Grandma’s Sports Garden

Sunday, May 18th

Andrew Olson
Reader Weekly 

On Sunday The Bricks will be the headliner at Grandma’s Sports Garden for the High School Rocks – 4 Bands Live show.  The doors open at 6 pm with music beginning at 7 pm for $5.  Other performers will be runners up Hydrowizard, Amauros, and Colmekill.

One thing that really makes Colmekill stand out are the giant mohawks that the band sports.  It also helped to liven up their stage presence at the Battle Of The Bands at the DECC last month.

“I have had a mohawk off and on since about 8th grade,” Kyle Johnson of Colmekill said.  “I've always been super into punk rock and the whole punk scene so I've always been into mohawks and all that fun stuff. As for Gary (McKeever), he's always wanted a mohawk and one night at our rhythm guitarist Cord’s (Tocchio) house we were sitting around after practice and talked Gary into getting one for 30 bucks. He decided to keep it for the DECC show.”

So if Colmekill was a car, what kind of car would they be? 

“The Delorean from back to the future,” Johnson said. “Who wouldn't want a car that can travel through time?” 

The Bricks had a more conventional car, saying they would “probably be a new-age, retro car that’s unique and making a difference in the world.” 

The Bricks also talked about where they got their band name and what the future is for the crew.

“Well, our original band name was Trapped by the Watchtower,” Sam McKinney of The Bricks said.  “But seeing as that didn’t get too many good reviews and it was too long to really remember, we decided about a year ago to change it to The Bricks. I guess we thought it was fitting seeing as the name was conceived down in Canal Park, which is made up, for the most part, of bricks.  For most of the members of our band this is our last year. I am going to college in Boston to the Berklee College of Music, Lauren (Verhel) is attending McNally Smith College of Music, and Jason (Munns) is graduating from UMD with a degree in music performance. Reuben (Verdoljak) and Nick (Spielman) are going to be the only ones left, and I am hoping that they will keep the tradition rolling.”

Another band that made it to the Grandma’s show is Amauros from Hermantown High School.  They barely made it in at 4^th place, but feel that the judges should have placed them a bit higher.

“We weren't disappointed because we placed in the top four,” Jacob LeRoux said.  “But believe it or not, (without being egocentric) we felt like second or third place would have been more suitable… of course this comes from the words of other people that supported us. We probably won't be playin’ in next year's battle because we all will be graduated by then. We want our friend’s band to play next year from Hermantown.”

Amauros explained their name and what they thought of the other bands they were up against as well.  LeRoux said, “We literally looked online to find cool words, and we found the Greek word, "Amaurosis," which means, "blind".  General themes could be incorporated into it like "Love is blind," or "the future is blind," or anything anyone makes up for themselves… the people may interpret it for whatever they want.  The other bands were mostly metal, and we enjoyed many of them. We also made friends with some bands that want to play with us this summer, which is always good.”

So what is the future for Amauros?

“We plan on getting our name out there more,” LeRoux said.  “We really want to play more shows and create more songs because we already have two or three riffs to build off of now. We are progressing more and we intend to make this band our main priority. We want recording time, and to perhaps make a high-quality EP within the next year. With that, we want to be signed and see how our band goes from there.”