Soul Surge, a band composed of lead singer and guitarist Tony Pollock, guitarist Nick Donato, and drummer Seth Buer, entered the public consciousness of most students after their WAHS Got Talent performance of “Comedown” by Bush.
Pollock and Donato met last year in guitar class, Donato being new to the instrument and Pollock having played for two years. Later, Buer and Pollock met in the band room, after which they began to play together at lunch. Buer had been playing the drums consistently for a few months before practicing with Pollock and Donato.
The band began after “Tony reached out to Nick and I and was asking if we wanted to practice with him,” Buer said. “Nick and I both said yes, and I took my entire drum kit over there and headed over with Nick. Since then, we have been practicing at his house as much as possible. Tony then had the idea of forming a band with Nick and I around last July, and that’s when Soul Surge was born.”
Pollock, who is in his junior year, is originally from a city near San José in Costa Rica, and moved to Charlottesville at the age of six. “I started actually playing [the drums] when I was six, but just a little bit, and then from the age of seven or eight, I played almost every day for five years,” Pollock continued, referencing his former teacher, Scotty Derrico, calling him, “probably one of the best drummers in the area.”
Pollock’s love of music stems from his parents, noting that, “my dad introduced me to a lot of really, really good music, and I got really into it.” Now, his favorite genres are reggae, 80’s music, and classical. In his free time, Pollock teaches and works at the Music Resource Center in Charlottesville.
He also writes his own music saying, “I feel like a lot of the time what inspires me to write is just the intelligence of other people…it’s hard to do it [write music], but in the end it’s always worth it because it’s your song.”
Donato, also a junior, prefers disco music, saying, “I love ABBA, I love Earth, Wind & Fire; I like a lot of songs that you can get down and dance to. I also like chill songs like reggae songs, and I also like more popular songs, like… [those from] The Weeknd.”
“I’ve played violin since I was five and I stopped during COVID,” he said. “Then I played video games for a really long time, and then I needed something to do because I was basically going to school and doing nothing and going home and doing nothing, so I got my guitar.”
Buer graduated last year and had drumming experience in the drumline in the marching band, which he was inspired to join because of his dad, and “started to get into music in general when I played violin in elementary until late middle school.” His favorite genres are reggae, reggae-rock, rock/punk, and rap, citing Sublime and Joe Tomino, who was the drummer for Sublime with Rome, and Bud Gaugh, the drummer for Sublime as inspirations.
“When I was in third grade, I got my first ever Pearl Roadshow drum kit for Christmas and that’s when I really started to just play them as much as possible,” Buer said. “I kinda stopped playing them for a bit when I entered middle school and most of my high school years. Around junior year at WAHS, I started to get back into playing sets and have been passionate about practicing and practicing ever since…I love playing drums because it releases a lot of my stress and makes me happy.”
“[In September], we made almost $300 over two days playing downtown because a bunch of drunk dudes tipped us a bunch of money. Then we went out and got some Chinese food and milkshakes,” Pollock continued. “I feel like what happened, like the whole band that happened, this whole thing kind of just was, like a natural thing, and I don’t want to have to replace and force another kind of thing to happen, because I feel like it’s better when things just happen naturally. It was really fun, honestly, like in the beginning, but kind of got old. But that’s just what happens with bands.”
