Graduating with a garage hobby

Remember how your parents reacted to your first guitar lesson, or when your peers thought your garage band was an interesting side hobby?

Now, as a senior graduating from college, you’ve got a band that seems to be going somewhere. The balance is no longer between school and traveling gigs but providing for yourself and achieving musical success.

Graduating seniors Mike Chan and Bobby Campbell’s gowns will be flapping in the wind as they rush off to New York City for a set of showcases with their group South Jordan.

“Everything is up in the air right now. If everything goes well this summer, school has to take a back seat,” Chan said.

Both recording arts majors, Chan and Campbell began what would become South Jordan. Now signed to Union Entertainment Group, South Jordan will be working with nationally renowned songwriters Kyle Kelso in New York and Richard Marx in Chicago.

Recording a little closer to home, senior Tim Smiley will be working on an album with his group Tiny Thieves. Smiley is a recording arts major who currently works as a soundman for local venues. His studies have given him the opportunity to experiment with various fields of recording, he said, including “live sound and surround sound recordings” and “discovering special ways to accent 360 degrees.”

For Tiny Thieves bassist Travis Davies, being a violin building major in a group composed primarily of recording arts students proves convenient.

“When it comes to recording, I’ve got it made,” Davies said. “I just show up and plug in, and they record me.”

Local rock stars come from a variety of other majors, too, including telecommunications. 

“My degree is in telecommunications, design and production, so if my life as a struggling, starving artist doesn’t work out, I can always refer back to the original focus of my studies,” senior Ben Gershman said. “I want to get into film editing and scoring, possibly.”

Gershman is the frontman for the local group Jip Jop, a conglomeration of jazz and hip hop styles with live performance methods custom-fit for late-night Bloomington. With the majority of the band now composed of graduates, the summer ahead will be one of exploration and development.

“End of August, early September, we are all moving to Chicago,” Gershman said. “I don’t expect to be living richly for an amount of time. I have always wanted to do music, and if I could do that for a living, I couldn’t ask for a better job.”

Senior Bobby Wooten will remain in Bloomington to complete his degree with the Jacobs School of Music, but he has agreed to frequently commute to Chicago. The rest of the band anticipates returning for scheduled Bluebird performances, among other local gigs.

South Jordan, composed entirely of undergraduates until this May, has been battling its own highway blues.

“We spent around 10 out the past 16 weekends on the road,” Chan said. “Recently in New Hampshire we opened up for Theory of a Deadman. It was an 18-hour drive out there, but definitely a good experience.”

With the help of laptops, Wi-Fi, Internet, and supportive professors, they were able to hunker down offstage and sneak in homework assignments between shows across cities and states.

“We get huge opportunities that might be on a Thursday in Illinois,” said Campbell, South Jordan’s songwriting mastermind. “It’s possible to be in a band and be in school at the same time — it’s just really tough. We’ve fortunately gotten a lot of teachers that are willing to work with us.”