Student band works collaboratively

“Happy hardcore” is how the members of new student band Take the Sky describes their unique music style.

“It’s hardcore music with happier sounding chords,” said junior Sean Tyson, the band’s bass player.

Seniors Nic Vargus and Kris Mayhew, and juniors Tyson, Justin Catlett, Steven Cutter and Tyler Kruse officially formed Take the Sky several months ago. After playing together, they decided it was time to form their music into songs.

After discussing more than 200 possible names including Hot Lava and In Red Letters, they finally settled on Take the Sky.

“The way we developed our name is kind of how we develop our songs; it’s a really critical process and it takes a lot longer than most traditional bands,” said Mayhew, the band’s lead guitarist. “We’re kind of proud of that, because it makes sure were all OK with the finished product.”

The focus of their songs deal predominantly with issues that Christians today wrestle with and have to go through.

“While they aren’t all explicitly Christian, they are all dealing with issues that either we have gone through or we understand as an emotional experience that everyone goes through,” said Vargus, the rhythmic guitarist.

The first song they ever wrote together is called “A Time to Keep.” It’s about how when life gets difficult, people tend to stay busy and try not to think about it. But not reflecting on their problems doesn’t fix them; it often makes them worse.

“We have a really ironic chorus that says, ‘We’ll be fine if we never take our time. We’ll be fine if we never slow down.’ In reality that is completely paradoxical to what we think we should do, we just know that we do that,” Vargus said.

Their music is written through the same kind of process they used to come up with their name; it is a collaborative effort.

“The final product is like the band name, it’s all of us coming together and fully agreeing on something, that way we’ll all enjoy what we’re doing,” Tyson said.
Each contributes with his own instrument and work to revise and perfect what each member brings to the table.

When they began writing their first few songs, each member had different pieces of songs that they all thought would make great music, but after collaborating with the rest of the band the pieces would end up getting cut or saved for a different song.

“It would get so frustrating to bring something that you think is so cool and have the guys say, ‘Well, this doesn’t really fit.’ But then at the end, what you have are these really cohesive songs that I think are ultimately a lot better because we were able to cut our losses and take stuff out that just didn’t fit right,” Vargus said.

Take the Sky played at Whitworth Unplugged last Thursday and placed second despite the fact that Kruse, their lead vocalist, was sick and couldn’t perform.

One thing they all agree on is that they love to perform.

“To see your friends and even strangers singing words that we wrote, to guitar that we wrote, is surreal,” Vargus said.

Another thing they all seem to enjoy is hanging out together and playing music. Although listeners may not appreciate the harder edge to their music, Catlett, who plays keyboard, enjoys playing music that they all love.

“It’s the music we like and we can do whatever we want. I like having total creative freedom and self-expression,” he said. “Plus I like being different and bringing a different element to Whitworth.”

Although they would like to play more shows, now they are more focused on writing songs.
“It’s important to have a lot of songs in your repertoire so you can put on a good set that people will enjoy,” Tyson said. “Right now that’s one of our main focuses, and hopefully we can play some shows here and there if the opportunity arises.”

Take the Sky’s long term plans are pretty ambiguous, because none of them know what the future holds for them. Aside from writing songs and trying to record a CD, they want to have fun playing together.

“Obviously we don’t know what’s coming up next in life, so we’ll just see where it takes us,” Tyson said. “If that’s on a tour, that’s awesome, if that leaves us with a six-song CD that we get to show our grandkids that we were in a band one time, that’s cool too. Right now were just having a lot of fun and learning a ton about music and being in a band.”

Contact Becca Cuniff at becca.cuniff@whitworthian.com.

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