We recently connected with Lockyer Boys (Will and Charlie Lockyer) and have shared our conversation below.

Lockyer Boys, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

We’re the youngest siblings in our family with an older brother and sister. Our mom put them in piano lessons and then as soon as each of us were born, we were brought to the lessons. Once we were able to walk, we were itching to get in on the action and we began piano lessons young at around 2-3 years old. Disclaimer: they weren’t normal piano lessons, Mrs. Walter would literally place our fingers on the keys so we could feel included with our older siblings. As we got older, our parents recognized our ear for music was special which led to vocal lessons (around age 7 and 9). Once our name became known around the vocal recital community, we were able to book appearances as “the Lockyer Boys” at local events.

Our first shows were at our hometown’s ski chalet and we only played covers but people seemed to like us! After getting playing there a few times, we developed a love for performing and entertaining and eventually, we realized that’s what we wanted to pursue. Fast forward to now, we’re full-time musicians, songwriters, producers and we even have kept the same name all this time. The Lockyer Boys!

Lockyer Boys, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are brothers (Will and Charlie Lockyer) from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. We’re 19 and 21 and have been a pop duo for around 7 years now. A huge aspect of music artists is writing and producing original material and we’ve been so fortunate to have worked with some of the best producers in North America including Grammy-winning producer Mikal Blue (Colbie Caillat, OneRepublic) and Jeff Dawson (Global 2005 hit ‘Bad Day’). We quickly learned to love being in the studio and it is now one of our favourite parts of the music industry, however working in professional studios was not how we started.

Once we told our parents we wanted to pursue music, they bought us an iMac with GarageBand and we had to figure out how to record our original material with whatever help we could find on YouTube. It was slow and we reached many dead ends. Our first few songs weren’t any good either but we kept learning and we slowly got better and better until a family friend connected us with Jeff Dawson in Vancouver. Jeff quickly took us under his wing and that’s when everything started to pick up exponentially. We learned how to work with a producer, how to produce ourselves, and we learned how to be efficient. With Jeff we pumped out around 30 professionally recorded songs in 2 years and he has his name in nearly every song we’ve released today.

Now we’ve managed to branch out working with other producers and songwriters including Mikal Blue as mentioned, as well as Brian Howes (Nickleback, Daughtry), Shawn Hook, Rob Wells (Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande) and more. In 2024, we plan to release as much music as possible the first song on the list was DRIVE! (released November 1oth).

Another aspect of being pop artists is performing! We feel like we excel in this area because it’s how we fell in love with music. We’ve been entertaining crowds of all sizes ever since we could play instruments and when we’re always so stoked to play live for our fans. We’ve even had the fantastic opportunity to open for many big names including the Barenaked Ladies, Loverboy, Fefe Dobson and more. We’ve also been touring all around our region at schools which has been gaining a lot of buzz in local and provincial news. In these school shows, it’s just us two with a guitar and we play our original music in front of the whole school, teaching the kids all about music and what it’s like being musicians and artists. The teachers love it. The kids love it. And we love it! We find that it’s our main way of gaining real authentic fans and it has helped us land more and more bigger headlining events in our area. In 2024, we plan to expand to other cities including LA, Toronto, and Winnipeg and we could never be more pumped!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Our main goal when creating music is that we want to make people feel good. Growing up in a musical household our experience with music was always positive (sing alongs with family and friends, live music at parties etc). Every night before we went to sleep, we would both listen to party/feel good music like Pitbull, FloRida, OneRepublic on our iPod Shuffles. Although it seems like a random memory, it played a huge roll in our overall inspiration and we believe it’s why our music leans toward happier themes.

Along with writing happier songs, we also focus on creating fun and uplifting live shows. One thing that separates us from other groups is that we don’t like to think of it as a band playing in front of an audience. Instead, we include the audience the entire time through various ways including singing along or even coming on stage to play with us. Our goal with our live shows is to create an experience for everyone of all ages and backgrounds, and we will continue to modify and perfect our ‘show’ until we can’t play any longer.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When we started our journey as musicians we were very young. Just as we were getting into high school we were travelling to Vancouver to record and start developing ourselves as artists. As previously mentioned, we were able to write and finish many songs in a short period of time and this came with the thought of, ‘let’s save our best for later’. We would send our unreleased music to various managers, sync agents, labels, waiting for someone to pick our songs up and help us! However, we never got many substantial replies and when we did, it would often result in a dead end. All of this waiting just resulted in little progress despite our effort behind the scenes. We had so much to show for our hard work but our fans weren’t able to see it.

This year we started to change our mindset. Nobody is going to magically do this for us so what are we waiting for? We just released our newest single “DRIVE!” and one line says; “Full speed go 100%”. That’s exactly what we plan on doing now. Face all of our doubts and fears and leave nothing on the table. We also plan on releasing much more music in 2024 because it’s time! So stay tuned:)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lockyerboys.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/lockyerboys
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lockyerboys
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lockyerboys?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV4pM75YzePYUIphHCQYv5A?sub_confirmation=1
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3KtXz8i1Db2miFscIV8V1K?si=WY_-vR1XSPOxm7l2Roo0og Stream Newest Single: https://ffm.to/lbdrive TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@lockyerboys

Image Credits
All photos taken by Chad Kirvan.