The Splinters from Havelock North High School were judged as the best band at Hawke's Bay's regional final for Smokefree Rockquest. Photo / Connull Lang
The Splinters from Havelock North High School were judged as the best band at Hawke's Bay's regional final for Smokefree Rockquest. Photo / Connull Lang
Havelock North High School band The Splinters has claimed first place in Hawke’s Bay’s regional final of Smokefreerockquest.
Talented bands, duos and soloists from schools across the region played their hearts out at Hastings Toitoi Opera House on Saturday evening in front of judges, friends and family.
The Splinters band members are William Bush (guitar), Reef Bridges (bass and vocal), Fletcher Cooper (guitar), Anthony Thompson (drums) and Gus Klingender (vocals).
The band also won the ZM Best Song Award while Klingender won the APRA Lyric Award.
Second place in the band category went to Te Whānau Puoro from Flaxmere College and Tamatea High School. The group is made up of Izzy Shields (guitar), Aroha Sellwood (guitar and vocals), Koha Sellwood (drums), Hohua Mitai-Price (bass), who won the national final of Smokefree Tangata Beats last year.
Aroha Sellwood also won the Musicianship Award at the Hawke’s Bay regional final.
Year 13 student Klingender of The Splinters said news of the win was extra shocking for him because he had to rush from the venue early to a theatre production elsewhere, missing the prizegiving, and only later found out his band had come first from his mum.
“The guys were all ecstatic as well, this is such a cool opportunity for us,” Klingender said.
This year’s Hawkes Bay regional Smokefreerockquest final at Toitoi on Saturday night. Photo / Connull Lang
The band now has about three weeks to record a three-song set and submit it to be considered for selection as one of the top 10 national finalists playing off live on September 20.
“We’ve had some really cool ideas come through about formatting the tunes,” he said.
“Working with [the band] on new songs is always so much fun because we have a bit of a lighter way of looking at composing songs. We like entertaining and getting a laugh out of an audience. When we put recorder solos and things like that in our songs, we like to get a bit of a giggle out of what we write.”
He said The Splinters takes a lot of inspiration from the style of the British rock band Idles.
“They have super-provocative, angry music. We really love their style of harsh writing, so when we are writing our tunes, we try to see if we can get some of their tonality to come out in our music.”
Aroha Sellwood of Te Whanau Puoro. The band from Flaxmere College and Tamatea High School took out second place at the Hawke's Bay's regional final for Smokefreerockquest. Photo / Connull Lang
He said he wanted to “raise questions” with his eclectic outfit on the night, which included a dress shirt and tie matched with a long dress and platform boots capped with some dark sunglasses.
“The sunnies I just really like because I did a lifeguarding season in them. The vocalist from our band last year, she does commissions so I got her to do a commission for a skirt and the rest is just my ball attire. I kind of just slapped it together and stole my girlfriend’s boots,” he laughed.
They won $500 for musical equipment from the Rockshop.
The top two bands plus the winners of the solo duo category can submit a video of their original material to potentially be selected as one of the top 10 national finalists.
Saint Maurice from Havelock North High School on stage at the regional final for Smokefreerockquest. Photo / Connull Lang
Hawke’s Bay Regional Final results
1st place Band (Smokefreerockquest) - The Splinters from Havelock North High School
Musicianship Award - Paulo Solon of Nag Practise Ka Ba Band from Tamatea High School
Smokefree Best Vocals Award - Ethan White of Donkey from Havelock North High School
ZM Best Song Award - The Splinters from Havelock North High School
APRA Lyric Award - Gus Klingender from Havelock North High School
James Pocock joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2021 and writes breaking news and features, with a focus on the environment, local government and post-cyclone issues in the region. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives in Napier. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz
