A night of music

By: John Askew
For our Sat. night we all went down to Otto's, which is a bar and venue for local musicians in downtown DeKalb. We were hoping to catch a benefit concert there, which we found out about by digging through the garbage on campus the night before, and hopefully some video and a story or two. But that didn't happen.

After talking with one band who had no idea that there was a benefit, we tracked down the manager-who also had absolutley no idea that the bands wanted a benefit concert. So the manager let us in the upstairs venue where the headliners were playing and said to figure it all out.

Note, that it's 20 minutes to showtime now and not one other person is in the bar. Seriously, no one. I ended up going down to the merch. table and chatted up a guy who was in the opening act, Strange Arrangement. After a 10 minute interview that ended up turning into a conversation on society's responsibility with events like NIU. Towards the end of the interview I ended up meeting another member of the band who told me he had a friend that was on campus, outside the building, when it happened. And the best part? He was coming to the show.

I ran upstairs to the balcony where we had set up basecamp and told Ross we had found our source. That one source who would make this trip worth it.
For the next hour we waited out Strange Arrangement's set by transcribing and updating the blog and when it was over, we scrambled down to try and get the source.
I found the lead singer and talked to him a bit more before Joe, the guy who knew the source, came over.

"Hey guys, you want to talk with Evan?"
Us: "Yes."
Joe: "How about I talk to him and make sure he's okay with it, because it's a tough thing, you know?"
Us: "Sure, that works, we'll just wait here."

And wait we did. For about 20 minutes while Joe circulated from the bar, to fans, to the back room where weed smoke was trickling out of. Finally he rushes by us and motions something. Turns out Evan, the source, was standing just 15 feet from us the entire time, and now with the next band starting their set it was going to be difficult to record the interview.

The two hurry over to Ross and I and we finally get an up-close view of Evan. He's about 25, slightly balding, and is drinking a Newcastle Brown Ale (immediatly i like him). Joe starts yelling that it's too loud in here, and there is a quieter place to go in back.

When we walk into the back room, it's just like out of a movie - a huge sagging couch, stained floors and the leafy smell of freshly smoked grass.
We're comfortable, Evan's comfortable.

And for the next hour we talked. Well he talked. He talked about seeing his first bullet wound, about hating the people who do this.

Really, what started as a doubtfull night turned into the best interview of the trip.