Name: Jake Smith
Major: Professional Communications and Emerging media
Year: Junior
Hometown: Â New Lisbon, WI
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H.C. What type of activities are you involved with on campus?
I’m the Communications Director for BDP. Basically I’m the first line of communication and direct agents and artists to the right programmer in our organization. We bring in music every week, comedy about once a month and films once a week, all for FREE. Its neat.
H.C. Word on the street is that you’re in a band, can you tell us more about that?
I play bass in a pop-punk band from my hometown called Pets With People Names. We just put out an album in September and it’s pretty rad. We’re already working on new material and planning to hit up the east coast for a tour this summer. Living the dream, yknow?
H.C. When is your next show?
We have three coming up in a few weeks, but the next one is Thursday October 17th at Stones Throw in Eau Claire. It’s a battle of the bands with all the proceeds going to local charities: Feed The Need, FMP Food Bank and the ALS WI chapter.
H.C. What gave you the idea to start a band, or join one?
That’s kind of a long story… Be prepared. Music has been a major part of my life since I was about 5. I learned guitar when I was 10, and picked up drums when I was 11. I played drums in bands through high school, but nothing ever came of them; we would just learn covers and it got old. When I was a freshman in high school I reconnected with a couple of friends from Kindergarten, and we just talked music all the time. Around our senior year, we realized we wanted the same thing from music, so we decided to start playing together. Originally, I was the drummer. After I came to Stout, I couldn’t keep drumming, so we kind of fizzled. A little later, Anthony wrote our first song called “15 Minutes of Fame,” and we picked up Luke, our drummer, through mutual friends and I started playing bass. We started all talking, and when we got to play together we just meshed.  After playing we started playing, I was completely sold. Long story short: Music is my life. There’s nothing else I’d rather do.