The Oak Creek Band just started to record the next album before the tour began. The group heads back into the studio Friday, Nov. 11, Daniel Watters said, with a projected release date of February or March. The band will head back on tour then, but may also be back earlier in January as both the Watterses have family in the Sedona area.

Jenna Watters said the single “2012” off the new album is definitely the one to listen for.

“It’s a song about how basically as a band and as a world we can change,” she said.