Edmonton high school students savour chance to play with indie band they covered
Winners of CBC music contest played with Wintersleep when Halifax band was in city
Members of an Edmonton high school band were in their early elementary years when Wintersleep's Weighty Ghost was a hit.
Last week they joined the indie rock band on stage to play their cover of the 2007 song. Wintersleep, from Halifax, rehearsed during sound check Friday before their concert at the Starlite Room.
Last year the same teens, from J. Percy Page High School in Mill Woods, spent four days practising a cover of Weighty Ghost.
They recorded a video of their performance and submitted it to CBC Music's Canadian Music Class Challenge, which garnered more than 1,000 submissions of cover songs performed by students from across Canada.
In December, the J. Percy Page students' effort was chosen the winner in the competition's best high school vocals category.
"It was such a big deal just to win the competition for us," said Amber Lee, a Grade 11 student who plays the melodica. "It would have been enough to have them send something to us, or tweet us."
But instead, Wintersleep invited the J. Percy Page band to play with them at a sound check.
As the students played under stage lights, their smiles mixed with expressions of focus and concentration.
The members of Wintersleep had watched the video submission before it was chosen as a winner, and were blown away.
"It was fun to see that kind of energy, a fun new take on the song," said Wintersleep singer and guitarist Paul Murphy.
"I'm sure a lot of them haven't seen shows in bigger venues like this, and for them to be on stage and get a sense of what it feels like to do that, I know when I was 15 or 16 that would have been a super-cool thing."
Fresh from their performance with Wintersleep, the J. Percy Page students were running on adrenalin and excitement.
"It is something that we take very seriously and we worked so hard towards," Lee said. "It's so important to us, so to be able to see it be something more than just us playing in the music room was so huge and really exciting for us."
The experience gave Grade 12 student Corban Miller a taste of what it's like to perform on stage with a professional band, and he wants more.
"This is definitely my No. 1 career option," said Miller, the high school band's lead vocalist. "It's really possible. It's out there."
Click here to see more on the Canadian Music Class Challenge and the winners from 2018.
Wintersleep will wrap up their Canadian tour in Winnipeg on May 3.
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