Harris field was more than an empty expanse of grass Friday night as 37 students from a business class hosted “The Backyard Bash,” a concert to benefit VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, for their semester project.
The event featured performances including local comedians and student bands such as Inflowential and Brooks Wood Band as well as food, raffles and T-shirts.
“The original idea was to do something that would bond the N.C. State community with the rest of the Raleigh community,” Taylor Smith, a senior in business/marketing, said. “We went beyond that and said, ‘why not do this for a good cause?'”
Smith is a member of BUS 465, which is the class hosting the event, and he headed the committee in charge of advertising.
“We decided the one [charity] that would best tie in with our whole theme would be VH1’s Save the Music Foundation,” Smith said. This non-profit organization is “dedicated to restoring instrumental education in America’s public schools,” according to their mission statement.
To make the concert most appealing to students and to keep with the theme of tying the community together, he said that the class “tried to get bands that had the closest ties to the campus as possible.”
The free concert gathered a crowd of students wandering by and looking for the source of the noise, but most of the people in attendance were looking forward to the event after seeing advertisements.
One family of three sat down and spread a picnic out on their blanket, while some students sported band T-shirts.
“We’re really happy with the support we’ve got from the student community,” Smith said. “We hope to give them a party they’ll remember.”
He said that a few N.C. State students had donated musical instruments, and that they expected to generate a lot of monetary support for the foundation.
“We had a killer PR group that went out to the community and used contacts they knew to get businesses to donate money,” Smith said.
He added that the concert might become a tradition, and that this year it represented “giving something back to the community, especially graduating seniors give back to the school.”
Claudia Kimbrough, the lecturer for the business class organizing the event, said that her classes “often do projects developing integrated marketing campaigns, and this class’s event was a great example of a successful project.”
“They learned everything I wanted them to learn from doing an event like this. They learned the advertising, public relations, selling skills, getting sponsors and how to implement and make this happen,” she said.
PULL QUOTE: “They learned everything I wanted them to learn from doing an event like this. They learned the advertising, public relations, selling skills, getting sponsors and how to implement and make this happen.”Claudia Kimbrough, lecturer for BUS 465
Kimbrough said the class did not have many resources starting out, including money.
“I asked the class what they thought they could do, starting with no money and no resources, and asked them, ‘can we really pull it off?’ They voted and decided that they wanted to do something with bands — that was very appealing to everyone,” Kimbrough said.
It was also important that these bands were linked to the campus.
Ill Digitz, a sophomore in business management and marketing, played the music while the event was setting up but couldn’t scratch because the wind was so strong it pushed the needle around, according to Sidney Fritts, a co-project leader for the event.
Fritts explained that the class had organized itself into different groups to handle the planning and implementing all aspects of the concert. His group, he said, was “coordinating, assigning, delegating, and keeping the class on target, while subcommittees covered all the specifics.”
Sissy Harrington was the first performer to go on, sitting onstage with only her acoustic guitar and a mic. Her chirpy introduction speech was followed by strong and passionate singing with acoustic accompaniment.
The senior will be graduating in May with a B.A. in visual arts, and she described herself as a “singer/songwriter” and compared her music style and delivery to that of “Jewel or Jody Mitchell.”
Forward All hit the stage at 7 p.m. after being introduced as “a little bit of rock, reggae, and hip-hop” while Mr. Wuf made an appearance and went through the crowd dancing, playing Frisbee and posing for pictures.
Some of the festival’s organizers launched free event T-shirts off of the second-floor balcony of Witherspoon for the crowd as class member Ryan Smucker, a senior in business management, handed out slices of pizza at one of the food tables set up around the field. Local businesses donated food for the event, including pizza from Papa John’s, ice cream from Coldstone and plenty of Cheerwine.
“Buy a raffle ticket for a dollar, that gets you food and your chance to win one of our prizes,” Smucker said.
The prizes included gift certificates to businesses like Village Draft House, 518 West, 42nd Street Oyster Bar, along with a kayaking trip and merchandise from REI.
Sara Bryson, a junior in business who is in another section of the business class, said that she “came out to see how this went,” to prepare for their Subaru event Monday.
“It’s really great,” she said of the concert. “They’ve done a great job getting good sponsors and they’ve brought together a lot of good music and a lot of students – it will generate a lot of awareness [for the charity].”
The sun set and the bright lights came on in the field at 8 p.m. to show couples and groups leaning back on towels and blankets in the grass, with Frisbees and footballs getting tossed around in the back.
“It’s the perfect weather, a perfect night for this!” said one spectator.
The class worked through some technical difficulties and brought colored lights to the stage, casting Evenfall in red, blue and green as it continued its rock/alternative performance.
Two comedians from Charlie Goodnight’s, DT and Mellow Mic, also had time on stage to entertain the crowd.
Inflowential was the second-to-last band to take the stage, and band-member “Charlie Smarts” was also a member of the organizing business class.
“I made no suggestions in the class as to what they should do [for the event],” Smarts said. When they decided to do a concert, he said, “I was just sitting around, and they asked if Inflowential would play.”
While he said the band “does shows all the time,” this concert was even more fun because the class wanted to have different genres represented.
“Here we’ve got acoustic, alternative, hip-hop, and even some folk — ’cause you know Brooks can get kind of country,” Smarts said, laughing.
He added that the class had tried to find a local country band but couldn’t, and that there were “either students or alumni in all of the bands — we wanted to really focus on State.”
Smarts enjoyed performing and organizing the event.
“I love this class! It’s fun, hands-on, real-world stuff – you don’t get that in other classes,” he said. “We learn how to bring people together to make something happen.”
Brooks Wood Band was the last band to go on stage for the night, following Inflowential. “[The class] let me know they were putting on a concert and asked if we’d like to come play,” said lead-singer Brooks Wood, a junior in business management and marketing.
While none of the bands were paid to perform, Wood said “that’s no big deal — it’s a good cause, which makes it worthwhile.”
“My favorite is that this brings different styles of music together,” he said. “Everyone can find a band to listen to. There’s rock, acoustic, hip-hop, reggae, solo acoustic – you get the whole spectrum.”
PULL QUOTE:”Everyone can find a band to listen to. There’s rock, acoustic, hip-hop, reggae, solo acoustic – you get the whole spectrum.”Brooks Wood, lead-singer of Brooks Wood Band
The crowds were there for all the bands, according to Wood.
“If you ask the crowd if they came to hear us, they’ll say ‘yeah, and Evenfall and Inflowential, too.’ We’re good friends with the other bands, and everyone is here to see everyone,” Wood said.
Wood enjoyed the concert as much as the crowd.
“I’d like to tell the class they’ve done a good job, I’m very impressed with the organization,” Wood said.
Smith said that the class estimated between four and five hundred people attended the concert.
“We know we raised at least $2,000,” he said.
