On Saturday, Feb. 4, the Night Owl Café opened its doors for the first concert of the spring semester.
The performance consisted of Sunday Ave., a New Hampshire-based band, and Bloomsday, who came all the way from Brooklyn, N.Y.
Sunday Ave. opened the show and performed with a packed dance floor. The band consisted of guitarist and vocalist Warren Olson and drummer Aidan Landry. The band performed songs from their new album, “Chaos One,” as well as three unreleased songs.
Sunday Ave. was followed by Bloomsday, a band consisting of Iris James Garrison on vocals and guitar, Alex Harwood on guitar, Kyle Kelly-Yahner on drums, and Chris Daily on bass. The band played a mix of power ballads and slowdive.
The band’s core members, Garrison and Harwood, were previously a duo until this past year, when Yahner joined on drums and Daily joined as their bassist.
Daily said, “We’ve done a lot of traveling this past year…we did a couple of mini-tours on the East Coast and Midwest…we drove [to Keene] as a one-off.”
Bloomsday performed a number of songs from their latest album, “Place To Land,” and three completely new songs. Daily described their music as, “we try to get as soft as possible so that when we get as loud as we can, it hits more effectively… I think those two dynamics…bounce off each other well.”
Sophomore Chris Perfetto, music director for WKNH, explained that WKNH is looking to hold concerts and other events more consistently. “We’re trying to bring back monthly concerts, we’re trying to have two bands play at a time…we want to bring in a variety of music and reconstruct that campus feeling,” Perfetto said.
Perfetto added, “We want campus to be a place where you do things again…all the stuff we do is free so there’s appeal there…before COVID, it was Rock in the NOC and we’re reinventing that…we want to do two-person shows and tabling events.”
Sophomore Ryan Stone, event coordinator for WKNH, described their desire for normalcy. “With COVID protocols for last year and the year before, we didn’t really have a whole lot of events… Now that everything is kind of getting back to normal, we’re trying to get back into having bigger events like this,” he said.
Stone added, “Any band that’s willing to come play, we’ll have come play…if we’re having a specific themed event, we try to bring in bands that will fit the theme.”
Stone explained that a lot goes into planning these events. “I’ve been planning this event since early December, it’s been a little hectic but it’s all done now and we can have a good time,” said Stone.
To find out about future WKNH events, visit their Instagram, @wknh91.3, tune into their station at WKNH 91.3, or go to their website, WKNH.rocks.
Benjamin Martins can be contacted at
bmartins@kscequinox.com
