Bowen made and locally loved youth band Gleezus have been busy building a name for themselves, entrenching their sound and dynamic presence into the very thread of music in the Whitsundays.
Evolving from a simple music class assessment to the competition winning band that is Gleezus, their success was unprecedented, but the team have been taking every opportunity to grow as musicians and develop their sound.
Jack Homewood is the guitarist for Gleezus and started the band initially.
“I just fell in love with it,” Jack explained.
“From there, we just started practicing outside of school, and eventually we just got better equipment, and started playing house parties and private shows, and then we played our first big competition at the Townsville Folk Festival,” he said.
Ashton Shepheard is Gleezus’ bassist and says that the whirlwind of the success has been amazing.
“It’s gonna be so awesome,” Ashton explained.
The final mixture of this youth phenomenon is Brock Medhurst on drums, and newcomer Kameron Stoneham, a powerhouse on vocals and a star with music.
“Kameron can just belt out Metallica, it’s great. We all just clicked with her. We can think of a song we’d like to play, and she’ll just rip through it,” Jack explained.
“The other day we were jamming together, trying to come up with lyrics, and she went outside for 15 minutes, comes back in and is like ‘done’ [handing over some lyrics], and that’s what we used to win Young Whitsundays got Talent.”
Still spinning from their recent success at the top where they won the Young Whitsundays Got Talent in October, the band will soon be performing at Airlie Beach Festival of Music, where they will also receive the ‘rock star’ treatment - full access back-stage passes with headlining act, The Superjesus.
“The festival is massive, with like 15 different bands playing at once at 15 different venues. It’ll be so good to meet some other musicians too, who are into our sort of music,” Ashton said.
Describing their sound as “rock, grunge, all the good old school stuff”, the band are keen to get on stage and perform to the people of Airlie.
Their set list prepped and ready, with a mixture of covers and originals, Gleezus has over two hours’ worth of music, with a 40-minute time slot.
With dreams of hitting it big professionally, Gleezus are certainly making a great foundation for stardom, with meetings with massive industry professionals in the schedule.
If you haven’t heard Gleezus recently, you haven’t heard Gleezus at all.
And if you miss them at the Airlie Beach Festival of Music, hit up the T8T Fest, held in Bowen on November 18th, which helps raise awareness for Australia Melanoma Research.
