At just 15, Kingston’s Lukas Oak is proving that you don’t necessarily need decades of experience to make a serious impression on a live music audience.

Lukas picked up the guitar in February 2024, at age 13, after a skateboarding accident left him with a busted shoulder—and what began as something of a musical form of therapy quickly turned into an obsession. He started performing publicly only a couple of months later and has been seemingly everywhere ever since, appearing at venues, festivals and community events throughout Kingston and the surrounding area. His musical tastes are wonderfully eclectic, covering everything from country, folk and blues to rock, pop, indie and reggae, while his growing musical arsenal now includes guitar, vocals, piano/keyboards and drums, among other instruments.

Lukas has already shared stages and festival bills with established Kingston artists and performed for crowds of hundreds, including an appearance at the inaugural Princess Street Promenade where he tackled songs by The Glorious Sons, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Zach Bryan. And judging by his own declaration that he wants to do music “forever and ever,” this may be less a teenage hobby than the beginning of a very long musical adventure. Catch him Friday, October 2, 2026 from 5 to 8 PM at The Cove Inn! Details and reservations here.

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Seamus Cowan: So, Lukas, you picked up the guitar after a skateboarding accident. Most people get told to rest and recover—you apparently decided to become a musician. What happened? And does your shoulder realize what it accidentally started?

Lukas Oak: At a skate camp in Pennsylvania, I fell and dislocated my shoulder. When I got home and was healing, I was bored and decided to mess around with my brother’s guitar. A few months later on April 30th, 2024. I asked my dad if we could go to an open mic and we went to a place in Kingston and that was the beginning of the obsession to be on stage.

Seamus: Your musical tastes seem to have absolutely no interest in staying inside one particular box. If you were stranded on a desert island with only one guitar and could listen to just five artists for the rest of your life, who makes the cut—and who gets thrown overboard?

Lukas: Dominic Fike is partially the reason I took an interest in music. Marcus King is currently my absolute favourite blues artist. Michael Jackson, because vocally he is incredible. Stevie Wonder for his soul. The Beatles because they are musical geniuses. 

Who would go overboard? That’s hard as I have a love for music and everyone brings something good to the table. An AI artist maybe…

Seamus: You’ve gone from picking up the guitar in 2024 to playing festivals and opening for established acts remarkably quickly. What goes through your mind in those few seconds before you walk onto a big stage—and is there still a little bit of “Oh boy… here we go!”?

Lukas: No matter how big a crowd, it’s always a little nerve wracking. There is always a fear that it might be a bad show or they might not care for my music.

Seamus: You’re already playing several instruments. Be honest: are you genuinely fascinated by learning new instruments, or are you secretly just collecting them so you can eventually form a one-man band and put the rest of us out of work?

Lukas: Currently I play 9, and I enjoy the feeling of figuring out how they all work together.

Seamus: You’ve said you want to do music “forever and ever” and bring Kingston along with you. Fast-forward 10 years: where do you hope Lukas Oak is playing, what kind of music are you making, and what would 25-year-old Lukas tell the 15-year-old kid who first picked up that guitar?

Lukas: I would love to be playing wherever I can still have fun. A big festival like Osheaga would be pretty cool. I will be playing a little of everything but mainly Blues. I would tell the 16 year old me to enjoy it all. There are more and more amazing things coming.

Posted: Oct 1, 2026