by NIKKI ROBERTI
Lifestyles Reporter

They have over 1,300 Facebook friends.

What first started as a student winning 10 free hours of studio time from the singer-songwriter competition at Legends last year, now has evolved into a six-member band whose name is on the lips of many students at Appalachian State University: Michael Alvarado.

Recent gigs have the Michael Alvarado band bringing in as many as 220 people at venues like the Dragon Fly Theater & Pub.

“[A] reason why we’ve gained so much popularity is because [Michael Alvarado] is a people person. He’s not just there to play music, he’s there to entertain,” Katie E. Henry, a senior advertising major and back-up singer of the band, said. “I think that helps. People come and they’re not seeing a band, they’re seeing their friends perform. These guys have a way of setting up on stage and relating to the crowd although you may not know any of them.”

The band consists of six members including Henry, Joe E. Brown, junior music major on bass; Kyle A. Wilkerson, senior music performance and education major on drums; Daniel Romanoff, senior music major on guitar; Samantha Crowder, junior interdisciplinary major and backup singer and the namesake for the band- Michael E. Alvarado, junior music major, sings, plays the piano and composes the lyrics for the original songs.

“I picked everyone individually. They bring awesome ideas,” Alvarado said.

Five of the six members are from campus a cappella groups Another Level, Higher Ground and Ear Candy.

After the completion of his solo album, Alvarado said he realized he needed a band to help him get his music heard.

“I was kind of nervous because I never played in a band before, but it’s exciting,” Brown said. “I would love to do this the rest of my life. It’s like every musician’s dream.”

The band is made up of six people, but there are six more working behind the scenes on everything from photography and publicity to technology and sound.

Sophomore music industries major J. Adam Sensenbrenner is the band’s manager. He is currently working on organizing their upcoming tour in New York for January.

“We have all these people doing everything,” Alvarado said. “And they do it for free because we want to help each other get life experience.”

The band is not signed or a part of Split Rail Records, the student-run record label at Appalachian.

Alvarado took the Split Rail Records class said he doesn’t want to be a part of the label.

“Split Rail is cool for the people in it. It’s a student run label so they can only do so much for you,” he said. “So what [my group of six behind the scenes people are] doing is what Split Rail would do for you, but you’d have to give them all the rights to your songs and pay them. If we can do it ourselves, there’s no reason for it.”

The group describes their music as “pop,” and they cover a lot of songs other than Alvarado’s originals.

Up until this point, Alvarado said he had been playing and writing Christian music.

“That was my struggle in doing this. I’ve always done Christian music. It was a great deliberation,” he said. “I think God has placed me here in a secular world to bring a positive influence to Pop music.”

Alvarado’s lyrics are light hearted and about love, inspired by a girl he was pursuing at the time he wrote them.

Not only is the music now successful, so was his luck with the girl.

He and his inspiration have been dating for 10 months, and she’s also a back-up singer in his band.

“I feel like it’s always what a girl dreams of: having a boy write a song about her. I’m just the lucky one who gets to live it out,” Henry said. “He actually gave me the first song on the album for my birthday. And that’s ‘Waste the Day’ before anybody heard it.”

“There’s so much crap and so much scandals [in pop music],” Alvarado said. “It would just be so cool to have a positive energy band that is like ‘hey, this is cool music. There’s no curse words and it’s not sexual. It’s just fun.’”

The band said they view the audience as most important and want everyone to have a good time.

“If you come out and see us, I guarantee there’s no other band with the type music we play,” Wilkerson said.

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