Organ Donors
Student band, Organ Donors, will open Centralhallapalooza’s show April 30.
Matthew Kendrick | Courtesy
Make sure that you arrive to Centralhallapalooza on time this Saturday because you will not want to miss Organ Donors, who will kick the night off.
“We plan on having a really good time, and we want to bring a lot of energy, but we’re completely dependant on the crowd for that,” lead singer senior Colin Wilson said. “We are starting off CHP for everybody, and we want it to be great this year.”
Wilson, who will also be on keys, will be joined onstage by sophomore Dean Sinclair on drums, junior Conner Dwinell on guitar, and Lecturer in Music Daniel Palmer, who is filling in on bass.
Organ Donors said it plans on covering a number of popular bands — including The Killers, Walk the Moon, and The Black Keys — in an effort to establish a type of “dancy rock” atmosphere early in the night.
Sinclair said the band’s unique name, which was improvised on the spot, is reflective of the way they view themselves.
“We don’t really take ourselves all that seriously,” he said. “We just want to go out there and play fun music for everyone. You can’t really pick up a serious name for something like this.”
Palmer, one of Sinclair and Wilson’s music teachers, offered to step in to fill the shoes of Wilson’s younger brother, who was unable to make the trip to Hillsdale for Centralhallapalooza.
“There is a shortage of bass players at this school, and my brother, who has played for us some, couldn’t get work off,” Wilson said. “And when we told Dan this, he offered to play bass for us so that we could perform for people. He is really chill. He can pretty much practice with us once and have it down.”
When asked what he wanted the audience to know, Sinclair simply said, “Come early and stay late.”
Deaf Davy and the Wine Boxes
Over 17 students will perform as Deaf Davy and the Wine Boxes April 30 for Centralhallapalooza.
Mark Naida | Courtesy
Deaf Davy and the Wine Boxes will take the stage next — all 17 members of it.
“There is a group of people that are not part of the other two bands, but they’re really great musicians, so I just got all of them all together,” lead singer junior Mark Naida said. “It would just be nonsense to not have them play.”
With so many members on stage, the band will be able to play a wide variety of music.
“We are planning on playing a steady progression, starting with some soul music and transitioning into more rock and popular music,” Naida said.
Deaf Davy and the Wine Boxes — mostly made up of members of Phi Mu Alpha — is named after lead guitarist junior David Johnson, who is completely deaf in one ear, and 60 percent deaf in the other. Despite this, Johnson is one of the most talented guitarists on campus, Naida said.
Naida said with so many members, it is hard for the band to be too tightly rehearsed but believes that this can actually work in their favor.
“If anybody thinks this is a super-tightly rehearsed thing, it’s not,” he said. “I like to let everybody do their own thing because, at the end of the day, I believe good musicians will do good things as long you let them.”
Naida warned that the audience should not plan on staying quiet during the show.
“It’s going to get loud,” he said. “By the end of the set, I think things are going to be pretty cathartic.”
The audience can also look forward to hearing senior Joel Calvert on keys and senior Catherine Coffey on vocals, both members of Coffey and the Sugar Packets, who will be featured alongside the band.
Naida urged everyone to stay until the end because Deaf Davy and the Wine Boxes will finish on a sentimental note — by playing a tribute to their senior band members.
Undetermined
All memers of Hillsdale College’s track and field teams, bandmates of Undetermined will keep up the hype after a track meet on April 20 when they perform at Centralhallapalooza later that day.
Nicholas Shuster | Courtesy
The final student band to take the stage is Undetermined, and the audience will once again be musically intoxicated.
Undetermined, which is made up of members of the track team, said it draws inspiration from rock and alternative-rock bands, such as Paramore, Wolfmother, Priestess, and The Killers.
“Honestly, we like to play anything that comes from actual instruments rather than from a computer,” guitarist senior Alex Mexicotte said.
Although they have only been playing together for a couple of months, the band members said they felt comfortable together, even before their performance at CHP Showdown.
“After all of the practices and all the work we put in before the show, we were just excited to get up on stage and actually be doing it for real, finally,” Mexicotte said.
Lead vocalist sophomore Chloe Ohlgren, the newest member of the band, joined the group after impressing the track team with her performance on the video game Rock Band.
“We thought we would just throw it out there, and she would be like, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’” bassist senior Nick Shuster said. “Then she was stoked about it, and we were stoked that she was stoked about it.”
The band is keeping their setlist a secret but did tease that the audience can look forward to a performance with a similar feeling as their audition at CHP Showdown.
The band said it hopes that their performance will help remind people of the music with which they grew up.
“Most of it is going to be very nostalgic to people that grew up in our generation,” Mexicotte said. “Stuff that will take us back to middle school and the early 2000s.”
Although the band members will be coming from a track meet that day, they said they plan on having plenty of energy left for the show with their drummer, sophomore Colby Clark, setting the tone.
“We have been watching our rock ’n’ roll movies to become properly acquainted with the behavior expected of us,” Mexicotte said.
