Techie rock:
Youngsters learn what it takes to form band, perform
Children of Silicon Valley parents get a taste of being in a band.
On a typical Sunday, while other kids might be playing “Rock Band” in the basement, 11-year-old vocalist Nico Chou grabs his water bottle and meets with his own band — the real thing, not the virtual kind.
The band, called the Black Stripes, has eight members — Chou, along with three guitarists, a bass player, drummer and two young musicians who rotate between playing the piano and keyboard. The elementary and middle schoolers have even pertwo formed at a coffeehouse on Stanford University’s campus. And in a twist that puts this somewhere between “School of Rock” and HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” several of the members have parents in the technology industry, and professional rockers guide the children’s endeavors.
“They can tell us what a real band would do,” said Nico, who aspires to be a pop star — a different career from that of his father, who works at LinkedIn, and his mother, a part-time lecturer at Stanford.
The teachers, Mike Hoffman and Joey Hassid, are members of the San Francisco band Panic Is Perfect, which has opened a few times for Death Cab for Cutie. They teach students how to play musical instruments as a side business. Within the tech industry, they have developed a reputation for cultivating kid bands. The pair have overseen the creation of three such bands, and a fourth is on the way.
“We’re trying to create little bands that really feel like it is their own” band, Hoffman said. “It is not a class or a camp.”
In 2014, Hoffman and Hassid began teaching two brothers, Liam and
“We’re trying to create little bands that really feel like it is their own (band). It is not a class or a camp.” Mike Hoffman, teacher
Jude Kelly. Eventually that grew into the formation of the Black Stripes — a play on the name of the former rock duo White Stripes. Their band typically meets in the basement of the Kelly brothers’ home.
Hoffman and Hassid each charge $90 an hour for individual lessons in some cases, plus $45 a week per pupil for band practice.
Nine-year-old Jude Kelly (who is named after the famous Beatles song) said he enjoys being in a band: “I am actually part of what’s making the sound, and I can hear myself and how it affects the song.”
“You are part of a bigger thing,” adds his father, Doug Kelly, a general partner at Alloy Ventures of Palo Alto as well as a doctor and musician.
“At the end of the day, everybody wants to be a rock star,” said the senior Kelly, who has his own band — some of whose members are drawn from the technology sector. “It doesn’t matter what you do.”
Like adult bands, kid bands have to work through their differences. In the Black Stripes, members have disagreed over what songs to perform. The band was nearly called Fat Santa, but that name lost in a close vote.
Lydia Mazzie, who works in business development at Google, said she wasn’t into music growing up, but that changed after a trip to Italy when she and her husband noticed that John Legend was playing at a town square. On a whim, they bought seats near the front of the performance. Since then, she has taken her kids to concerts by U2, Twenty One Pilots and Imagine Dragons.
One day, her son Lucca asked her to name a life regret. Mazzie said she didn’t really have regrets, but if she had to name one, she wished she traveled more before she had kids. Her son’s regret was he wished he could go back in time, so he would know more of the lyrics at a Twenty One Pilots concert they attended months before.
“I am hoping this is his only regret in life,” said Mazzie, who has enjoyed watching her son’s passion for music develop.
Last week, Lucca and his friends performed two songs with their band called Good Stuff in the Mazzies’ backyard.
“Parents want those memories and connections with their kids, and they are not getting them when they give an iPad,” said Maryellen Mullin, CEO of San Francisco Family Therapy. “They are getting it when they show up to their kids’ rock band concert.”
Parents who use Hoffman and Hassid’s services said they like how the bands have formed largely among groups of friends, with known talents.
Bryna Chang, Nico Chou’s mother, said Nico’s younger brother went to a rock band camp but didn’t want to return to it.
“He was frustrated that one of the other kids couldn’t really sing, and a band camp takes all comers,” Chang said. “Here, it’s different.”
The Black Stripes have taken time off for the summer and will pick up practice again in the fall. Nico treasures the experience of performing in a band. Right before his first time singing with the Black Stripes, he was nervous. Those jitters quickly transformed into excitement after the show.
“I joined it and loved it,” Nico said. “I now know to try new things.”