Last Saturday night, student band Courtyards shook things up with their concert “Music on the Mountain,” held in the Appalachian Collegiate Center. The rock band featured three Binghamton University students, as well as three high school students from the Rockland County area.
The six-piece band is the musical brainchild of Gus Fisher, an undeclared freshman; Shauna Bahssin, a freshman majoring in English; and Noah Markwica, an undeclared freshman, as well as Clarkstown High School North juniors Dan Murray and Pat Coppola and Clarkstown High School South sophomore Jake Valois.
On an elevated stage in the dining hall, the band played alternative and classic rock hits from the last 10 years, including Weezer’s “Say it Ain’t So,” “Blister in the Sun” by Violent Femmes and original composition “The Bedroom Bop.” In light of Vampire Weekend’s recent change, the band featured “Campus” and “Oxford Comma,” which was a particular hit with the audience. They brought in the Valentine’s Day theme with Barbara Lewis’ “Baby, I’m Yours” and Arctic Monkeys’ “A Certain Romance.”
The songs were chosen to appeal to a younger audience, though the band usually performs at bars and restaurants and plays hits from the ’60s and ’70s.
“You have to play to your audience,” Fisher said. “When we play in bars, we usually play more rock and roll, but here we thought, we’re at a college campus, let’s play Vampire Weekend.”
Among the student audience was Dana Stewart, a professor of Italian and the head of the romance languages and literatures department, cheering on the band members.
Stewart is part of the Faculty-in-Residence program, designed to increase student-faculty interaction beyond the classroom. The program pairs faculty members with residential communities to help plan community building or student-run events. The program works to foster a sense of community and create fun and enriching on-campus activities for both students and faculty.
“I ran a weekly jam with my husband and my band, Voodoo Highway, in the dining hall in Mountainview,” Stewart wrote in an email. “Students, faculty, staff and even some community members came together each week to make music together.”
Last fall, when Stewart became the chair of the romance languages and literatures department, she no longer had time to do the jam, but was thrilled when Fisher contacted her, wanting to do a show with Courtyards at Mountainview College. Stewart and her husband even ran sound for the students.
“I loved the show,” Stewart wrote. “They were all very talented. I was really impressed by their great energy onstage, as well as their amazingly eclectic set list. They played a little bit of everything and kept the crowd engaged for the whole show.”
The band cites their collaborative dynamic and support from family and friends as the main factors for their success.
“We’re all so close as friends that it’s almost like family … everyone contributes,” Murray said.
While none of the band members plan to pursue music professionally, they plan on continuing the band because they enjoy performing and collaborating, and this has kept them together for over a year.
“We all have so much fun playing music — we all enjoy listening and talking about music so deeply — it’s like a party,” Murray said.