RUTV hosts its third annual band night

By Dagmawit Dejene

The third annual RUTV Band Night was held on Feb. 25 at Adelaide Hall.

Students were invited to listen to live music on Thursday night where seven local, Ryerson bands were set to perform, as well as contestants in a cover contest that took place half-way through the show.

“The reason that we’re doing band night is of course to showcase Ryerson talent,” said executive producer and RUTV President Trey Robinson. “It’s also a great way for people to get to know more about RUTV and where it’s going and not what it once was.”

A lot of people made it out that night to show their support for local music. The Ryerson group, Musicians@Ryerson, had a large role in both providing the bands for the event as well as encouraging other musicians and friends to attend the event. Robinson explained that reaching out to Musicians@Ryerson was their first move when looking for bands to perform that night.

“The response was pretty good,” said Robinson. “Of course we had an external selection team that voted and we made sure that that is how we selected the bands.”

One of the bands that performed that night was Little Boxer, an alt rock band made up of Ryerson students Zackery Erickson and Juan Udarbe on bass, who actually met through Musicians@Ryerson. The group also includes Liam Driscoll on guitar and Dave Silani on drums.

Right after Little Boxer came vintage rock band The Lost Angelos. The four-piece band received quite a lot of love from the audience.

“We always love playing,” said drums and vocalist Ryan Gaynor after their set. “We’re a band that’s very raw, and we haven’t even hit the studio yet so what you hear, our live sound, is really all we have to go by.”

They have only been an official band for a little over a year.

“Our first show was actually at The Central last year for RTA band night,” said Gaynor. “So it’s sort of a commemoratory show for us.”

It was also RUTV’s first time outreaching to the entire campus through a larger event.

“It’s the first year that it’s been so largely marketed to the entire Ryerson campus,” said Robinson. “Our demographic is just first-years almost, so we want people to look at the network and say, ‘Hey, that’s exciting. That’s engaging. I wanna be a part of RUTV, I wanna see what they’re doing.’”

The entire event was streamed live on rutvlive.ca for those who were unable to attend and all proceeds went to covering the costs of putting on the show and any profits are to go to funding for other similar RUTV projects.

“We’re only trying to break even really,” said Robinson with a laugh. But he made sure to assure students that they should expect big things from them this year. “There’s lots, lots, lots more to come from RUTV.”