Lizard News MARCH 2021
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Hard work starts to pay off for young guitar hero By Matthew Farrell hile most people have fingers crossed for falling Covid levels, Ōmokoroa teen Michael van Lieshout has the exciting next step of a blossoming music career depending on it. After being plucked from high school obscurity, the 14-year-old was embraced by 20,000 fans at Australasia’s biggest reggae music festival last month. The Tauranga Boys College student - formerly of Ōmokoroa Point and Tauranga Intermediate - was thrust into the limelight for One Love at Tauranga Domain over Waitangi Weekend. Michael took the lead guitar role for the L.A.B. hit ‘Ain’t No Use’, riffing before a big solo and then being joined by the band’s frontman Joel Shadbolt playing harmony, before finishing up with a little improvisational work. The crowd lapped it up, and Michael is now eyeing a possible gathering of 15,000 for L.A.B.’s next scheduled gig at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium on 27th March. In December, Stuff described the band as one of New Zealand’s biggest music successes of 2020. Getting ready to ride the wave with them is this hard-working
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and likeable young man who has been a student of Joel’s since asking for an electric guitar as a birthday present the year he turned six. That’s where 14 hours a week of practice can get you. This summer, L.A.B. has also played Gisborne’s Rhythm and Vines festival, Mangawhai’s Northern Bass, Whangamatā on New Year’s Eve, Bay Dreams in Nelson, and the Bowl of Brooklands in Taranaki - with Michael slipping backstage to meet the band several times. “They started throwing the idea around, only halfjokingly. ‘We should have got you up there on the stage’. Then three weeks before One Love, Brad, the drummer, sends me a message on Facebook. We came home from terrible weather on our South Island holiday, and I was straight into rehearsals with Joel and the bass player Ara. We locked in what I was going to play. Then it was the full band rehearsal, then the show,” says Michael. “At soundcheck in the morning, I was all good. But when I went on stage and did my solo, the crowd went nuts. They drowned me out. Joel walked over and turned up my amp so I could hear myself.” Michael says he’s also appreciated the opportunity to see the recording side of L.A.B.’s music and how clean, pure and real the process is with no room for mistakes.
While he grew up wanting to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Michael says Joel is now his most significant influence and role model for being humble and hardworking. Michael loves blues and jazz, and thanks his dad Stephan for a love of big band and funk artists such as Tower of Power. Dad and mum Maria Cataldo both get a lot of thanks for all the taxi driving too, and sister Sophia (7) isn’t forgotten for all the rehearsals she has been dragged along to. As she points out, “I don’t have concerts yet, and he does.” Michael plans to study music when he leaves school and says he will probably soon form a band to write music and play covers. “I want to keep playing and doing what I love, but I will keep my academic options open, so I don’t become stuck down the track,” he says. The list of thanks goes on from past and present school teachers to the L.A.B. band members. And how about that appearance on national TV news? “When I saw Simon at his desk with a photo of me on that massive curved screen, I just had to laugh. That means it’s really happening. That’s really me. This past couple of years, I am starting to see all my practice bePhoto credit: One Love Festival. ginning to pay off.”