Nayland College rock bands and students have featured prominently amongst the regional winners for the Smokefree Rockquest this year.

Muted, a band made up of Year 10 students Peter Gray and Tyler Curtis, as well as Year 11 student Jayden Day-Anthonise, were awarded first place.

Sugarloaf, a band made up of senior students Toby Sussex, Will Roddick, Henry Burgess, George Burgess and ex-Nayland student Ruby Burr, came in third place. Maisie Lucas won a musicianship award for her work with the band Parallel Park.

Like many things this year, the competition was affected by Covid-19. Usually bands are judged on their ability to play live, with bands playing in front of a large audience at the Theatre Royale. This year, with live performance opportunities uncertain, the organisers instead required the bands to record videos of themselves playing two songs, and then send them in to be judged.

The musicians have been guided in their Rockquest journey by music teacher Kay Mackenzie. This is her first year as a music teacher at Nayland College and she has been impressed by the musical culture within the school.

“We are really well resourced, which is fantastic because a lot of schools just really don’t have the gear,” Ms. Mackenzie said. “I just feel like there is a culture here where people are just confident to present some of their skills. They’re not all hiding in a basement or a practice room somewhere. It’s celebrated. It’s a great culture so that is really cool.”

We talked to the musicians to find out a bit more about their Rockquest experience this year.

Muted

Muted are proud, happy and a little bit surprised that they got selected to be first place in the region.

The band, made up of three multi instrumentalists, said it was their first time entering the Rockquest and that they were not expecting to make it this far.

The trio have been together in one form or another since their days together at Broadgreen Intermediate. “We all auditioned for the school band and then we became friends through that,” said drummer/bassist Tyler Curtis.

Their inaugural entry into the Rockquest has been in the works for some time Tyler said. “That was our plan for last year, to work towards something for this year,”

For regionals, they supplied video of themselves playing two original songs: “Nevermind Me” and “What you want.”

They band write the songs together and describe their sound as jazz -funk with elements of rock. They are already proving to be adept at writing catchy songs or ‘earworms’ as guitarist/pianist Jayden Day-Anthonise describes them.

Now that they are through to the national heats, the trio now have to write two more new songs, and video themselves playing them before the deadline next Friday. If their new songs win favour with the judges, they then could be selected for the final, which up to last week, would’ve seen them have the opportunity to play live in Auckland.

The students have learnt a lot from the experience, with Tyler saying they’ve ‘learnt to write songs faster,’ and that the band has ‘really found its sound.’

Check out Muted's video here.

Sugarloaf

Sugarloaf are comparative Rockquest veterans. Apart from Henry Burgess the drummer, the other four members have played the Rockquest several times over the last few years, either with other bands, or in various configurations with each other.

Although their third placing this year doesn’t see them initially go through to the next stage, due to the fact that several of the members of the band have been part of successful winning Rockquest band in the past, they have qualified for a ‘second chance’ placing. They get to record two more new songs on video to send to the judges, to see if they should qualify for the next round.

Despite being quite experienced, this is still quite a new band. Guitarist Toby Sussex explained the band had only come together this year.

“This year we formed as the group we are. I’ve played with George many times in the past, and Henry. Me, Ruby and Will have played with each other for about a year and a half. This is the first year that we’ve all come together in this way,” Toby said.

Toby said the major difference between this year and last year has been the lack of opportunity to perform live. “We would’ve really liked the live aspect, because that is what we really enjoy doing. In a show format with the audience there, it’s great to interact with them and we missed that this year, but we are happy that we got the recording we did,” he said.

The group describe their sound as a mixture of alternative funk and soul, blues, rock and pop, with songwriting being quite a collaborative process.

“We all help out with song writing,” Toby said. “The way all of the songs have come about, is we musically all sort of contribute and then often some of us say ‘this is what the chord progression is and now Ruby you can sing something over it’ and she listens to us play and starts coming up with ideas, writing notes on her phone, and then usually she’ll come up with the melody and lyrics for most of the songs.”

The band’s members are all different ages, with some students in Year 13, and others in Year 12 and Year 11. As such, they are unlikely to be able to play as a group after this year, so plan to keep playing together as much as possible over the coming months to make the most of it. 

Maisie Lucas

Year 10 student Maisie Lucas was one of only two students in the whole region to be awarded a Musicianship Award. In speaking to Pete Rainey, co-owner of Rockquest Promotions, he said, “the award is given to instrumentalists that they think really shine.”

Having only recently picked up the drums again after an 18 month break, Maisie feels really good about her achievement, and rightly so.

“I’m pretty proud of myself,” she said. “And surprised, I didn’t expect to at all… I only joined (the band) like two or three months ago so I had to learn those songs from a recording of the old drummer and I couldn’t even really see what he was doing; I had to hear pretty much all of it so that was hard.”

It is clear that Maisie has natural talent on the drums and while she has previously sat a Trinity exam, achieving two points away from excellence, she is keeping it fun at the moment rather than putting too much pressure on herself.

Maisie and her fellow band members continue to meet every Wednesday after school to practice at NMIT and they’re already working towards Rockquest 2021. “We’re aiming to definitely place in Rockquest and definitely get to finals and stuff, that would be cool,” she said. “Because we’re really young at the moment so we’ve got heaps of time.”