THEY may be midway through studying for their HSC, but Noah Blockley, Harley Wilson, Asher McLean and Tom Partington are also releasing singles and have just sold out their very first headline gig.
The four teens, better known as The Rions, are a band with big plans. They've grown up in a breeding ground of world famous musicians and they're keen to make their mark on the music world.
"Beatles-level fame" is how Harley describes their goal for the future. Forget scoffing at the dreams of these teens, the northern beaches has also bred the likes of INXS, Midnight Oil, Angus and Julia Stone, Lime Cordiale, Icehouse and Ray Thistlethwayte (lead singer of Thirsty Merc), just to name a few, so to be aiming for the stars is a fair enough dream for these mates from Avalon.
The first gig for these Barrenjoey High School students was during a school talent quest. They won, and they also came up with the name for their band, Harley said.
"Before our very first performance, which was a talent quest in Year 7 at Barrenjoey, I told them a story about when I was one or two and my brother would make fun of me because I couldn't pronounce lion, clever me would pronounce it 'rion'," he said. "I don't know why I thought of it that day, I just thought it was funny and told them. When the organisers came up to us at assembly and asked what we wanted to be called, I can't remember who it was, but two of us jokingly said 'The Rions'. And we never changed it!"
The lineup hasn't changed since that day either - Noah's on vocals and bass, Harley and Asher are guitar and keeping beat on drums is Tom.
We haven't done any sort of gig that we've organised ourselves, ever, this is our first one and it fully sold out which has been a crazy thing to get our head around.
- Guitarist Harley Wilson
This Saturday, they'll play the first-ever sold out gig as headliners - the launch of their latest single Night Light. "We haven't done any sort of gig that we've organised ourselves, ever, this is our first one and it fully sold out which has been a crazy thing to get our head around," Harley said.
The video for the single was filmed on location at Q Station, in one of the site's most haunted locations no less, the gravedigger's cottage. While the others didn't have any spooky experiences during the video shoot, lead singer Noah did.
"I was in one of the rooms and I was filming my scene in there with a mannequin and I was sitting there alone and they were all working on the cameras and the light next to me started to flicker and turn on and off and I thought 'oh they must be working on the light'," he said. The crew wasn't and the experience sent shivers down Noah's back.
Night Light is actually the fourth single for the band. Their debut single, Halfway Out, was released in March 2020 and it's already had more than 173,000 streams on Spotify. Their second single Sadie was released the same day and it's had 294,000 streams.
The singles came out the same day The Rions won the Audience Choice category in the 2020 Northern Composure Band Competition.
"It's pretty incredible," Asher said. "It's very unexpected but I think a big thing that would have helped out on our publicity was Noah's TicToc account. Noah just did some fashion stuff and it drew a lot of attention, he did a TicToc that got 3.3 million views which grew his TicToc following very greatly, and two weeks later he was able to post something about the band which drew us a lot of attention."
Their third single, Head Still Hurts (almost 70,000 streams), is not only super catchy and a radio hit just waiting to happen, the band actually filmed the excellent, gritty video for the single themselves, on the northern beaches, late at night.
"That was one of the hardest projects that we actually undertook because we decided early on that we wanted to have a music video for it and we also didn't have the budget to pay anyone to do it," Harley said. "We basically just grabbed two cameras and we story boarded how we wanted it to play out and we filmed across three different days. We branched out to people we'd never met before to play the girl in the story.
"For the party shots, we got 12 people at Asher's house and we had to film every angle and make it look as packed as we could because of the COVID rules."
Fast forward to Night Light and this video is a major step for the band, thanks to their management team, Noah said: "They got us a low budget film clip with a lot of people doing passion projects. "Because of the lack of work during COVID, they wanted to do it for free so that they could have something to do."
Noah said growing up in the northern beaches helped to fuel their passion for music. "It's pretty exciting because a lot of the bands that have come out of here we idolise," he said. "Ocean Ally are from Mona Vale, Lime Cordiale are from Narrabeen and then of course INXS."
Harley said agreed it was inspiring. "It makes us believe that you don't have to be from some location you've never heard of to make it, you can be exactly where we're from for it to work," he said.
Under the guidance of their high school music teacher John Stone - Angus and Julia Stone's father - they started performing across the Beaches when they were 13 years old. Said Asher: "He was a mentor for us at the start and he got us in the picture of music. He took us down to the Bowlo, things that seem small I guess now, but back then that was the biggest thing for us.
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"My advice is take anything you can on board, like any gig, any opportunity, especially when you're starting out. We've played at some of the strangest gigs, we played at a dementia home in Byron Bay. That was very unexpected but we did it."
Their musical influence is wide and they grew up listening to Ani DiFranco, Bryan Adams, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Leon Bridges among others.
"It's helped that we grew up on older fashioned music, because when we were growing up it was 2000s music that was popular," Harley said.
These days, Tom said they still listen to a mix of genres. "We listen to a lot of local stuff like Lime Cordiale, who is a big influence for us, Ocean Alley, but then we also have a more rockie mix like 80s Australian, INXS, some of the Beatles, Arctic Monkeys," he said.
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Four singles down and at a recent gig at the Q Station, Noah and the rest of The Rions realised how different being on stage now is compared to their early days.
"When they're singing your songs back to you, we've never really experienced something quite like it, it's just insane," he said. "It's so crazy to have people that know your music and people that know the hard work that you've put in and just enjoy it."
In October they'll be on stage at the re-scheduled Byron Bay Bluesfest, after being declared runner up in Bluesfest Busking Competition earlier this year. They're also busy on the "writing train" and are keen to have a few more songs under their belt before they'll look at releasing their debut album.
They've also been listed on Triple J's Unearthed and won this year's local Northern Composure Unplugged competition, the finals of which took place this month.
With their parents as roadies, groupies already following their moves and fans singing their songs back to them, The Rions already have big goals for the future.
My goal is just to be respected as a musician but as an individual one of my biggest dreams would be a Live Aid version two, pack out Wembley, millions of people watching on TV, The Rions on stage.
- Tom Partington
"I'm looking for Beatles level fame," Harley said. While Noah's goal is a "sold out stadium".
Asher's looking to "make a sustainable career and make a living off just music".
For Tom, his goal is twofold. "Just to be respected as a musician but as an individual one of my biggest dreams would be a Live Aid version two, pack out Wembley, millions of people watching on TV, The Rions on stage."
Beaches' melting pot of music talent
The northern beaches might be famous for its laid back lifestyle and golden beaches, but it's also a place of immense musical talent. Many musos, bands and singers grew up here or got their start on the Beaches, here's a few of them:
- INXS
- Midnight Oil
- Angus and Julia Stone
- James Morrison (jazz musician)
- Icehouse
- Prinnie Stevens
- Ray Thistlethwayte (went on to find fame in pop rock band Thirsty Merc)
- Moving Pictures
- CXLOE
- Lime Cordiale
- Dear Seattle
- Seaforth - country-pop duo featuring songwriters Tom Jordan and Mitch Thompson
- Flume
- Ocean Alley
- Winston Surfshirt
- Dean Lewis
- Jade MacRae
- Courtney Barnett
- Ruel
- Martin Cooke (baritone opera singer)
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