Keene State College’s Social Activities Council (SAC) announced on Feb. 17 who the Spring Weekend 2014 artists and comedian will be.
After two years of planning and networking, SAC managed to land “fluffy” funny man Gabriel Iglesias as well as artist Jake Miller and band New Politics.
“We haven’t really had a big name comedian and Gabriel Iglesias is a fairly big name and full headlining act,” Ryan Mahan, SAC events coordinator, said.
This year SAC members said they wanted to switch it up and bring a big name comedian over a popular artist. Mahan said, “Gabriel was a big check, he was really expensive, but this is something we really haven’t done before and believe will sell out.”
So far, student reactions are mixed. “I’ve never heard of Jake Miller but I have actually seen Gabriel before. He’s hilarious so I’m definitely looking forward to the comedian over the concert,” sophomore Cody Shanks said.
Senior James Yazinski said he probably will not attend the concert.
“I did like last year’s concert though. I’m a big country fan, so having Chris Young here was a much different show than past years,” Yazinski said.
“I don’t know who the comedian is but everyone says he’s wicked funny. It’s my freshman year and first Spring Weekend, so I’ll probably buy tickets to both events just to try everything for the first time,” freshman Julia Iascone said.
Mahan explained why some students are disappointed in the concert. “In regards to the concert, when we go into looking for an artist we have option A, B, C and even D. We aren’t guaranteed any of those options. Most of the artists we wanted [in] priority to others were either unavailable, on tour, not in the area, or extremely expensive,” Mahan said.
At the beginning of the year Mahan said that students are sent a survey that opened when they logged into the MyKSC website that asked what genre students are into at the moment. “The reason we don’t do specific artists is because we don’t want to create high expectations for students and make them think that indeed one of those artists will be actually coming, so we stick to genre,” Mahan said.
Last year and the year before, surveys indicated country was popular among students. Over the years, genres like rock and having a band instead of a single artist have always been at or near the top, which is why band New Politics will be at performing alongside Jake Miller. Ticket Sales will start on April 7, and each event ticket costs $10.00.
Kendall Pope can be contacted at kpope@keene-equinox.com
