James River Rock-Out-Battle for the Bands: Capstone Project

The “James River Rock-Out - Battle for the Bands” Capstone was a battle of the bands style competition featuring high school garage bands held at James River High School on February 11th from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. The Capstone was organized by senior, Quinn Schreck, and its purpose was to raise money and awareness for all of the music programs at James River High School that recently have been struggling to maintain a stable number of students in each program.

The competition was split up into two categories, a casual category, and a professional category. Bands got to choose which category they participated in, and got to perform 2-3 songs of their choice in that category. The bands in the casual category were the first to perform, and it featured performances from two bands right here from James River: The BBC, and The Green Peeves. It was a close vote, but the audience chose The BBC as the winners of that category! The Green Peeves was also recognized as the runner-ups for that category. Up next was the professional category, which featured performances from four different bands, The Marquis, RagTag, and 5 Second Rule, who were from other schools in Chesterfield County, and Vertigo City, who was from James River as well. It was another hard fought battle, but in the end, the audience chose 5 Second Rule as the winners of the category, and RagTag as the runner-ups.

Snacks, t-shirts, and raffle tickets were also available to the over 175 audience members in attendance of the event. They had the chance to win 5 incredible prizes in the raffle, including two packages of 15 Chick-Fil-a gift certificates, a basket of gift cards to various restaurants (La Cucina, Sugar Shack, and Candela's Pizza), a Fender acoustic guitar case donated by Music & Arts, and a electric guitar package valued at $229 also donated by Music & Arts.

Thanks to the incredible support of the audience members, sponsors, and bands alike, this event was able to raise over $900

to support James River High School’s music programs! With these funds, these programs will be more equipped to handle the expenses each program must deal with to help make their programs a success, and hopefully as a result will be able to attract more students in the future to take part in these incredible programs.