Ryan Shupe plays for a full house
What do you get when you combine two and a half Eagle Scouts, one True Aggie, 118 years of collective music experience, more than 81 strings and a bald guy who likes to sing?
Ryan Shupe and the RubberBand, the music group that loves corn dogs and banjos.
Last Friday night, the Kent Concert Hall was packed with an audience excited to see the five guys who can run around stage while playing their instruments and keep a crowd singing, or howling, along.
The band is no stranger to USU. Just last fall they played in the Spectrum for a benefit concert to help raise money for the Pauni family during “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” They also played here last spring and a few years ago at the Howl.
“I think my favorite place to perform is the Kent Concert Hall,” said Bart Olson, the RubberBand drummer.
Logan is a fun place to be, said guitar player Roger Archibald, who added his favorite part is the drive in, coming out of the canyon. And Ryan Tilby, the bass player and True Aggie of the band, said coming to USU is like coming home to crazed fans who have even tried to crawl on stage in the past.
On stage, the Rubberband not only played, but danced, ran and switched around instruments. They even got the audience involved by letting them ask Tilby questions that would be answered with chords coming from his bass.
Their unique sound began with Shupe when he was in college.
“Who doesn’t want to be in a band in college?” he said.
Throughout the years, the members have come and gone, and the group has released five CDs. Craig Miner said the instruments the band uses (acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo and mandolin) aren’t unusual to traditional bluegrass groups.
“We just added the drums and funkified everything,” Miner said.
Olson added that people don’t expect their instruments to sound the way they do.
“People think that the banjo and fiddle weren’t meant to rock out, but they were,” he said. “I was meant to rock out.”
They said their songs have meaning and have even heard from a fan that “1000 X” helped him get married. They told the USU audience to “Dream Big” last Friday and said the song had become an anthem for them.
“We feel really blessed being able to travel all over the country,” Shupe said. “We don’t take that lightly.”
Each of the members have been involved in music since they were young. Shupe began playing the fiddle at age 5, and Miner taught himself the ukulele at age 10 in the top of a tree.
To college students looking for a break in the music world, Archibald said, “You have to have a big desire and a lot of loyalty to the other band members. If you love to play, then just do it.”
With a standing ovation and their own style of encore, Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband proved they have done it.
-mnewbold@cc.usu.edu