Columbia will hold its first Battle of the Bands at the music venue Reggies Chicago on Friday, Dec. 12. The musical event will feature four bands from Columbia and one from Jones College Prep High School, with an awards ceremony after the close of the competition.
The bands performing will include The Raspberry Jams from Jones Prep and Sangram, Versus Vitality, Claim Ursa and Clean Break from Columbia.
The idea for a Columbia showcase had been bouncing around between Reggies’ talent buyer Owen Schoenfeld and Ben Sutherland, Columbia’s director of the School of Audio and Music. It finally moved forward over the summer when Schoenfeld reached out to Sutherland. For both, the partnership felt natural.
“With Columbia in Reggies’ backyard, we couldn’t think of a better partnership to elevate the local scene,” Schoenfeld said.
Tom Joyce, career advisor at Columbia’s Career Center, helped to find participants for the Battle of the Bands. He created a committee of four students from different majors and sent out a school-wide call for bands on Handshake.
In total, 25 bands submitted, four were selected, including headliner Clean Break, an indie-alternative rock band with five members: junior performance and songwriting majors Katie Tegethoff and Briyanna Manzanares on lead vocals, junior music composition major Samar Elfaki on bass and backing vocals, junior performance and songwriting major Matthew Flynn on guitar and senior film and television major Logan Neill on drums.
Elfaki said Joyce encouraged the band to register after their first show at Sessions @33. “We went ahead and did that, and we got selected,” Elfaki said.
Clean Break was formed when Tegethoff was a part of a club at Columbia called Rock and Roll Productions a year prior, and one member told her that they’d love to see her performing in a band. This gave her the confidence to reach out to fellow club members Elfaki and Neill to form a band. Neill brought on Flynn as a drummer, and Tegethoff brought on Manzanares on vocals.
“Bri was with me that night and we had always been talking about being in a band together since freshman year,” Tegethoff said. “So, obviously when I made the call to reach out to these two, I was like, ‘well, duh, you’re in as well.’”
Inspired by President and CEO Shantay Bolton’s desire to build community, Joyce decided to bring on the self-decribed melodic art punk trio The Raspberry Jams from Jones College Prep High School, who will be the opener for the Battle of the Bands.
Another band that made it to the final four is Versus Vitality. The rock band currently consists of five members including, junior audio arts major Kash Fokken on bass, junior performance and songwriting majors Kylee Cox and Abdiel Diaz on guitars, junior fashion studios major Tommie Anderson on drums and junior performance and songwriting major Greta Hugen as the lead vocalist.
Versus Vitality, like Clean Break, has performed at Sessions @33 and has previously worked with Joyce, who suggested to the band that they should audition for Battle of the Bands, and they ended up being selected.
Versus Vitality came to be in the members’ first year at the college when a former student at Columbia talked to Hugen about starting a band. The student had a roommate that he brought onto the band, the roommate being Anderson. Fokken submitted an audition for the band, and later on, the band recruited Diaz and Cox.
Both bands expressed their excitement about the upcoming performance and what it could mean for their recognition.
“I feel like a lot of our shows recently have been like people who have seen us before and people who are invested and have been invested from the start,” said Manzanares of Clean Break. “But being on such a big bill kind of gives us a chance to reach out to different audiences that may not have even known we existed.”
Anderson said that he’s looking forward to moving onto the next step as a band.
“I’m excited to up the ante, to be honest,” said Anderson. “I feel like we’re in a traditional spot where we’re about to really up our overall performance presence.”
At the end of the performances, a panel of judges will deliberate and choose a band to take home the win. But for Joyce, the real joy is to show off the talents at Columbia.
“It really is a nice culmination of the semester, and I’m so proud of the student bands and all the student volunteers,” he said.
Reggies Chicago is located at 2105 S. State St. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $7 and available to purchase on TicketWeb.
Copy edited by Mya DeJesus
