Astoria High School's newest student band, Top Hat, got the professional treatment from the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, which brought a full crew and a mobile, $3 million recording studio, to town Tuesday to record a song and shoot a music video.

Top Hat, city’s newest band, was born in a bus parked outside Astoria High School.

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a sky blue, $3 million mobile recording studio marked by a rough sketch of the late Beatles frontman, stopped by Tuesday on a tour of high schools on the West Coast. The experience gave students a chance at professional production and YouTube glory.

The nonprofit that runs the Lennon bus was started by Yoko Ono in 1998 to honor her husband’s legacy and to help students express themselves through music at a time when musical programs face funding crunches. The bus visits about 200 schools a year, with help from corporate sponsors.

Firewall company Juniper Networks sponsored the Pacific Northwest tour and chose Astoria as one of the stops after being contacted by the school district’s technology director, Scott Holmstedt. Port City Jazz Choir Director Matt Pierce provided the music lovers, who spent much of their Tuesday on the bus learning how to professionally produce a song.

The students of Top Hat, after settling on a name based on their bassist Evan Lemmy’s vintage headgear, had to come up with an idea and the lyrics for a single. For junior Beth Mathre, a co-lead singer along with Sarah Miller, it was as easy as looking out the window.

“Ain’t it a shame … I never get to dance in the rain,” Mathre and Miller belted out, recording the chorus of their single by late morning.

“I was looking outside and seeing that the sky was blue,” Mathre said, adding she started thinking of lazy Saturdays and dancing in the rain, channeling her Gene Kelly-esque inspiration into the lyrics of Top Hat’s debut single, “Springtime Rain,” in a mere hour.

“It’s not as hard as I thought,” said student Jared Rivera, one of Top Hat’s three guitarists, of the cutting and mixing assembled into the final product.

Rivera sat in a soundproof recording studio at the back of the bus that doubles as a green room and sleeping quarters for the crew.

Recording Rivera’s licks and Mathre’s and Miller’s vocals from another soundproof editing studio in the middle of the bus were Jesper Windmar, one of several onboard engineers, and sophomore Jasmin Mabry, who in her day job provides technical assistance for the lyricists of Port City.

“It’s a lot to do with tech and how you personally hear stuff,” Mabry said, peering over the bank of computers in the production studio, packed with professional editing software.

By Tuesday afternoon, Top Hat and their entourage of engineers, laden with high-definition video recorders and wide-angle lenses, spread out across the high school’s courtyard. They finished shooting scenes for the music video of “Springtime Rain,” piquing the interest of passing students and staff stopping to see the spectacle.

Windmar, a Swedish immigrant, said he got his first introduction to the Lennon bus when it visited the Los Angeles College of Music, where he earned a degree in music engineering.

His is a similar story among many of the engineers, mostly millennials and recent music school graduates.

While traveling on the Lennon bus is a choice gig, it’s no pleasure cruise.

“We do about two of these a week,” said Luke Huisman, another engineer who learned of the bus through a friend.

By Wednesday, the engineers of the Lennon bus were editing “Springtime Rain” and traveling to southern Oregon. By Thursday, they were holding public tours and music workshops with students at North Medford High School. Today, they were in Ashland doing the same.

“This tour is until the end of May,” Huisman said. “Ten months out of the year, we’ll be on the road.”

The Lennon bus experience served as both a revelation and an affirmation for student music lovers getting an introduction to professional production.

“That was my first time in a real recording studio,” said junior Nate Hawkins, another guitarist for Top Hat.

When he found out the bus was coming, Hawkins said he lobbied Pierce to let his friend and fellow budding musician, Rivera, join the band.

“I have a lot of students that have wanted to continue (with music), but only a couple have,” Pierce said.

While he’s always wanted to do recording projects to put his students’ work out into the world, Pierce said the school simply doesn’t have the technology — at least at present.

“Our only goal is to get involved with music,” Hawkins said. His time on the Lennon bus has helped rekindle an idea for a senior project he and Rivera had for next year: fundraising to build a recording studio at the high school.