Subfest lineup interviews

Meet Elon’s musical talent from SubFest!

Wisteria captured by Ethan Wu.

On Friday November 7th, Young Commons was filled with the sounds of Elon bands and singer song writers performing for their peers. Elon’s Student Union Board held the sophomore debut of their annual SUB-Fest event. The event offered a fun and casual night for Elon students to listen to live music and pursue local business booths. 

The line up of Elon students and bands consisted of: Sister duo Allie and Andy, The Y2k pop inspired band Wisteria, Singer-song-writer Jocelyn Bogart, the curly haired Keller Knight, The Elon lake-name-sharing band Verona. 

Allie and Andy - interviewed by Barbra Duran

Ali and Andy captured by Ethan Wu

What's it like making music together as sisters?

It's fun. I like it a lot. It's easy for us to harmonize together. Sometimes it is difficult because we fight sometimes, but I feel like that makes it easier that we're siblings, because it kind of comes with the whole thing, you know. If we get past the many arguments we have, it's fun to perform together. It's nice to bounce ideas off of each other too, especially when we’re writing. 

What’s your earliest “music memory”?

We’ve been listening to music like our whole lives. The first thing I can think of is dancing to music in the kitchen that our dad would play. 

And what drew you guys to the genre of music you're making?

I would say we sing very quietly, so that kind of lends itself to the singer songwriter genre and I really like to do harmony together. I found that I really like to play the acoustic guitar and finger pick, so it's something I enjoy, and so we put that into our music. 

Wisteria - interviewed by Barbara Duran 

How did you guys all meet?

So this is the second iteration of this group, technically.  We formed two years ago at this point, and originally we had Anthony, I'm Zach, and Brian, and we had Joey Schwartz as our vocalist, and Eric Hoke, who Eric graduated with last year. But these two (Anthony and Brian) I've known since high school, and I kind of pulled them in all over the local area, and it's kind of been like that since, and the three of us are students or alum.

The band has undergone some lineup changes, like you mentioned. How have you stayed consistent as a band and kept Wisteria with those changes?

I think just totally with choosing our riff. I know a big thing when we were prepping with the new lineup was identifying what our sound is and sticking to it. I mean it's inevitably gonna change a little bit with new members, but I think through the lineup, that early 2000s pop stayed consistent.

Jocelyn Bogart - interviewed by Ruby Glover

Jocelyn Bogart captured by Ethan Wu

When did your love for music start and what is your history with music?

So I've been singing pretty much my entire life, but my love for music really started in high school with my choir teacher and I was a big theater kid, so I did a lot of theater in high school, and that was huge for me. But music has always been a big part of who I am. I've played piano since I was four. I've been singing forever. It's just, I think, kind of like baked into my soul a little bit. 

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

I draw a lot of my inspiration from other artists. So whether they're other artists in my own life or other artists I listen to. Obviously life events give me some inspiration, but mainly it's from other artists… and also novels. I'm a big reader.

Are there any particular artists that you can think of like some of your favorites?

Yeah, I love Joan Baez, Theo Kandel, Bob Dylan. I'm kind of all over the place.

Keller Knight - interviewed by Ruby Glover 

Keller Knight captured by Ethan Wu

Did you know that you wanted to be a music production, Recording Arts major before coming to Elon?

Yes, I did. I actually knew about Elon before I knew about the program, but when I was applying to schools, that's kind of when I decided that I wanted to pursue music, production, Recording Arts, and I saw that one of the schools I was already looking at had a program. And that kind of taught me a lot about what those programs look like. I always knew that I wanted to do something in music, in the arts. And so that's why I thought about Elon, because there's a lot of great artistic things here. I definitely was excited about the program before coming here. 

What's your favorite part about performing at Elon?

My favorite part about performing at Elon is just the community of artists and my other friends. It's really nice to perform, especially starting out a career in music, in front of people that I know and that I'm comfortable with. Also getting to work with them artistically as well, and getting to watch them perform – and then I'm also performing – it just it feels like a community event whenever I'm performing, which is probably the best part for me.

Verona - interviewed by Kate Burns 

How does it feel to be closing sub fest? You guys are the last set of the night. How's that feel?

It's an honor. I mean, this is like, this is like the core of Elon right here. It's just like people having a good time interacting with each other, bonding with each other outside. And it's just an honor to perform, and even bigger of an honor to close out the night.

Your Instagram bio says that you are making Elon a little louder. How would you describe the music that you make? 

Anybody read that bio? But yes, that that phrase is a little bit of a generalization with, what we're trying to do, which is just make Elon more of a live music friendly fun place, which it already was, somewhat, but we just wanted to bring, you know, a whole new love for music here. Music from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of eras of rock music and classical music and everything like that. So we're just trying to bring volume and culture to Elon through live music. 

What is it like being a student and being in a band? How is that balancing all of that?

I love it, just because it gives you something else to do besides  just going through classes. You always have something to do if you're playing at a party or at one of the bars… in that way, it always gives you something. It gives you this little family we have here. I think it's a great way to round out everything on this campus.

The whole goal behind it was literally just to send off our final year here to Elon, just playing music for the people and making everyone else's experience here a better time. You know, it's not, it's not about like, our own like, image or our own ego or anything like that. We don't care who, like, knows our name and whatever. And at the end of the day, we're just trying to make everyone have more memories of more vibrant stuff going on here.