Making the Day spreading entertainment around
Artists for the Valley Verve (we’ve published more than a hundred) are found in a multitude of ways.
Verve subjects have been found through e-mail and searches, word-of-mouth, readers, art events, art businesses, galleries and even a couple at garage sales. This week’s story occurred while interviewing last week’s subject. The noise from across the hall turned out to be her son’s band, Making the Day.
They’ve all got the beat. They all recently graduated from East Valley High School where they were all in marching band, they’re all self taught and eager to make the day with music. They will all go on to college in the fall but they will continue to rock.
Sean Burgett, 18, plays lead guitar and sings while Jake West, 19, keeps rhythm on the drums. Matt Olson, 19 plucks at the bass and Michael Szember, 18, plays guitar while occasionally singing. Szember will be going to Washington State University while the others attend area community colleges.
They’ve been jamming on and off since their freshman year but didn’t get serious until they were juniors. Instead of doing covers, they decided to write their own songs. Their style is alternative and their song list includes “To Whom it May Concern,” “The Theory of Falling” and “Honesty.”
Most of their songs deal with dysfunctional relationships. For example “How many times you think you’ll fall before you try to save yourself, how many times is enough ‘til you wake up and see yourself? It’s never too late to start again” are lyrics from “Doesn’t Hurt to Ask.”
The musicians have performed at EVHS talent shows, at Make Some Noise for Darfur, at a concert event at West Valley High School called Millwoodstock and at Bobfest in 2006. “Bobfest opened our eyes to what other music existed so close to us in Spokane and we began searching for venues to play in,” Burgett said. They’ve played at the Big Dipper, the Service Station, Empyrean and Pavillion Park in Liberty Lake.
They practice in the basement of Burgett’s Newman Lake home. Their goal is to stay together. “It’s for fun only because it’s hard to be serious when we have such busy lives, but we will keep playing,” Burgett said.
“I don’t want to let it go,” Szember said, “I will keep playing all my life.”
Though area venues are not as abundant as they would like, Making the Day is driven to entertain. “If we had to name the one thing that drives us to keep playing, it would have to be the massive amount of support we get from the people who listen to our music and come to our shows,” said Burgett, “The constant demand from local music fans in Spokane has been the reason we overcame many obstacles and worked to keep playing for them.”