By Shana Dines
DAILY BRUIN REPORTER
[email protected]
Being both a college student and a rock star is not the easiest
combination to pull off. Entering their fourth, and hopefully last
year as English majors at UCLA, Ryan Wilson and Kevin Lenhart of
Division Day are attempting the impossible.
Wilson and Lenhart joined forces with Sebastian Bailey and
Rohner Segnitz last summer, living together in Santa Cruz and
honing their sounds as a group. After a whirlwind year of balancing
schoolwork with concerts and touring, the band is staying based out
of Westwood this summer. It hopes to break into the Los Angeles
small club scene with its rough-around-the-edges indie rock
sounds.
Despite the difficulty of balancing two alter-ego lifestyles,
the members all know that this dream they are pursuing is real.
“Being in a band is quite literally always what
we’ve wanted to do,” said Bailey. “Kevin and I
have had “˜Rock God Fantasy’ syndrome for as long as we
can remember.”
There have been some difficult situations and tough decisions
that Wilson and Lenhart have had to make concerning their classes
and the band. During ninth week of this past winter quarter, the
band members went on tour. With their classwork in hand, they were
spending every free second they had on the tour reading to keep up
with their classes. Returning in time for tenth week classes and
finals, the quarter ended fine, but Wilson recalls the stress of
trying to maintain both his grades and his band.
Wilson also has to juggle his commitments to UCLA as an elected
official in USAC and on the Campus Events Commission.
“When you’re trying to do something seriously, like
when you’re trying to pursue music as a career and also have
school, which is supposed to be your first priority, you can get
pretty stressed out,” Wilson said. “You definitely get
into a situation where your priorities are called into
question.”
Being a student and musician is not always a struggle, though.
Wilson knows that there are also positive effects from staying in
school while simultaneously working with the band. He feels a great
deal of support from the student body, having seen numerous surveys
in which Division Day was named as a favorite band. Local shows are
also typically hot-spots for students.
It is a two-way road, however, and while Wilson is adding to the
flavor of the UCLA community with his band, he also takes something
away from his collegiate experiences.
“I get a lot of inspiration from being at school because
this is a place where a lot of diverse ideas are shared back and
forth and proposed to me in the classroom that kind of jog my
imagination,” Wilson said. “I guess I probably
wouldn’t say the same if I was an economics major or
something, but English just does that for me, I guess.”
Having established itself in Northern California last summer,
the indie-rock band is working to break into the So-Cal scene.
Division Day’s sound is dominated by Segnitz’s powerful
keyboard and guided by Lenhart’s defined rhythms. Wilson and
Bailey’s guitar and bass add scratchy edges and piercing
counter-melodies to their songs like “A Home at the End of
the World,” which also features Segnitz’s whispery
vocals.
Like many bands, Bailey cites Michael Jackson and The Beatles as
some of the group’s main influences. However, the band
members’ interests range from post-rock to Brit-pop. Most of
their music has a political undertone, which fits into the
indie-rock scene well.
“I think our message is definitely a revolution of the
mind that we’re shooting for,” Bailey said. “I
think it’s a critique of consciousness and human interaction
as it exists today. I think if we have a political agenda,
it’s starting with that and self awareness and self
discovery, and making that the basis for community.”
With such a defined idea of what the band believes in, it can
sometimes be difficult to refrain from preaching and to continue
enjoying the music and the creative experience of it. Thanks to
Lenhart’s antics, however, Bailey assures that the tension
between being serious and having fun is often forgotten.
The four friends work on their songwriting as a group. Segnitz
will usually start an idea and let the other members take over to
complete each song. Songs are rarely predetermined, as Bailey says
they usually figure out what a song is going to be after it is
already finished. The dynamic of having started as friends before
forming a band keeps the work atmosphere between the four very
positive.
With only one year to go, Wilson and Lenhart have almost
finished their runs at UCLA. They have worked hard and, it seems,
been successful at balancing both roles of the student and the
touring musician. Although it has been a struggle and will
most likely not get any easier in the year to come, they are ready
and willing to neither give up on their dream nor lose sight of the
goal of graduation.