Sky Zone hosted the second of three concerts in the Concert Series Sept. 7 featuring the band Making Movies. Anyone over the age of 16 was invited to attend the event. The third concert for the series will be held Sept. 28 featuring the bad She’s A Keeper. Find Making Movies on twitter @MKNGMVS and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mkngmvs.
Q: How was the band created?
Enrique Chi (Lead Vocalist and Guitarist): Diego and I are brothers, and we had the idea. I had the idea, and I needed someone to do it with me.
Diego Chi (Bassist and Vocalist): And when you’re brothers, the first person you call when you need something done.
Enrique: We convinced his friend Brendan Culp to be our drummer. We had tried out different drummers and had the idea up and running. We are still kind of clumsily aiming toward an honest fusion of our culture (Panama), mixed with rock and roll. When we finally met Juan-Carlos and got him in the band, we were able to do it.
Juan-Carlos Chaurand (Percussionist and Vocalist): It’s because I’m Mexican and you needed a Mexican.
Diego: Yes we needed a Mexican to balance it all out.
Q: How is Sky Zone different from any venue you’ve played before?
Diego: Vastly different.
Enrique: To ever have this much fun, adults have to be drunk. Kids can just have this much fun, no juice. So really this is just like a sober bar with really bright lights.
Juan: Really, really bright lights. It’s different; it’s nice. We haven’t played for a crowd this young.
Diego: I don’t think ever.
Juan-Carlos: Except maybe our families. So this is our first show playing for a vastly young crowd.
Enrique: We have our friend Chris Haghirian who works for Ink Magazine. He’s a very good guy, and he brought up this opportunity. I am usually more willing to take any opportunity if it comes from Chris before anyone else. He has been good to us. So I’ll take a risk if it’s with him. This place is big; it’s weird. It’s in a trampoline park, all right. For anybody else I would be like “no”, but for Chris, all right let’s try it.
Q: Tell me about the bracelets that you sell for the summer camp you set up.
Enrique: Yeah we sell — mine has worn out from so too much pool time — it says “I’m a Dreamer”, we give the proceeds to two things. One is United We Dream organization which supports the Dream Act which is an immigration reform petition. It is something that is in Congress right now. We do a summer camp where we give back to inner city youth. It’s basically a free summer camp for kids, and we just started our fall program, starting this fall it’s going to start up. It is something that we like to do as a way to give back to a community that sometimes is lacking in music education.
Diego: These young people were not as fortunate as we were growing up to have the opportunity to get music instruction, like we did. We had our dad that played, and we could also afford to get a private lesson. A lot of these students just don’t have that opportunity available to them. We wanted to give them that if we could.
Q: What are your favorite songs?
Diego: I find myself going back into things I grew up listening to. I found an old Peter Gabriel album that we didn’t have, and I love Peter, and I have been listening to that a lot, but that’s from the 80s so I don’t know. It’s not new. It ain’t hip.
Juan-Carlos: I don’t know. The guys tease me because I don’t really listen to music, like ever.
Diego: We’ll go on a drive, and we will be like two and a half hours in and no music, just the dead sound of wind going by.
Q: What would you be doing if it wasn’t music?
Juan-Carlos: Sleeping.
Enrique: I would work in the community. I would want to be a full time social worker mixed with music and the arts program. I teach guitar lessons, so if I wasn’t playing in a band I would do that more, or I would be a chef. I love cooking.
Diego: I don’t even know. I would be a bum. I also work at a non-profit organization in Kansas City so that’s working with young people, which is close to my heart. I would find a way to do something with that.
