Many people spend their life living in two worlds, straddling a line that firmly divides their passion – the things they do for fun – from what they do for a living.

For Auburn resident Tory Mayfield – “The Realtor that Rocks” – that line is not just blurred, it is nonexistent.

Mayfield, a real estate agent with Keller Williams of Auburn, has found a way to integrate his passion, playing drums with a local rock band, Weight of the World, with his profession.

“For me, I knew I had to set myself apart rather than try to fit a mold,” Mayfield said. “Instead of trying to overcompensate by looking more professional and overdressing to look more mature, I was confident in my abilities and what I had was my youth and a drive to succeed.”

For Mayfield, that drive has paid off in both his profession and with his work with Weight of the World.

The music started for Mayfield in high school.

“I was, I would say troubled, coming out of junior high school,” Mayfield said. “So when I got into high school, the first year that Auburn Riverside opened, they were assembling a band. I’d always been into music, especially being from the Seattle area when grunge hit. That really influenced me a lot.”

Mayfield attended his first rock show, Pearl Jam, Blind Melon and Neil Young, at the Gorge Amphitheater in 1993. But it wasn’t until he began attending Auburn Riverside High School that he first picked up the sticks.

“When I was 14, I had a girlfriend who was in the band, and joining was a way to hang out with her,” he said. “They needed a bass drummer for the marching band. I just fell in love with it. It was big and it was boomy. It fit the profile for me at that age.”

Teacher’s great influence

Mayfield credits his band teacher, Ruth VanAmburg, with helping to nurture his love for music, as well as teaching him the basics of music theory.

“She really helped me focus and taught me about music,” he said. “She taught me everything I know about music and music theory. The drum set, I was just really aggressive about learning myself and getting out there.”

Mayfield said he bounced around a bit, playing with friends “banging around and just making noise” for a while before he took out an ad looking for someone to play with.

It wasn’t long before he got a response from two other local players, bassist Billy Gadberry and guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Vanderford.

“Jimmy called and had me come down to some storage place in Kent,” he said. “And we jammed.”

Although Mayfield said the trio immediately clicked, the band decided to try working things out with their original drummer. Four months later, however, Mayfield got the call.

“And that was it, we’ve been inseparable ever since,” Mayfield said.

For the past nine-years the trio has gigged around the Puget Sound area, cutting two albums – 2001’s “6e+24(kg)” and their second, “Bringing the Rock”, released in 2004. Mayfield said the band is at work on a new album now, that will hearken back to their first album.

“We’re trying to get back to the spontaneity of our first album,” he said. “We were all influenced by different bands, so there was more creativity and less focus. But it created more magic, so we’re trying to work back to that.”

Mayfield acknowledges that the band takes a blue-collar approach to its music, practicing twice a week “religiously.”

“A lot of people don’t realize how serious we take it,” he said. “It’s a job. It takes time away from family and our businesses.

“We take it very serious,” Mayfield added. “We go in and work. Sure we have fun, because we love it, but we take full advantage of the time we have and get back to life.”

For Mayfield, that means getting back to the business of selling houses.

Jump to real estate

Mayfield said he was 22 when he first got his real estate license, making the jump from selling newspaper subscriptions at the since-defunct King County Journal.

After joining his first office, Mayfield said he decided on the “Realtor that Rocks,” moniker

“For me the ‘Realtor that Rocks’ is more of an affirmation,” he said. “It’s not that different than saying, ‘Hey, that’s cool, or hey, that’s awesome.’ Instead it’s, ‘Hey, that rocks.’ To me it was more of a statement, it means that I can get the job done, provide results and rise to the occasion.”

Mayfield adds that it’s that attitude that has brought him to where he is now, and will hopefully move him through the real estate market’s current turmoil.

“I started pre-boom, not even knowing what we were in store for,” Mayfield said. “So it’s never been a case of where things just fell in my lap. I still really had to work for it.

“Times almost got too easy, and it bit a lot of people,” he added. “Now the market is a lot tougher, a lot leaner. My last year was as tough as my first year in the business. My way of business hasn’t changed. I always want to do better. Bigger, better, faster, more.”

And his way of doing business with Weight of the World hasn’t changed either.

“I would just call us a really eclectic style of rock,” he said. “We refer to what we do as pure rock fury.

“Usually the disclaimer is that we’re not metal, we’re not your typical rock band, but we fit in there somewhere,” Mayfield said. “Yeah, we yell and scream a bit, but we’re good quality rock.”

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CHECK IT OUT

For more information on Weight of the World, visit their MySpace page at www.myspace.com/wotwmusic. The band will be playing a 9 p.m. March 13 at Hell’s Kitchen in Tacoma with Jet Black Stare and the Atomic Outlaws.