The local Ventura band Nucklehead offers a unique and enjoyable surf punk sound for all. Noah Boland plays bass and performs backup vocals, Trevor Carr plays guitar and does vocals, and Zach Castro performs on drums. Boland is also in charge of booking gigs for the band.

Boland and Carr are seniors at Ventura, while Castro is a junior at Foothill Technology High School, but they all find time to play music together.

The band’s origin story is short and simple; they formed just in February. “A mutual friend told Trevor about me, and we got together and just got the ball rolling. After a while Trevor invited Noah and that’s how we started jamming,” Castro said.

Carr added on that an inspiration to start a band was his dad. “My dad had a band when he was our age and that was an inspiration to play,” Carr said. Castro’s father is also a guitarist in Simi Valley.

Nucklehead’s first gig was at the Foothill Technology Art Show and their following act was at Bombay’s in Ventura.

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With two seniors in the band, the question came up as to how college would incorporate into the band dynamic.

Carr is going to college in San Luis Obispo, and said, “We’ll be playing at a lot of Frat parties, a lot of fun, sweat, and loud music.”

“We hope to keep this going, it’s not a short term thing,” Carr stated, with a positive outlook on the band’s future.

In between booking gigs and having fun, the band is dedicated to producing quality music.

“We play as much as possible but practices tend to last three hours, where the longest it’s ever lasted is five hours,” said Castro.

“We don’t just wing it,” he added. “It’s for fun but it’s also for self expression.”

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The band as a whole feels their music can offer something more. “A lot of music today in my opinion is boring, so the fact we’re doing something different is a pretty big thing,” Castro said.

Their musical inspirations consist of bands like Black Flag and Bill Stevenson, Jean Krupa, and Papa Joe Jones.

When asked about the main goal of being a student-run band, Boland said, “We want people to hear our music as much as possible, but we really don’t care if we become famous. It’s not the main goal.”

Photo Credit: Noah Boland (Used with permission).