On Thursday, Oct. 22, WKNH put on a concert in the Night Owl Café (NOC) in the L.P. Young Student Center called Hootieween. Eve Pierce, a solo performer from Peterborough, opened by playing guitar and singing some original songs. Afterwards, The Blowflies, a band from Keene State College (KSC), played their own songs as well.
Pierce said that Trinity Nay, the KSC audiovisual operations coordinator, was the person who mentioned her when WKNH was looking for opening acts for their event. Pierce said Nay ran the sound for her when she played at the Keene Music Festival.
Pierce said she has been doing music since she was a little kid. When she started, she said she was just playing open mic nights to try and make connections. Now, she has an album produced and CDs made.
Pierce lives only 30 minutes away from Keene, and said she spent a lot of time here even when she was younger. “I was involved in the arts; I was constantly having to come to campus for things when I was in high school,” Pierce said. “My dance recitals were in the Redfern.”
“I feel pretty comfortable on the Keene State Campus, and I know a lot of students who go there,” Pierce added. “I felt like I was on my home turf.”
Pierce said she enjoyed playing at the NOC on Thursday, and she had never even seen it prior to that. “I thought that space was so cute, 10 out of 10,” she said.
She said it can be difficult playing at a place for the first time because she is alone up there in front of “a bunch of people I may or may not know.” However, she said, “I felt very welcomed and really cozy.”
Senior WKNH General Manager William April said running the event was mostly done by the tech team and Nay. “They do a really good job coordinating with us and making sure they have enough people to help set up,” he said. He said they brought their own drum kit from the station for The Blowflies to use, even though bands usually bring their own stuff. However, April said WKNH is good at accommodating, and The Blowflies asked permission to use their drum kit because they really liked it.
April said originally the event was not going to be the same night as Campus Fright Night; however, The Office of Transitions and Community Living asked WKNH if they wanted to collaborate. This led to Hootieween having a larger turnout than expected, one that April said was way bigger than last year’s. “We’ve never had a big turnout like that,” April added.
Senior Eleanor Warinner, the PR coordinator at WKNH, designs the posters and graphics for promotion. “I made the poster for the event, and the promotional materials for the Instagram,” Warinner said. “I met a lot with Noelle, the event coordinator, and Will, our general manager, to just prepare for what we thought the event was going to look like,” she added.
During the event, Warinner was “mostly doing concert photography,” and said, “I’ll be making a post soon with the photos we got from the event.” She also helped to DJ the Fright Night event happening downstairs at the same time as Hootieween.
“We try to put posters up around campus a few weeks before the event to get as many people to see them as possible,” Warinner said. “I did an artist spotlight for each of the bands that were performing.”
Warinner said the event coordinator, sophomore Noelle Hisgen, was “really involved in choosing what bands perform.”
“[Hisgen] is great to have on the board because she’s very excited about what she does, and she just brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the events,” Warinner said. “This event went super well, and I think it was really successful.”
Junior Julien Triana, who is a member of the band Before Blossom, another band made up of students at Keene State, said, “It was really good; she [Pierce] had a voice, and I’m jealous.”
Another member of the same band, junior Connor Pederson, said, “Oh my god, I thought it was amazing. There was great production; the sound team was on it. WKNH put on a great event tonight, and that’s what’s important.”
Noelle Hisgen serves as Senior Multimedia Staff at the Equinox and did not have any part in writing or editing this article.
Alex Perry can be contacted at
alex.perry@keene.edu
