Don Fox, Michael Brenner, and David Tracewell are doing the planning for this event, holding after school meetings with some of the performers to play music and practice with the other musicians who are performing. The event will take place in the Central Kitsap auditorium on April 16th in the evening.

Calvin Lumadue is a junior at Central Kitsap Highschool who has been creating music he described as Alt Rock and in some cases psychedelic. This will be Lumadues’ first ever live performance after six-seven years of performing music.

Lumadue considered music an escape for him or an outlet for the thoughts inside his head.

“I had a lot of mental problems. I didn’t really have an outlet for that, you know I just started writing music one day and never really stopped,” Lumade says.

Lumadue is able to play many instruments such as: percussion, piano, guitar, trumpet, and drums.

“I plan on playing mostly acoustic guitar so it will be a more slow paced song,”  Said Calvin Lumadue.

Lumadue plans to perform a completely original song which he titled “Silence”.

“It’s kind of just this form of what is in my mind, I consider it laying my mind out for you,”  Says Lumadue.

Lumadue hopes his music will resonate with people when he performs it on April 16th, he says he hopes that people will sympathize and really listen to the lyrics.

“I hope that they really catch a lot of this uniqueness to it and also the point across with the lyrics is that it doesn’t outwardly speak a lot of things, said Lumadue. “It kind of shows a lot of my emotions and it’s kind of showing what goes on in my mind. It also has a lot of hidden art parts to it that talk about mental illness. I do hope it resonates with other people, I really hope to speak to their hearts.” 

Reed Sanders is another Singer who will also be performing at The Battle of the Bands on April 16th.

Sanders has been performing music since he was five years old, he originally started out on the piano but later discovered his love for signing in 6th grade when he joined Mr. Platten’s choir. Sanders says that he really started to take singing seriously to be spiteful to his sisters who were better than him at the time.

“Actually I kind of started singing to spite my siblings, because they would sing in the car,” said Sanders. “And they were always better than me. And guess in the desperate search for validation or attention. I took up singing to be better than them. And then of course, it kind of went off into like being a fun thing for myself, but my original motivation was just to spitefully be better than my sisters.

Sanders considered performing music a very self serving thing, he says it’s kind of just showing off and for personal validation, also getting the validation from other people that his music is good and that he is good at what he does.

“Performing has always been a very self serving thing,” says Sanders. “It’s kind of just showing off. So it’s really just for the personal validation of being able to do something, but now in that performing my own work, and also looking for the validation to my art and not just my performance.”

Sanders plans on performing two original songs, “Bad Things” and “Wouldn’t That be Nice?”

“I suppose only they’re not my best work because they’re my first songs ever, and I think they can be better at based off of my knowledge of music, but I haven’t had the experience of writing music, enough to know how to make it exactly what I want it to be, but for my first two compositions,” said Sanders. “I’m pretty proud of.”

Sanders hopes the same as Calvin Lumadue that his performance will connect with people, however he cares more about the personal validation that comes from a well received performance so that he will truly feel his music is good, and or better than he thinks it is.

Aspen Willis and Shayla Sutliff are the final performers that will be spoken about, they are a duo performance in which Sutliff is the lead vocalist and Willis is doing backup vocals and playing the guitar.

The Battle of the Bands is both of their first performances in front of a crowd. Sutliff has been singing for five to six years, Willis started singing “in this past year or so”. Together they have been performing for a couple of months however not in front of a crowd quite yet, Willis and Sutliff will be covering three songs of choice called “Buzzkill” by Mothica, “Everybody Talks” by Neon Trees, and “Boyfriend” by Coin.

Willis and Sutliff say that they have the first song on lock, however are still working on the other two.

“’Buzzkill’ is fully polished, ‘Buzzkill’ we got on lock. but our other two songs we’re still working on.” Aspen Willis says.

All of the performers performing during Battle of the Bands on April 16th will be competing to win against all of the other performers, a prize has yet to be announced however all of the performers will be trying their hardest to win.