By Rachel Womelsduff
Collegian Reporter

Six guys, six styles, six opinions, one band: Mitchell.

This Saturday, Feb. 8, the self-proclaimed “eclectic West Coast”-style band will play a show at the Sigma Chi house. The evening will open at 10 p.m.

The name Mitchell is not particularly meaningful to the band but instead was chosen for its simplicity and for being easily recognizable.
“If the band is good the name won’t matter,” said lead singer and Hillsdale senior Peter Krupa. “There are lots of great bands with stupid names.”

The band members not known at Hillsdale are Seth Deming on guitar, John Lauriat on bass guitar, his brother Chris Lauriat on drums, Jordan Gladden on tenor saxophone and Zach Parker on alto saxophone.

“We have a blast when we’re on stage,” Krupa said. “When we have a bunch of people paying attention to us we’re not nervous. We say random dumb stuff and we don’t care.”

Krupa loves playing in public with five of his best friends.

The group has been playing together since the summer of 1998, for almost five years now.
Krupa, the Lauriat brothers and Deming went to church together growing up and they met Gladden and Parker in a high school math class.

The band used to call itself a Christian band, playing gigs at churches for no money and people who did not care. They dropped the label, not because they are no longer Christians, but because to them Christian bands make no sense. A band’s primary purpose is to entertain and only after you have entertained can you proclaim a message, Krupa said.

“Everything I write comes out of my background in Christianity but there’s no overt didacticism,” he said.

The band has written between 60 and 70 songs, “most of which are embarrassing,” Krupa said.

Recently they have been working on crafting quality songs and employing melodies to lead the music.

The song-writing process involves each band member writing a verse here, a bridge there, harmonies and saxophone parts, and putting it all together. Krupa compared this cooperative style to running the gauntlet in a democracy.

“We all have a creative instinct,” Krupa said.

The saxophones, he said, while not the most prominent, are the most unique part of the band’s sound, providing smooth cadences and an orchestral, harmonious feel.

The vocals and guitar players have a range of influences from Green Day, Weezer and Cake to Metallica. The members struggle with different styles but try to focus on one.

“I don’t think you can get to be an influential band by only listening to music from one genre and classifying yourself in one genre because your creativity will quickly dry up,” Krupa said.

The band started out with nothing. They built their own PA system, learned to use professional audio equipment and recorded their own albums.
They have essentially created a low-budget recording studio.

“We figured everything out for ourselves,” Krupa said. “It was healthy but painful.”

In the past year, Mitchell has played some bigger shows at a club in Freeport, Ill., and at Univ. of Illinois where Parker attends college. The university show attracted about 300 people.

This summer, the band intends to hit the Chicago scene if they can arrange to be in the same state at the same time.

Their short-term goal is to attract a following and they would eventually like to be famous. Krupa is convinced it needs to happen soon.

“Our drummer is married and can’t afford to dink around with losers for long,” he said. “It’s crunch time.”

Their Web site, www.mitchellrock.com, should be up and running soon. Right now it has a link to CNN.com. “I don’t know why,” Krupa said.

They plan to have copies of their last album for sale at the concert on Saturday.