Senior Robby Brooks and junior Jude Fucetola are wasting no time pursuing their passions. Over the past few months, they have taken their soundwaves from homemade studios to Spotify, a platform with over 170 million users, and made a significant splash on the St. Louis high school community in the process.

For both musicians, it always seemed a matter of when, not if, their music would make it big. Brooks and Fucetola both began playing instruments at a very young age and from the start, they fell in love with the craft, although each in their own way.

Brooks’s journey to Spotify was unsurprising, given the inspiration all around him. A drummer since before middle school, Brooks’s house was full of musicians growing up. Both his brothers played the drums and his oldest brother Peter, ’15, even had his own band, The Plywood Inspectors, in high school.

“They were amazing. I grew up going to see their shows,” said Brooks. “My brother is my biggest influence. I loved seeing him make his own music.”

Following in his brother’s footsteps, Brooks and a trio of friends joined together to form a band at the beginning of their own high school career. Calling themselves The Scamps, they had very humble beginnings. 

“When I look back on The Scamps, it’s pretty crazy thinking about how far we came from where we were freshman year playing covers and some of my bandmates not really knowing how to play their instruments,” said Brooks. “We were just messing around.”

Playing primarily out of the upstairs of a band member’s garage, The Scamps began slowly perfecting their craft. After playing at high schools around the St. Louis area, like Viz and Priory, Brooks quickly noted the growth of the musicians around him. Eventually, the band started to play its own songs, an important switch for the journey towards music streaming.

“We came up with these ideas, and we really liked them,” reflected Brooks. “The first song we wrote sophomore year, that turned into an original that we played at shows.”

Even after the group started making its own songs, it still wasn’t until last summer that they decided to go public.

“It took way too long to happen,” said Brooks. “We’d been a band for too long to not have anything out there. We had people that liked our music and we knew our music was good enough to present it.”

Last summer, The Scamps recorded the first of their two originals in a homemade sound studio, the same room they’d practiced in since the start. The new room, now fitted with insulating foam and noise-proof curtains installed diligently by a band member's parents, was an important sign of the support around them.

“We had a lot of outside encouragement,” said Brooks. “We had people like my brother who had real experience recording music and wanted to hear us record.”

Their two singles: “Beach Yu” and “Hold (My Own)” are classic garage band hits, featuring tantalizing guitar licks, driving drums, and soothing background vocals. Together, their two songs have well over 40,000 streams on Spotify, an impressive number that Brooks credits to the community around him.

“(The streams) mean we’re doing something right,” said Brooks. “It's a combination of people, kids at SLUH who I am friends with, kids at SLUH who I don't even know—which is awesome—and also people from other schools in St. Louis picking up on our music and liking it.”

“(The streams) mean we’re doing something right. It's a combination of people, kids at SLUH who I am friends with, kids at SLUH who I don't even know—which is awesome—and also people from other schools in St. Louis picking up on our music and liking it.”

Robby Brooks

Collaboration has played just as important a role in Fucetola’s music, even though he isn’t part of a band. Writing under the name J. Anthony, Fucetola is still a newcomer to Spotify. His first and only single so far, “I Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover Anymore,” dropped at the beginning of this year. From even its first day on Spotify, it’s success was apparent, garnering 500 streams and littering Instagram stories with it’s bright orange single cover. 

“It’s something that I feel like a lot of musicians, especially teeneagers, want: to get noticed and put yourself out there, but it’s such a process,” said Fucetola. “To even write a song and then record it and put it out on Spotify and market it becomes so much more real when you actually do it.”

His song, written on a sleepless summer night, is straight out of the 80’s with an electrifying synth groove and classic guitar samples recorded by two of Fucetola’s friends at De Smet. While a typical Scamps recording session can take a whole day, Fucetola recorded the piano melodies and vocals for his track in just three hours thanks to help from a friend who oversaw production. The song was dropped shortly after recording and Fucetola was incredibly grateful for the response it earned. 

“It’s really awesome. Part of me is like ‘Oh I want more, let’s get to this number,’ but I mean there was almost 500 (streams) on the first day, which is crazy. It’s been really humbling,” said Fucetola. “I’m glad people reacted to my stuff.”

The positive reactions to his music have been a relief for Fucetola, who at first was hesitant to share his voice.

“I’m still taking vocal lessons because I could not sing at all,” said Fucetola. “Just recently I was like ‘Okay, I can fake it.’ Putting my voice out for people to hear me sing, it was really nerve-wracking.”

One thing that was never questioned, though, was both artists’ skill on their respective instruments, skills they credit to SLUH’s own band program. 

“When I got here freshman year I didn't really know how to play jazz drums. That was uncharted territory for me,” said Brooks. “Very much thanks to Mr. Pottinger knowing what to place me in and what to recommend to me, that helped me branch out. That made me a way better drummer.”

Fucetola agreed, and appreciated the connections he made through the band program. 

“Someone who inspires me a lot currently is Robbie Brooks. We became really good friends, and I definitely wouldn’t have met him if it wasn’t for SLUH band. The Scamps are going crazy right now,” said Fucetola. “Learning jazz music, both in and out of school, has definitely helped me be more creative when I’m writing stuff.”

As for the future of these two, it remains bright. The Scamps have plans to release several songs over the summer and an EP, or a type of mini-album, as well. 

“We’ve had discussions about what it would take for all of us to not go to college—something like a million streams on Spotify,” joked Brooks. “Do I think that will happen? No, but our goal is to still play some shows over the summer and keep releasing music.”

Fucetola, after hearing several requests for new music, has similar plans for taking music with him after high school and beyond. 

“My dream is to own a music studio one day,” said Fucetola. “Music is definitely going to be part of my life in the future.” 

In the meantime, though, Fucetola aims to collaborate with other teenage artists in the St. Louis area, who continue to inform his craft. 

“I’m inspired by all music, man,” said Fucetola. “I think anyone who makes music has some sort of gift.”