Gannon University students found out how easily time flies when you’re waiting for a concert announcement.
The Activities Programming Board, APB, held an event Sunday night at the Knight Club to reveal who the university is bringing to Erie for a concert.
The group Timeflies will headline the concert while Mike Stud will be opening.
The concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. April 28 in the Hammermill Center.
The event at the Knight Club included free food, some music and concert-related prizes for those who attended.
Liz Westburgh, a junior legal studies major, holds the title of APB’s concert chair for this year.
Westburgh said she decided to take the position of concert chair because her involvement in APB made her feel like she was qualified enough to take on this leadership position.
Westburgh said when deciding on who to bring to Gannon, APB consulted an agent who helped the group analyze who would be the best act to bring based on the school’s budget.
Westburgh said the members of APB’s concert committee made a list of about five or six people that they would like to bring to Gannon and the agent recommended Timeflies based on his popularity and APB’s budget.
“We’ve worked with this agent in the past and he’s always recommended good acts,” Westburgh said.
Westburgh said she has seen Timeflies in concert and she likes the group and thinks it performs really well live.
She said she has been receiving mostly positive feedback from most of Gannon’s campus.
“People really seem to like Timeflies now that they’re gaining popularity,” Westburgh said. “I think once people who don’t know of them go and listen to their music, they’ll really like them too.”
While Gannon paired up with other universities to bring the last concert to Erie, this year they decided to take care of it without assistance.
Ben Thompson, a senior environmental engineering major, said he went to the concert two years ago and he plans on going to this one.
“I’ve never heard of Mike Stud, but Timeflies is a good band and I like them a lot,” Thompson said.
Thompson said he likes a lot of different types of music and will basically listen to everything except for country music.
He said if he could see anyone in concert, his first picks would be Twenty-One Pilots and John Mayer.
He also said he likes groups like Dave Matthews Band and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Thompson said although he really does like Timeflies, he wishes that the concert would have been more of a conjoined effort between the different schools in the area.
“I liked how last time it was a joint venture with Penn State Behrend and Edinboro so they could afford a bigger set,” Thompson said.
Thompson said there might be a couple of people who would go to the concert with him, but most of his friends don’t know them.
One person who has the same disposition as Thompson’s friends is Mary Stephens, a sophomore occupational therapy major.
Stephens said she never heard of Timeflies before the reveal, but that she will look up their music and if she likes it, she may go to the concert.
“I was kind of hoping that the headliner would be a bigger name or at least someone I knew,” Stephens said.
Stephens said she listens to a variety of music, such as Panic! at the Disco, Imagine Dragons, Ke$ha, Luke Bryan and then some “hipster” artists like Churchill.
Stephens said she liked that APB decided to do a concert reveal at the Knight Club, but she wishes there would have been more events leading up to it.
“I think there should have been a student poll to find out who they wanted to see,” Stephens said.
“I also think it would have been cool if there were some other fun events leading up to the reveal.”
Thompson also said that he thinks a concert survey would have been a good idea, although with his luck it probably would have ended up being someone he didn’t like.
Tickets for the Timeflies concert featuring Mike Stud are on sale now on gannontickets.com.
Pre-sale tickets are $13 and regular admission tickets will rise to $15.
Westburgh said the last two concerts that APB held sold out.
“We’re really excited about this concert,” Westburgh said, “and we’re hoping to sell out again this year.”
KHADIJA DJELLOULI
