Lions' Digest Winter Issue 03 2020

15 | WINTER 2020
we decided to do that, and it was surprisingly
successful the first time so we did it a few more
times and that’s basically our main source of
income.
JC: The first time we went busking was during
Arts Fest, and it was honestly a perfect spot, we
were right across from the Target in that little
square, and everyone was walking by. It went great.
Elijah Snyder(ES): I had busked there by
myself before and that worked out really well
for me, and it wasn’t even during Arts Fest so I
thought it would go well, and it was pretty crazy.
Arlo Nicholas(AN): When we busk we don’t
just play music but also try to implement some
choreography as well, and because it’s a pretty
open space we have a lot of leeway to do whatever
we want.
AH: A plus to that is that it can get tiring
doing the same set over and over again, so that
freedom to move around can definitely make
things more interesting.
How many times have you guys performed in
total?
JC: We’ve busked three times, plus we played
at the drama club cook off, the 7th and 8th grade
concerts, and at the High School, plus March
Music in our Schools Months, so that’s eight
performances in total.
How much has the pandemic impacted
performing?
Luca Snyder(LS): We’ve kind of paused
practices and performances for now. We ended up
doing a few socially distanced rehearsals before
school starting, but now that schools started and
cases are rising, we decided it would probably be
safer and easier if we took a pause on rehearsals
for now, but we’ll probably try to get back together
when COVID is on a pause.
If you guys were doing gigs right now would
you be playing covers, or do you have your own
stuff that you’re working on?
LS: We have some stuff that some members
have written that we work on occasionally, but the
most fun things to do are covers because they’re
songs we know, and we can jam to them while we
play them and it’s very fun. So we’ve mainly done
covers.
AH: Another thing that comes with playing
covers is that if you hear a cover of a song played
by a brass band it’s not exactly the same as it
would be if you were just listening to the original
recording, so I think covers definitely work for us
more than they would for a more standard layout
of instrumentation.
ES: So far we’ve only really performed coversin
one case, we performed a cover of another song,
so basically a cover of a cover.
JC: Like we said earlier, Lucky Chops is one
of our biggest influences and they perform a
lot of covers, so sometimes we pick a song that
worked well for them because we have very similar
instrumentation to them.
What are some more influences you guys have,
individually or as a whole?
AH: I think we’re all fans of Vulfpeck, a funk
group based in Michigan, so we like to bring a lot
of that rhythm stuff into our performances.
JC: Moon Hooch as well.
AH: That’s a trio who invented their own
genre called Cave Music which is basically blasting
into a saxophone as loud as you can.
JC: They once taped a traffic cone onto the
end of a bass saxophone to make it lower.