Student run bands at Harrisonburg High School have been a tradition for some time now. Since the members of last year’s bands Help Wanted and Hours of Operation graduated in 2014, two new bands have risen to take their place. They are This Side Up and Begging to Differ. This Side Up is made up of juniors Ellie Plass, Ava Reynolds, Hollyn Slykhuis, Valerio Aleman, Bianca Pierson, Kieran McClay and Douglas Ritcher. Begging to Differ is led by juniors Jaymie Inouye and Laura Ruple, as well as sophomore Cecily Lawton, juniors Rachel Rohrer and Noah Heie, senior Chloe Richard, JMU student Dryden Labarge, and EMHS student Drake Wagner. Last month This Side Up celebrated their year anniversary as a band, and Begging to Differ is going on seven months.

Both This Side Up and Begging to Differ began as a group of friends who loved music. All it took from there was a conversation with the one and only music aficionado Bob Adamek.

The motivation behind forming their new groups was not only for the music but also to keep fun traditions alive. Junior Jaymie Inouye was previously featured in Hours of Operation and now sings in Begging to Differ.
“[I wanted to start a band because of] my experience before being in it, it was just tons of fun. You know Help Wanted had been a band for a long time and we all enjoyed going to see their performances so we felt like we should continue doing that. I knew that people enjoyed it and that I enjoyed it,” Inouye said.

Some bands have purely one sound and stick to it, but This Side Up and Begging to Differ bring musical diversity into their bands. A bluesier tone comes from This Side Up, and more of a rock sound from Begging to Differ, but they are known to stray from the given path and throw some modern music in there too.

“For our [band] I wouldn’t say that we have a hard core theme to the music or a same kind of recurring genre. I would say we have more of a rock sound more than anything else but we really do lots of different things like modern music. Just depends on how we feel,” Inouye said.

Even though being in a student band is fun, it still comes with a lot of work. Not everything starts out as smoothly as it looks at the performance.

“You have to be super committed. There’s no half way into it so you have to be willing to do it. There’s a lot of time that goes into it, you have to work out rehearsals, you have to work out gigs. You have to pick out what songs you are going to do you have come up with stuff, so you have to really be willing to put a lot of hard work into it, but you really should do it. If that’s your thing then it’s really good,” Inouye said.

Despite the hard work the combined consensus seems to be a positive one. Even with the bad rehearsal days junior Hollyn Slykhuis and the rest of This Side Up have ways to brighten it up.

“Sometimes we’ll go to IHOP in the middle of the night because our practice isn’t going well and stuff like that. There’s too many good things to count,” Slykhuis said.

According to Slykhuis all and all the band experience is a fun one.

“I love playing my trumpet and it’s a super unique place to play it and it’s nothing like the other bands I’ve been in. Then the people, we really are like a family so thats pretty cool,” Slykhuis said.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Laura Ruple and Jaymie Inouye singing at first night.