POINT PLEASANT — We all just want to be big rock stars, but for some it is easier than others. For the members of Indigo Sky, this dream is rapidly becoming a reality.
Band member Luke Reeves, 19, of Point Pleasant, Rich Coombs, 20, of Brick Township, Michael Lanza, 22, of Point Pleasant Beach and AJ Demillio, 19, of Point Pleasant are in the running to become America’s Next Top Hitmaker, a contest held by Rolling Stone magazine.
Reeves is the drummer, Coombs plays bass guitar, Lanza plays lead guitar and Demillio plays rhythm guitar and is lead singer.
At the time of publication, the band is currently still in first for their group, and have moved onto the top 10 running in the whole country. The winner of this contest will win $10,000, be featured in the Rolling Stone magazine and perform at Rolling Stone’s Future of Music Showcase next year.
Lanza said he just found an ad on Instagram one day for this contest and decided to enter into it. He said, “I saw this a couple of times and I wondered if it was legit. We didn’t know if it was real but we applied anyway. Then I got the email that we got accepted weeks later and I had completely forgotten that I applied.”
“We are blessed to have people to vote for us and support us,” said Lanza.
Reeves said, “It was a great realization to find out people will vote for us and support us, kind-of putting their money where their mouth is.”
ORIGINS
The band’s roots go very far back, with Reeves and Demillio having known each other since kindergarten. Demillio further said, “We actually hated each other way back when. We hated each other all the way up to (middle) school.”
Reeves said that since they were in two separate bands at the time, there was a dash of jealousy that caused them to resent one another. Yet eventually they would each grow out of the rivalry.
In the seventh grade, Reeves and Demillio, along with another one of their friends at the time all got involved with a local music studio known as Red House Music Studio and Rehearsal. At this studio, Coombs and Lanza were already members, and slowly but surely, they would all soon come to be performing with one another until they decided to branch away and start their own band.
The name “Indigo Sky” actually came to Lanza in a dream.
“I was in this guitar store and I was playing this pedal and testing it out. Then, this big guy comes up to me and he was like, ‘Wow, that sounds like something Indigo Sky would play. That’s some Indigo Sky stuff.’ I thanked the guy, I assumed it was a band that I didn’t know about but I remembered it when I woke up. So I pitched it to the guys, we went back and forth with a lot of names, but we just stuck with this one,” said Lanza.
The band also revealed that their name was almost “Great Mantis.” Demillio said the name “Great Mantis” would have “pointed them in a different direction.”
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