(By ALEX PARKER)

A 10-year-old boy sat in his chair after a church service, anxiously waiting for his dad to give him the go ahead to check out the drum set up on stage.

He tugged at his dad’s sleeve and asked again if he could go check it out. His dad nodded in acquiescence, then the boy jolted toward the drum set.

Years later, Elijah Cadena recognizes this first experience with a drum set as the start of a path that has made him who he is. “Something about it made sense,” he says.

Elijah is someone you meet and immediately identify as a person passionate about life with a sense of who they’d like to be, which in his case is a drummer.

Right now, Elijah plays drums for an Austin indie rock band called “Sneaky Peaches and The Fuzz.” As a 17-year-old he’s been playing drums for seven years and has devoted his life to music.

Greyson Heine, the bassist for his band, says, “Elijah is an amazing drummer, a great friend, and he’s super good at throwing himself into musical situations with other bands, and instantly grabbing their style, and groove.”

Elijah likes bands like “Hippocampus,” a popular indie rock band whose drummer, Whistler Isaiah, is one of his biggest inspirations because of his technical ability.

When Elijah decided that it was his life goal to pursue music, he decided to forgo finishing his secondary education to focus on drumming.

To help make it happen, he has a good support system around him. His older brother and band lead singer Noah Cadena handles most of their social media and interactions with the algorithm on platforms like Spotify.

Elijah says that his band will be releasing at least six or seven songs over the next few months starting with their new song, “Foot Steps.”

They also have a music video that’s being made for their song “Bedroom Floor” that currently has over 1 million streams on Spotify.

Sneaky Peaches’ strategy to promote “listens” to their songs is a bit like slowly drinking water as opposed to trying to drink the whole water bottle at once.

Essentially, they’re going to slowly trickle out one song a month as opposed to one big album drop.

Elijah and the other band members believe that’s what you need to do when you’re an up-and-coming band in the information age. This way, their songs have more time to gain individual traction before they compile their songs into an album.

Elijah says the band wants to create a concert experience that people of all ages would be interested in. One of their objectives is to be “the indie rock band that your parents like.”

“We want to be able to spread [good] emotion with other people, spread our life story through music,” he says. “I just love doing what we do.”

When asked about the future, Elijah envisions playing sold out shows with the band, being financially stable and successful.

“I hope to see myself improve as a person and a drummer,” Elijah says. “I want to be successful in my music. I don’t want to be without it. I don’t want to lose it in any way.”