by Molly Vincent |
Friday and Saturday nights on campus will now be filled with local music in the revamped Pilot House.
With the opening of the new Pilot House, an influx of donations have come in that have benefitted PAD and KDUP. The extra funding has allowed KDUP to chase down new and more well-known acts for PAD performances.
Sophomore Elijah Ballantyne, the Pilots After Dark (PAD) and KDUP liaison hopes the new stage will entice more well-known bands to play, since the The Cove in the old Pilot House didn’t have a permanent location to facilitate performances.
“People didn’t want to play in a cafeteria,” Ballantyne said. “Just having a stage is a big step forward.”
The new venue helped attract Tangerine, a Seattle-based band, and The Lower 48, a Portland-based band, both of which played at PAD this past Friday and Saturday.
Ballantyne hopes KDUP’s revamped presence at PAD will help get students to attend performances more frequently and encourage them to get more involved with KDUP in order to create a more musical environment on campus.
“With Pilots After Dark and KDUP growing as exponentially as it has for the past years, we’re trying to create an environment that allows people on campus to become involved,” Ballantyne said.
Senior Clayton Stahnke, KDUP Program Director, agreed with Ballantyne, saying that he wants successful programming to encourage increased attendance throughout the semester.
“(The Pilot House) holds more people so we can host bigger bands, more conducive to concerts like Rock The Bluff,” Stahnke said.
In addition to hosting bigger bands, KDUP aims broaden its shows to as many different types of music as possible in order to widen their audience and keep things fresh. Stahnke also hopes KDUP can expand musically not just on weekends at PAD, but also on the weeknights with activities such as open mic nights.
Stahnke and Ballantyne’s vision is already coming to fruition: Over Halloween weekend, the band Horsefeathers played to an audience of roughly 1,400 people, and just this semester alone, KDUP has hosted seven shows -- more than ever before -- and has bands booked through the rest of the semester.
Molly Vincent is a reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at vincentm17@up.edu.
