Twelve-year-old Alison Long stands front and center onstage, a bass guitar in her arms, her face shadowed by long brown hair. Behind her, nine-year-old Trent Burritt holds his drumsticks above the kit. Ali is flanked by her brother, 16-year-old Cameron Long, and 15-year-old Caidon Vasquez, both on electric guitar. The four musicians, who perform as the band Watch Your Step, are getting ready for an important gig this weekend.

The Long siblings live in Orleans, Burritt is from Eastham, and Vasquez is from Wellfleet. Cameron and Caidon attend Nauset Regional High School, Ali goes to Nauset Middle School, and Burritt is a student at Eastham Elementary School. Minutes before, they’d all climbed out of their parents’ cars in the parking lot of Mark’s Music in Orleans, smiling shyly and shouldering their instruments and equipment.

Now, under the multicolored stage lights and the watchful eye of music teacher Mark Filteau, Ali lays down the bass line for “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes. Burritt starts to kick. This is the first song on their 75-minute set list, which they’ll perform on Saturday, Nov. 9 at Wellfleet Preservation Hall in a concert called “Save the Music,” presented by a newly created nonprofit organization, Outer Cape Music. Two other local bands, Friendly Fowl and headliner Flavor Bomb, are also scheduled to perform.

The nonprofit’s first event was the Outer Cape Music Festival in August at the Orleans-Eastham Elks Lodge. This weekend’s concert is a fundraiser to benefit local musicians and music students, according to David White, the founder of Outer Cape Music. White says he saw Watch Your Step perform at a talent show at the Elks Lodge this fall and recruited them for “Save the Music.”

Filteau opened Mark’s Music, a music store and school for adults and kids, in 2000. He grew up in East Harwich and now lives above the shop, where he gives lessons on guitar, bass guitar, ukulele, and drums.

Filteau says he’s been putting bands together since before the movie School of Rock was released in 2003. He listens to his students play and gauges their musical personalities. When he feels they’re ready for “the next step,” he graduates them to his band program and groups them into bands.

He says Watch Your Step came together naturally: Ali and Cam are siblings, Burritt is “a very focused nine-year-old,” and the four kids have similar taste in music. Vasquez took some convincing, says Filteau: “He’s a little shy.” But Filteau wouldn’t give up. “If I see that potential, I keep pushing,” he says.

Filteau showed the newly formed band songs he thought they’d enjoy — mostly rock from the ’80s and ’90s. “They’d be like, ‘You know what — I really do like Tom Petty,’ ” he says.

The band finishes working on “Seven Nation Army” and pauses to breathe. Filteau watches from the plush couch at the back of the stage room, a space he built in 2010. He pulls out a megaphone and speaks into it: “Good job! Next song!”

Ali plays bass and is also the lead singer, with a surprisingly big voice: smooth, grounded, and pitch-perfect, it easily fills the room.

The band’s set list includes songs by Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses, and the Rolling Stones — most of them originally sung by men. But that makes little difference to Ali. “With most of the songs,” she says, “there’s a lot of room to play with how you sing it.” It’s less about the person behind the microphone, she says, and “more about what song they’re singing.”
The kids communicate with nods and smiles, leaning toward each other when the music calls for it. On “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by Eurythmics, they sing in unison. On “Rockin’ in the Free World (Live),” their version of a Pearl Jam cover of Neil Young’s song, Cam takes a guitar solo, fingers flying up the fingerboard. In a deft transition, Vasquez takes his own solo: now he’s the center of attention, and everyone on stage makes space.

Vasquez says he first heard Nirvana in fifth grade: “I was hooked.” He started taking guitar lessons a year later, in 2020, at Mark’s Music. “Rock and roll is this force that pulls you to it,” he says. “You can’t escape.”

He and Cam take solos often. For songs that are “super iconic,” he says, like “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd, with memorable guitar solos, they’ll play them as recorded by the original band. But in a song like “Rockin’ in the Free World,” they improvise their solos.

“If you told me two years ago I’d be doing this now, I’d be mind-blown,” says Vasquez, admitting that he used to be less outgoing. These days, his onstage jitters get lost in the groove of a good performance. “When you’re super into it, and you’ve pushed past that nervous barrier, it’s like you can do anything,” he says. “You feel the music inside your soul.”

Burritt, who looks the part of a drummer with his blond mullet, says he used to suffer from stage fright — “when I was like five or six.” Not so much anymore.

The more gigs that Watch Your Step played — mainly open-mics at places like Wellfleet’s Hog Island — the less fear they felt.

“Performing keeps you on your toes,” says Filteau. “It pushes you to be a better musician.” It’s also imperative to have a good time, he adds.

Vasquez has been taking lessons with Filteau the longest: almost four years. Burritt started on ukulele in 2021, took up guitar in 2022, and began to play drums only at the end of that year. Cam started lessons in 2021, and Ali started the most recently, just last year.

Cam says he practices guitar at least once every day, usually for an hour. “It’s where I find the most joy,” he says. His favorite guitarist, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, plays “quick, flashy riffs,” says Cam, but also “solos with a lot of emotion.” That’s a talent he’s trying to emulate: “I’m trying to express something instead of just playing notes.”

Watch Your Step rehearses once or twice a week. The band played two shows for Eastham’s Windmill Weekend and performed at Porchfest in Wellfleet. “It’s fun to have people listen,” says Ali.

“I feel like, as young musicians, when we go onstage people aren’t expecting much,” says Cam. “When we don’t sound horrible, like some people expect, it brings a whole new energy to our playing. It’s kind of like an extra wow factor.

“At the end of the day, we’re just kids having fun playing music,” he says. And it is the end of the day — a school day looms tomorrow. But onstage at Mark’s Music, the kids don’t look tired.

They launch into their next song, Radiohead’s “Creep,” a bittersweet cry of unrequited love. Ali’s sure voice sails through the bridge with ease. She’s lit up by the stage lights in purple, then green. “What the hell am I doing here?” she sings. “I don’t belong here.”

But standing in front of the microphone with her eyes closed, she has no doubt she’s where she belongs.

Rock On

The event: “Save the Music,” a concert presented by Outer Cape Music
The time: Saturday, Nov. 9; doors open at 5 p.m.
The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
The cost: $25 at outercapemusicfest.com