‘LET’S START A BAND’
By Chris Wadsworth
It was the biggest moment yet in the short life of the local band SunCrest. It was Aug. 9. They were competing in the annual Jammin’ Java Mid-Atlantic Band Battle at the eponymous music venue in Vienna.
A group of teens facing off against a line-up of bands made up of musicians years older than them – and they were about to win first place. It wasn’t a surprise at all.
“I knew before they called it,” said lead guitarist Will Schweiker, 16. “They had a paper with our name on it and the dude dropped it. I saw our name and I knew we won.”
He quietly turned to his fellow band members and said, “It’s us.”
The teenage boys in SunCrest are doing what thousands of kids before them have done – passionate about music, they formed a band, practiced in their parents’ basements, started playing some local gigs and then entered a competition – and won.
In addition to Schweiker, SunCrest is made up of Dexter Day, 17, who sings vocals and plays rhythm guitar; Joaquin Garcia Hacek, 15, bass; and Matt Lauber, 14, drums.
Day is a senior at Woodgrove High School in Purcellville, Schweiker is a junior at Loudoun County High school in Leesburg, while Hacek is a sophomore and Lauber is a freshman at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn.
Flash back to the summer of 2024. All four teens were students at the School of Rock music school on Ashburn Road. They were sitting around one day. One of them was strumming on the guitar, another chimed in with some harmony – and then someone said, “Hey, we should form a band.”
Like any good band, when you try to pin them down on details – who was playing the guitar first, who suggested a band, the conversation breaks down into good-natured bickering over who did what. It’s kind of humorous to listen to them.
They all agree that when they decided they needed a drummer, Lauber was sitting nearby – right place, right time – and he was quickly added to the roster. SunCrest was born.
“It’s kind of a lame story. We had joked around about calling ourselves ‘Josh.’ We soon realized it was not a great name, especially for internet searching so on to Plan B,” Lauber said. “We were struggling to find something we all liked so we tried using a name generator online. We went through a bunch of different options until the name SunCrest popped up. All four of us liked it and thought it was cool and had the right vibes.”
The members describe the band as a four-piece alternative rock band. They have a sound that’s inspired by the music of the 1990s and 2000s.
“We’re kind of trying to bring that back,” Schweiker said.
They cover some of their favorites of the era, including “Interstate Love Song” by Stone Temple Pilots, “My Hero” by the Foo Fighters and “Can’t Stop” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“When we play live, we do play some covers,” Day said. “But we don’t consider ourselves a cover band. Our primary goal is to write our own original music and release that.”
To that end, the teens say they’ve written eight songs of their own so far. They won second place and some professional studio time earlier this year in the Loudoun Battle of the Bands and used it to record their first two songs – “Latin” and “Stargirl” – both available on the band’s Spotify site.
Jeff Hacek is Joaquin’s dad. He’s been a drummer in bands since fifth grade – professionally and as a hobby. He is filled with pride seeing what his son and the other boys are doing.
“They have something special going on,” he said. “They’re getting better and better. And they’re very mature with how they go about it. Their first time in the studio, they knew what to do and they didn’t waste any time. They are very professional.”
The SunCrest guys parlayed the experience they were accumulating into the Jammin’ Java competition – which saw them on a real stage in front of a real, paying audience that wasn’t just made up of their parents, classmates and friends.
The crowd loved them – obviously they won – but everything didn’t go perfectly on stage. “I was jumping around and I unplugged Dexter’s guitar,” Hacek said. “My foot got caught in the cable.”
“I started playing and I wondered why I wasn’t making any noise,” Day added. “I looked down and there’s the cable lying on the floor.”
Nevertheless, that victory won the boys $2,000, more studio time and the chance to headline a show at Jammin’ Java in December.
When asked what’s the best part of being in a band, Hacek responds like thousands of musicians before him. His answer: the girls. But he admits he doesn’t have any groupies of his own.
“As a bassist, nobody really cares. It’s all about the guitar. Will and Dexter get all the attention,” he said with a laugh.
And the hardest part? It’s a challenge that every would-be songwriter faces.
“There is so much music out there already, it’s really hard to make something sound like you made it,” Day said. “So many songs out there have the same chord progression or the same melody and you have to figure out how to make it sound like your own music, make it sound original and make it sound good.”
The boys aren’t certain what will happen next. Day is a senior and will head off to college in less than a year. But he says he plans to stay with the band and keep producing music with his pals.
In the meanwhile, they want to keep practicing, write more songs, get more gigs and just soak up being a local band with some swagger for as long as they can.
To check out SunCrest when they headline at Jammin’ Java, here are the details:
- When: Friday, Dec. 12. Doors open, 7 p.m.; show begins, 8 p.m.
- Where: Jammin’ Java, 227 E. Maple Ave. in Vienna
- Cost: $15 + $6 service fee at unionstagepresents.com/shows/suncrest
- Other: The group Everyday People will open for SunCrest