Cambridge band win people’s choice

Cambridge High School band El Jay Hall have kick started their recording career after being finalists in the national Smokefreerockquest competition.

The boys, Stephen Watson (lead singer), Josh Mayo (lead guitar), Oli Fairbrother (bass) and Liam Hall (drums), came third overall, out of roughly 700 acts from all over New Zealand.

Their recorded song will feature alongside the nine other finalists on the 2015 Smokefreerockquest album. “It’ll be cool to have our song hard copy, and with this year’s other great talent,” Liam said.

The group almost missed the opportunity for professional recording as they were not originally finalists.

They placed in the top 30 and were told they had a chance to be finalists by receiving the most text votes for the “People’s Choice” award. “We made it a priority in those weeks to get as many votes as we could, got the whole family reaching out at work and everything. We wanted this,” Liam said.

The boys spent weeks gathering votes from Facebook friends, colleges, teachers and family, and MC of the Junior Band Quest, Chris Mac from Six60, got the audience to vote for them after they performed at the show.

El Jay Hall won “People’s Choice” and were entered again as finalists to compete at nationals.

On the night of the final, the band took out the “Best Song” award and third place of the whole competition. “I can still remember hearing that being said but it not processing for a while. That is a big achievement,” Liam said.

They were given recording time at Roundhead Studios in Auckland for being finalists. The boys were inspired by previous bands, like The Who, that have recorded in the same studio.

“We could only choose one song to record. Our song ‘Lights On’ was our very first as El Jay Hall, and our most played. We thought it fitted to go with that,” Liam said. The group have completed two sessions at Roundhead to perfect their track.

El Jay Hall had no expectations of going far in the competition. They entered SFRQ in 2014 but didn’t make it past their auditions due to lack of organisation.

This year, they were given an opportunity to play at Balloons over Waikato. “After we had an awesome time with that and got some good feedback, we thought we’d try out SFRQ once again,” Liam said.

The future of the band is uncertain as their high school careers come to an end. “We want to continue and progress together with our music, but we’ll have to organise our lives a bit differently for the upcoming year,” Liam said.

El Jay Hall will aim to continue with their music once the school year ends. “We’re all determined, music is a massive part of our lives, together, and individually. We like what we do so there’s no reason to stop,” Liam said.