by ALLISON CASEY
Lifestyles Editor

“I want Cake,” Brian M. Straub, sophomore music industries studies major, said in regards to Boone’s lack of nightlife.

For Straub, an avid music fan, bringing Cake to Boone is about expanding Boone’s music scene, not the bakery item.

Straub and about fifteen others recently began BUMP, a group backed through The Music and Entertainment Industry Student Association, to bring new and different musical acts to Boone with hopes of eventually bringing national acts locally.

“College is a time to try new things,” BUMP member Alex M. Snow, sophomore creative writing major, said. “Music can change your life. We don’t get a wide enough range here, we feel obliged to present people with other stuff.”

The group is still toying with the exact name but is debating between Boone Music Project and Boone Unlimited Music Project.

The project began when Straub and others noticed a lack of variety in the bands that play on campus.

“Every band who’s played at Legends recently has played here before,” he said.

According to the group’s mission statement, their goal is “to diversify the Boone music scene by raising funds necessary to attract artists that represent a wide variety of musical interests found within the Appalachian State student body of over 15,000.”

The group presents their first concert Dec. 4 when the Asheville group Secret Lives of The Freemasons and Harvard play at The Dragonfly Theater and Pub.

The show begins at $10 p.m. and tickets are $5.

“This a rock band, contemporary rock, but we hope to bring literally every type of music,” Straub said. “Hard rock, bluegrass, Latin, whatever.”

Through constant booking, the group hopes to draw national attention and make Boone into the next big college music scene.

“We get a lot of jam bands here,” Straub said. “There are people who get into it, but I feel like everyone just puts up with it.”

With the recent attention Appalachian has received from the football team’s success, Straub and Snow hope to draw more attention to the town and it’s music scene.

“Boone has potential,” Snow said. “We had Lynyrd Skynyrd, and yeah that’s a great big band, but it’s Boone. It’s expected.”

So far, BUMP has collaborated with WASU, the Audio Engineering Society and the Advertising Club and hopes to works with The Appalachian Popular Programming Society.

“There’s a division of everything,” Straub said. “I want to see more working together between the clubs.”

Straub, who hopes to eventually become an entertainment lawyer, said the contacts he is making are invaluable.

“I would like to pass it on,” he said. “But I could come back and do who knows what.”

The group meets Tuesdays at 7 p.m. at Crossroads in Plemmons Student Union.

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