After starting up last spring and giving performances at the Chelsea Depot and the Chelsea District Library’s Songfest, the band Wicked Cricket brought their talents to Ann Arbor and rocked the Battle of the Bands.

Trilian Krug (‘24) and Liam Favre (‘26) had already been playing together when they decided to start a band. Coincidentally, they met one of the current guitarists for the band Logan Gossiaux (‘23). 

“My mom saw Logan walking around wearing a guitar shirt one day, so I just walked up to him,” Krug said. “We tried playing together and decided it was a good fit.”

Bassist Jay Hawkins (‘23) then joined the band after looking at a recruitment poster, and finally singer/keyboardist Gavin Cagney (‘25) joined as the most recent addition.

The band plays mainly rock and roll music, both covers and original compositions. Typically, the originals start with Gossiaux or Hawkins. 

“It generally starts on my guitar,” Gossiaux said. “I’ll play a riff and start to build a structure around it, then once I have that down, I’ll write a melody and some lyrics and bring it to the band.”

After that, the rest of the band makes their own parts around the initial idea and turns it into an original song.

The band also manages its own publicity online through social media.

“We made an instagram account where we post videos and photos of the band,” Krug said. “Our professional photographer Marah Putnam (‘24) takes photos and edits videos for us to post there.”

The Battle of the Bands was held at the Neutral Zone, a space promoting young artists and teens.

“I had started to go to the Neutral Zone for a music production and recording class,” Krug said. “So when I heard that they had a battle of the bands competition, I signed Wicked Cricket up.”

To qualify, the band had to send in a video of themselves playing onstage, then six bands were selected to actually come perform. From there, the competition ensued.

“Each band played two songs for the first round, one original and one cover,” Krug said. “Only three bands moved on to the second round, and the winner got to play an encore at the end.”

The Neutral Zone has a huge open space with a disco ball, lighting, and a stage, so there were lots of spectators in attendance.

“Even with the bad weather and school closings we had a decent audience,” Gossiaux said. “There were well over 100 people in the crowd.”

Tons of young artists attended the Battle, making the performance a community building opportunity for Wicked Cricket on top of a win.

“During the breaks for the judges, we got to talk to the other bands and interact with the crowd,” Krug said. “The whole experience was great because we got huge publicity and the chance to meet a bunch of other bands and young artists.”

After playing their encore, the band got to claim their prize for winning.

“We got to choose between a performance at the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair, a recording session in the Youth Owned Records Studio at the Neutral Zone, a pro photo shoot, or a publicity packet,” Gossiaux said. 

As the band essentially had the other choices already, they chose the performance option.

“We already have our professional photographer Marah, and Logan’s mom published an article for us,” Krug said. “Youth Owned Records is one of the classes I’m going to at the Neutral Zone, so we will be able to record the band there.”

The band also has potential recording opportunities outside Youth Owned Records and the Neutral Zone.

“Mr. Sylvester, the orchestra director at CHS, has also offered to help record our band,” Krug said. “One way or another, I really hope we have an album before the boys go off to college!”

In the future, the band is hoping to get more gigs and play at as many places as possible. Krug is mainly in charge of finding gigs for the band.

“I have been part of WildChildz (another of Krug’s bands) for a while, so I try to make as many connections as possible,” Krug said. “I also try to go to these venues to see other bands, then take business cards and email them to see if they’re interested in having us play.”

Another way to search for gigs is at the gigs themselves. 

“Talking to people at gigs leads to more connections,” Krug said. “Communication and networking are beyond key to opening new opportunities.”

Wicked Cricket has a number of gigs coming up this spring and summer including Sounds and Sights on June 15th at the gazebo and the Rumpus Room on April 29th. Anyone interested should go support and check out Chelsea’s premier rock band!