WHUS Radio, the University of Connecticut’s student-run radio station will be hosting their first concert of the year, “Sounds of Summer concert,” on Saturday, Sept. 13, which will be headlined by indie rock band Boyscott.
The annual concert, which is free of charge for all attendees, will be held on the Student Union Lawn at 4 p.m. Local bands AshBABY and Hang Him to the Scales will be opening the concert. The event will be offering WHUS merchandise and UConn Dairy Bar ice cream for free.
Seventh-semester psychology and economics major Sire Brock, the events director at WHUS, talked about the Sounds of Summer concert and his involvement with the event.
“[My job] encompasses the planning and execution of events, so a lot of our concerts that we do,” Brock said. “Sounds of Summer in some ways is similar to two of our other big concert events that we have, like Mischief [after Dark] and Spring Fling… this year we decided to go with a headlining band while also having two local bands open for the event.”
Normally, WHUS concerts are composed of exclusively local bands who send in self-tapes to audition, according to Brock. However, the Sounds of Summer will be headlined by Boyscott.
Scott Hermo Jr., the lead singer of Boyscott, talked about how the band was feeling about performing in an email.
“We’re all really looking forward to the show this weekend,” Hermo wrote. “Our guitarist Tom Bora actually graduated from [the University of Connecticut] a few years ago — he’s really looking forward to coming back with the band.”
Brock said that,since Boyscott was headlining the concert, they wanted local bands that would fit “in the realms of Boyscott.” The first band that will be opening is New York-based Hang Them to the Scales.
“Although [Hang Them to the Scales] do have a similar sound to Boyscott in some ways, theirs is also in regard to Chinese music as well,” Brock said. “It was just a very interesting and cool new sound that we haven’t heard or presented through WHUS before that we really thought would be awesome to bring to this event.”
Loto, the vocalist and guitarist from Hang Them to the Scales, talked about how they felt about opening for the concert in an Instagram DM.
“We are quite excited about this event as we had never played at a concert like this, in a university!” Loto wrote. “Although it would take us three hours to get there… we kind of have a feeling already that this is going to be worthy.”
After Hang Them to the Scales, AshBABY will be performing.
“[AshBABY’s] sound is more jazz fusion, and we just thought that that was… something incredibly cool,” Brock said. “Their sound just really appealed to us.”
Judah Friedmann, AshBABY’s bassist, talked about the concert in a text conversation.
Friedmann talked about the difficulty the band faced during the audition process for the event.
“Preparing our audition tape for [Sounds of Summer] brought us to an issue that we commonly face: how do we make 10-minute songs appealing to a broader audience?” Friedmann wrote. “We want our music to feel approachable without sacrificing the uniqueness that makes it interesting. We put together a few songs into a tape that we felt accurately represented our sound and were fortunate enough to be selected.”
Friedmann talked about how the performing at the concert feels “very exhilarating.”
“There is a significant lack of jazz/jamminess on this campus, and it’s exciting to be able to share our sound with the greater student body,” Friedmann said.
Brock encouraged students to bring their own activities to the concert.
“In past years we’ve had a lot of students bring their own things,” Brock said. “We’ve had people bring Spikeball nets… A lot of students will have picnics there as well… We want people to enjoy themselves and then be able to do activities simultaneously while enjoying this space and this thing that we’re putting on.”
Brock said that WHUS’ goal with these concerts is to give back to the UConn student body.
“As a Tier III organization, our money does come through fee-paying students, so we want to give back to them in terms of events or just things that they would be interested in potentially doing,” Brock said. “So, in terms of us being able to get our name out there and also give back to the student body by providing those free events to them and opportunities to do fun things on campus… we want to be able to bring something to people.”
WHUS merchandise, including t-shirts, lighters and posters, will be given away on a first-come, first-served basis, according to Brock. The event has enough ice cream to cater for 200 people, and distribution will be monitored “to make sure everyone gets a fair chance to enjoy it.”
WHUS will host other events throughout the year, including the annual Mischief after Dark and Spring Fling concerts as well as new events being planned by Brock.
More information about WHUS and how to get involved can be found on their website and on their Instagram page, @whusradio.