To the naked eye, the five members of the Brookfield-based rock band Kickout seem like regular teenage boys, cracking jokes and ribbing each other.
But put an instrument in their hands, and the Riverside Brookfield High School students — Jake Loiacono, Aidan Diaz, Isaiah Griffin, Charlie Rodis and Mateo Dominguez — reach a shared flow state, they said.
“Community is the biggest thing for me,” Griffin said. “The moment I started drums, and me and Jake and Mateo got together for our first mini gig thing that we played at some random cafe, it was like, ‘This is amazing. I want to keep doing this.’”
“When we jam, I feel like, as a group, we’re all so connected that everything goes really smoothly, and we can cohesively work together,” Diaz added. “Everyone seems to love it when we jam.”
The band formed last summer out of connections they made in their rock band class at school and in the six-man band club, the members said. They named musical acts like Led Zeppelin, Smashing Pumpkins, the Beatles, Braid, or, in Rodis’s words, “basically any emo band from the ‘90s Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, scene” as their inspirations, alongside their families, whose support has been instrumental, they said.
“We were asked to play the Fourth of July parade through six-man band. We were meant to be there to represent [the club],” Rodis said. “After the parade, the guy came up to us asking to play at his block party after, and that’s what started the band.”
This year, Kickout gained notoriety in Brookfield’s digital spaces after police were called on some of them during a jam in the parking lot at S.E. Gross Middle School after hours, breaking up the performance.
“It was one or two officers,” Dominguez said. “They said it was a noise complaint. They were fine with us playing, but they told us to stop. We didn’t really care, but now every time that we play there, more people complain.”
The most recent time they tried to play at Gross, officers didn’t just ask them to move on but took their information, Griffin said.
“The Brookfield police have probably been the biggest supporters,” Loiacono said. “They really hate having to kick us out. They watch us [play].”
Aimee Silvestri, Loiacono’s mother, posted about the band being kicked out — hence the band’s name — in the Brookfield Connections group on Facebook, garnering hundreds of interactions. Since then, Silvestri has created a Change.org petition that’s garnered nearly 1,100 signatures asking officials at Gross and Brookfield-LaGrange Park School District 95 to let the band play on their property, as only a couple of them have enough space to practice and play at home.
“The first time, the police told them, ‘I don’t care if you play, but you need to get permission from the school,’” she told the Landmark. “I made the petition to show the school, and then the school told us, ‘You have to ask the village,’ so now I emailed the village.”
In an emailed statement, D95 Superintendent Ryan Evans expressed support for the group’s interest in music but said “unscheduled use of District property for amplified performances is not permitted.”
“S.E. Gross is located in a mixed residential and business area, and the district has a responsibility to ensure that use of its property does not disrupt neighboring homes, businesses, or scheduled school and rental activities,” Evans said in the statement. “While we are aware of the petition, District decisions must be guided by established procedures, safety considerations, and the impact on our immediate community.”
The support from the signatures, the majority of which are local, is still reassuring, the boys said.
“It’s such a good feeling. It supports all of us in what we want to do with music. It’s so nice knowing when we play, we’re not pissing a bunch of people off,” Loiacono said. “It’s the greatest thing ever.”
“It didn’t even register in my head that, not only do this amount of people register that we exist but care about this, at all,” Rodis added. “I remember you guys randomly came up to me saying we had this petition. I look at it, and it’s already at a few hundred signatures. I was like, ‘What?!’”
While Diaz and Rodis are set to graduate this year and head to the University of Iowa and the College of DuPage, respectively, all five members of Kickout agreed they want to keep making music together as long as possible.
“This whole summer, all I’m going to do is play with these guys. Every time I’m back on break, I bet you it’s gonna be my favorite part,” Diaz said.
