On Wednesday, May 11th, the West End House band, The West, packed their suitcases and boarded a plane to New Orleans. As if traveling to a cultural mecca with your best friends wasn’t exciting enough, Kevaughn, Carolina, Jonathan, and Jio had won a talent search to perform at the national Boys & Girls Clubs conference.
As The West (accompanied by Music Clubhouse Coordinator Nick Tetrault) stepped off the plane into the muggy Louisiana heat, they expected to have to compete against other musicians from Boys & Girls Clubs across the country for the opportunity to perform a special “in memoriam” song during the convention’s closing ceremony. Instead, they spent their three days in the Big Easy collaborating and making new cross-country friends.
Jonathon recalls, “Rehearsals went great. We met this singer named Alexandra from Newark, NJ. In the beginning, we were competing against her but now she’s a part of our band.” When Alexandra was going to sing to a recorded backtrack, The West learned the music and performed backtrack for her.
At the conference’s closing performance, The West received a standing ovation for their original song “Tell Me.”
