In 2009 they were a band with no name, performing at local bars and parties of friends and relatives. Today, the Sobieski Outlaws are scheduled to perform at the largest music festival in the world.
The band earned its Fourth of July gig at Milwaukee’s Summerfest during the Wisconsin Launchpad competition in March.
Pretty impressive, especially considering the band members are all in high school.
“Three years ago when we started (at Launchpad) we were too young to realize how big of an experience it was,” said Zach Hanson, the band’s bassist. “We didn’t make it anywhere the first two years, and then this year we were thinking, ‘We have got to get serious.’ We have got the talent now, and we really practiced and got everything down to a science.”
The Sobieski Outlaws are Hanson, 17, of Oconto Falls, and brothers Dustin and Dillon Leja, 16 and 13 respectively, of Stiles. Zach and Dustin are entering their senior year at Oconto Falls High School, and Dillon will be a freshman.
The three Outlaws were exposed to music at an early age, picking up on the styles and bands their parents listened to, including the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“We kind of grew up listening to all of that stuff,” said Dustin, the band’s singer and guitarist. “(Dad) has got the musical influence that kind of started us off.”
Dennis Leja said his sons have liked music since they were babies. He said Dustin was just over a year old when he was riding in the car with his mom when a turn of the radio dial sent him into a tantrum.
“She didn’t like the song that was on so she changed it, and he starts crying and squealing in the back seat,” Dennis Leja said. “She doesn’t know what’s wrong, and finally she gets back on that same station, and he stops crying.”
The Leja brothers started playing music when they got instruments for their birthdays. Dustin got his first guitar when he was 5, playing and taking lessons until he learned one of the classic rock riffs of all time.
“The first song I learned how to play was ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ” he said.
“All the way to New York and back,” Dennis joked, recalling a road trip he took with his sons, “he would put the guitar away, and about 20 minutes later, just like a cigarette, he would drag it back out, play ‘Smoke on the Water,’ and then put it back again.”
Dillon, the band’s drummer, got his first drum kit when he was 3 years old.
“My dad had to set them up at 3 in the morning because Dillon wanted to play them,” Dustin said.
“I didn’t know what went into a drum kit,” Dennis said. “He would not let me sleep until I put that together.”
Compared with the Leja brothers, Hanson was a late bloomer, picking up his first instrument, a saxophone, when he joined the school band in sixth grade.
“That’s probably something that started my interest in music,” Hanson said. “I thought, I like music and I like playing music, so let’s pick up a bass and see what we can do.”
Hanson and Dustin met in seventh grade. Hanson said he knew Dustin was a guitar player from watching him at a talent show.
“We started talking and he said, ‘We should hang out. I can teach you some stuff sometime,’” Hanson said. “So he started teaching me for over a year, and I progressed.”
When Dillon was old enough to start playing with the two older band members, the Leja brothers’ aunt, Marilyn Fischer, started taking them to lessons every Thursday, something she has continued doing for the last six years.
The group started performing at bars and parties around the Sobieski area.
“We didn’t even have a band name, so people started calling us the Sobieski Outlaws,” Hanson said. “It just stuck, and that’s what it’s been for four solid years.”
The Sobieski Outlaws have encountered a variety of interesting circumstances in their time together, including a show in below-zero weather and nights where the drummer was feeling a bit drowsy.
“Somebody asked me, ‘How long do they play?’” Dennis said. “I said, ‘Until the drummer falls asleep.’ When you are younger like that, that is a long day for you.”
Dustin said performing is always an experience.
“The shows are always really cool, and you have all different types,” he said. “Sometimes you are playing on a big stage, or sometimes you are playing in someone’s back yard on a trailer.”
This was the group’s third year in the statewide Launchpad competition for student bands.
“It’s going to be pretty cool,” Dustin said. “One of the first times I was at Summerfest I saw a band playing on one of the stages, and they were playing ‘Purple Haze’ like we play, so it’s going to be a pretty cool experience to be that band now.”
Categories
