Young Williamsville rock band get mentoring session from Buffalo Hall of Famers

WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. (WKBW) — A sharing of knowledge from music industry veterans to students in the Northtowns.

Williamsville North High School students are members of the band, Cobraz, who recently won a songwriting contest through the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame.

The reward they received Friday evening, was priceless.

You know it's a great day when aspiring musicians get to jam, and learn a few things from local music legends.

Cobraz band member, Donald Heim said, "We're definitely going to rethink how we write our music and how we compose it. When we're down Andrew's basement, composing the parts, mixing guitar with the base and the drums. Building the songs, piece by piece, and take it into consideration since they talked about dynamics and silence and less is more, essentially."

Buffalo Music Hall of Fame inductees Tom Lorentz, Jessie Galante, Kenny Hawkins, Ken Kaufman and Al Hury, took some time to teach the members of Cobraz, one-on-one this afternoon.

"If you think about it, when we were playing, you know these guys were writing songs together as a band-- we were learning songs to play out, to play gigs. A few of us were writers but we probably wouldn't endeavor in our own material at that particular time but these guys are starting out and I think they're a little ahead of the 8 Ball," Buffalo Hall of Famer, Kenny Hawkins said.

Everyone came to the table with different levels of experience in the industry.

However, these local Hall-of-Famers, they shared the secrets to their success during the 90-minute mentoring session.

"They were great. They're young guys who submitted a song. We got to listen to it. They performed several songs life and we gave them some feedback from all of our experiences from what we've heard, suggestions for songwriting, recording, producing,” Buffalo Hall of Fame, Jessie Galante said.

The Cobraz are a two-year-old rock band started by will north seniors Donald Heim and Chris Rossi, and alums David Gregoire, Joel Turner (was not at event due to school) and Andrew Doviak.

This quintet got this chance to turn their song into a golden opportunity.

The group of current and former North students composed the song "Snakebite," submitted it to the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame for their annual songwriting contest, and won the Lucille and Jack Yellen Foundation Songwriter's Scholarship, which includes this mentoring conference, according to Williamsville CSD.

"We submitted 'Snakebite' because it was our first song. It was probably one of our best songs too”, Cobraz band member, David Gregoire said.

"We submitted the two songs that we recorded live in studio back in April of last year. We decided that those were the best two recordings we had had because they were all professionally mixed, mastered and recorded,” Cobraz band member, Andrew Doviak said.

After winning the songwriting contest, the group says they can't wait to take what they've learned from Friday's session and put it to the test.

Cobraz band member, Chris rossi said, "It's really cool because you see all this hard work that you put into something finally payoff and this is obviously the payoff that we were looking for."