If it’s the day of an ASU swim and dive meet, the song “Jungleland” by Bruce Springsteen will be playing in Caleb Veazey’s ears through his headphones as he waits for his race to be called.

Music has always been a part of the freshman swimmer’s life.

It was a refuge for Veazey when he was younger. He first picked the guitar up at the age of 11 during a rough time in his childhood when he was teased for being overweight.

“I was pretty fat when I was younger, so it was my way to be cooler,” Veazey said. “In elementary school, you don’t get respect, and I had low self-esteem. The guitar was something I used as an escape.”

Now, Veazey is a jazz performance major at ASU. He plays the guitar in ASU’s Jazz Repertory Band, and he also plays a little piano and flute from time to time.

Veazey enjoys listening to different types of music, including jazz, funk, hip-hop and rock. Some of his favorites are The Roots, Wes Montgomery and Radiohead.

Veazey has played at different venues around the Valley. With the ASU band, he has performed in Scottsdale twice. He also occasionally plays at Monti’s on Mill Avenue.

“I play in a jam session,” Veazey said. “I play with some other professional musicians there.”

It isn’t easy to be a jazz musician, especially in college. The major requires constant practice, and Veazey has to be ready to play a song the moment it’s called.

“In jazz, you learn older songs,” Veazey said. “Everyone knows the standard repertoire and you study them, perfect them and practice them. When someone calls a song, you’re ready to play.”

The music schedule requires Veazey to constantly bike back and forth across campus all day to get to his classes and his workouts and practices.

“If I had wanted to give it up, I would have given it up already,” Veazey said.

Veazey writes his own music on the side and is looking to start his own band at ASU. Right now, he’s still in the process of finding other musicians to be a part of it.

“Music has been something I’ve always loved to do,” Veazey said. “It’s different than swimming, but it takes the same amount of discipline, and I enjoy doing it.”

Veazey doesn’t always have as much time to practice as he would like due to the hectic athletic schedule he has, but he is satisfied if he gets a good hour or two in a day.

In his first athletic season at ASU, Veazey has already experienced success. The dedication Veazey speaks about toward practicing the guitar is mirrored in the dedication he has toward swimming.

Veazey has collected several first-place wins among top swimmers. In the home meet against USC, Veazey placed first in the men’s 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:47.44.

In the meet against Carthage College and St. Louis University, Veazey was part of the men’s 200-yard freestyle relay team that won with a time of 1:27.24. Veazey also earned first place in an individual event, the 300-yard freestyle, as he clocked in at 2:44.88.

Most recently Veazey earned a win when the Sun Devils traveled to the Bay Area to compete against Stanford. Veazey came in first place in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:42.12.

In the pool, Veazy wants to finish in the top five of the Pac-10 meet and then make it to the NCAA meet and place there.

“I should be able to do it,” Veazey said. “I want to score and take out as many people as I can in the process.”

After Veazey graduates from ASU and is done with his swimming career, he plans to move to New York City to continue playing music.

His ultimate goal is to play in the Saturday Night Live band.

Veazey is truly passionate about music and cites the philosophy, “It’s really the only language that everyone speaks.”

Reach the reporter at nicole.klauss@asu.edu