It’s an accolade most drummers would kill for. Imagine getting a “like” from Ringo Starr on a music video in which you’re playing the drums.
For Hamilton mum Andrea Stokes – who didn’t pick up a pair of drumsticks until she was in her fifties and has been playing the drums for less than two years – getting the thumbs-up from the legendary Beatles percussionist is just one of the incredible responses she’s had since Momma’s Boy, the band she’s in with son Ryan and husband Lyndon, became a TikTok sensation.
Bad Moon Rising hitmakers Creedence Clearwater Revival commented on one of their covers, as did Fred Durst, the lead singer of Limp Bizkit. And when the Rolling Stones announced they were joining TikTok, the video they posted to mark the occasion featured bands who’d covered their music on the site, including the Stokes family band.
That’s not bad considering Andrea and Lyndon only learned instruments so Ryan had someone to play music with during lockdown.
“It’s mind-blowing,” says Andrea, 55. “We had no idea we’d get a response like this.”
When keen musician and talented singer Ryan couldn’t get together with his mates to belt out tunes during the August 2021 level four lockdown, he had to get creative. Andrea explains, “He needed a drummer to play with and one day he said to me, ‘Mum, I reckon you could do it – you’ve got a good sense of rhythm.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I’d never played drums before. I’d never played any instrument in fact. But he dragged me out to the garage, put me on a little pocket kit he had and showed me what to do.
“I’ve always looked at drummers and thought, ‘How cool.’ But I never thought I could do it. But once Ryan explained how to do it, it seemed to come quite naturally. I was playing on our first song, Hardest Button to Button by the White Stripes, in half an hour.”
Only child Ryan, 20, who plays several instruments, including guitar and drums, says, “I wasn’t surprised. Mum’s a natural. I thought she had a good sense of rhythm because I’ve seen her dancing and tapping her feet to music. I thought, ‘There’s a born drummer there.’ She’s amazing.”
Andrea recalls how Ryan asked for a drum kit as a child and she told him there was no room. “Now I play them, we have moved furniture out of the lounge to make room for the drums. We’ve had to lose a couch, but I don’t care. I love my drums!”
Once Andrea had mastered the drums for the White Stripes song, Ryan recorded them playing it and posted the clip on TikTok.
“A lot of stuff on TikTok was very negative when it came to older people, like, ‘Look at my dad trying to operate a phone’,” says Ryan. “I thought we could put a positive spin on it and show my mum being proficient at something she had just learned, and that might be inspiring. People started liking our stuff and commenting, and it wasn’t just people we knew, it was people from all over the world. There
are now 1.6 million views on that clip.”
After three months of helping his mum learn a new song every week, Ryan decided to teach his dad Lyndon – also a musical novice – to play bass.
Lyndon, 61, admits it’s taken quite a lot of work. “Ryan’s a really good teacher, but I’ve had to do my homework. I thought I’d left it too late to learn an instrument, so I’m rapt I’m able to do it.”
Their covers of songs by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Nirvana started going viral. Along with celebrity feedback, they also appeared on TV shows here and around the world, including US show Access Hollywood. They now have 85,000 followers on their TikTok account @MommasBoyOfficial and their most watched video, Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, has 1.8 million views. Andrea has even been recognised by a Momma’s Boy fan while in the crowd at a concert.
Ryan, who has moved to Auckland to work in social media for phone company Skinny Mobile, goes home at weekends to film a new song and teach his parents another tune for the following week.
They’ve recorded an album of Ryan’s original songs, Who Would Have Thought, which is on Spotify, and played at two Christmas parties for the Waikato Regional Council, where Andrea works as a consents monitoring operator and Lyndon is in river management. “Originally I said no, but our workmates have been really supportive, so we did it and had a lot of fun,” tells Andrea.
They love hearing that they’re inspiring others.
“I had a lady in her fifties say to me the other day, ‘I’m going to pick up some drumsticks and try it,'” Andrea says. “I said, ‘You go girl!’ You’re never too old and it’s so much fun.”
