’90s nostalgia will reign at this concert
Get your ’90s music fix with School of Rock Regina
Marshall Brooks’ drum kit may be tucked into a corner of the stage, but there’s no way to ignore him.
Wearing a Ramones T-shirt and a huge grin on his face, he keeps the rhythm seemingly effortlessly for his six bandmates.
Brooks was nine the first time he played drums, in front of a crowd at his aunt’s wedding.
Now he’s 10 and he’s a machine. “I just knew I wanted to play drums, so then I had drum lessons at Long & Mcquade for a bit, and then my mom told me about this place and then I came here,” he explains matter-offactly.
Brooks is the youngest of these similarly impressive musicians, ranging in age from 10 to 15. They’re all students in the School of Rock Regina performance class.
Twelve-year-old Jaxon Hicks and 13-year-old Cohen Jones play guitar.
On bass, there’s 14-year-old Harrison Mooney.
On vocals, Jade Russell and Jesse Gibson, both 13, spell off 15-year-old Brennan Koshykowski, who also plays keyboard.
This group was part of a British Invasion-themed show in May. But the theme of their Saturday night concert is near and dear to my heart.
In their Modern Rock show, they’ll cover the ’90s and early aughts, songs that had peak popularity before these kids were born.
“It’s not like something you’ve been listening to since you were little, but it’s still a song and you can sort of get the hang of it as you play it,” says Koshykowski, whose favourite is The Killers’
All These Things That I’ve Done because “it’s so fun to sing.”
These kids are super fun to watch — it is no exaggeration that attending their Tuesday night jam was the highlight of my week. And they sound good. Amplified, though, earplugs are necessary, as music fills the industrial-area School of Rock jam space and spills out from an open garage door.
On that note, Hicks says Saturday’s audience can expect to see “people on the stage making noise.”
Making noise or music? “Making noise,” he reiterates. “Wow, roast your own band,” Koshykowski says, laughing.
It’s hard to imagine a time when this group was quiet, but School of Rock Regina co-owner Laurie Schulz says it’s true.
“First day was a little awkward,” Mooney confirms.
“We all wanted nothing to do with each other, and by the next thing we were like brothers and sisters.”
Just like real siblings, they outvoted their parental figure — in this case, performance director Matt Cudmore — to play a song not from their set list.
“You said we could do it if we learn it,” Koshykowski tells Cudmore.
Jones adds: “I kind of know it.” So, Cudmore agrees — “Let’s see how it goes” — and Jones, Mooney, Brooks and Koshykowski break into Weezer’s 1994 classic, Say It Ain’t So.
“That was pretty good for our first time,” Mooney says after. He’s not wrong.
While you might not hear Weezer on Saturday, you will hear Foo Fighters (with Russell nailing it on vocals of The Pretender), Blink 182, Smash Mouth and Nirvana — Smells Like Teen Spirit being a favourite of the group.
“It’s funny, these young kids love that ’90s rock,” Roland Schulz, Laurie’s husband and business partner, points out.
Of course, it’s not the only music they love.
Ask them what they listen to and it’s a mishmash: bands like Metallica (Brooks and Jones), Green Day (Koshykowski) and Steve Miller Band (Mooney); and genres including indie rock (Russell), pop punk (Gibson) and power metal (Hicks).
“They all have open hearts to different kinds of music,” Laurie Schulz says.
They like School of Rock because “you get to play good music,” says Jones. His previous guitar teacher “just taught me, like, Mary Had A Little Lamb,” he adds, unimpressed.
“You get to play music you like,” Mooney says.
For him, that’s the classic rock he grew up on — songs he says his friends don’t understand.
“When I go to school I tell my friends all these tunes and they’re like, ‘What?’ … Like, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Huey Lewis and the News.”
Those bands inspired his dream of becoming a rock star.
Mooney started with drums, which his mom thought were too loud. Then he switched to guitar three years ago.
“I had a few lessons and it was too difficult, so we decided I would move to bass,” says Mooney, his words drowned out by his bandmates’ laughter.
The opportunity to play music together is another reason they like it here: They play together three hours a week, in addition to 45-minute individual music lessons.
Jones says he’s the only one at his school who plays a musical instrument. Koshykowski jams with a friend sometimes, but that’s it.
It’s a bonus to “perform in front of different places, meet new people,” he says.
Modern Rock takes place Saturday, 7 p.m., at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. Tickets are $15, and children aged 12 and under get in free.