Curbside Bands Together to Open for T-Pain

Curbside, one of the two winners of Mane Entertainment’s Singer-Songwriter Showdown, opened for T-Pain this past Sunday at ASLMU‘s Fallapalooza. The LMU students took some time to share details of what brought them to LMU and how they ended up competing for the opening spot.

Curbside is made up of five students, Jack Palen ‘21, Jacob Johanson ‘21, Bobby Sutton ‘21, Jack Alving ‘21 and Luke Gresback ‘21. But while the group is musically talented, they don’t like to call themselves a band. “When people ask what is curbside, first of all, it doesn’t have a definition,” Palen explains. The group refers occasionally refer to themselves as a creative collective, but would seemingly rather not even be boxed into this definition. Curbside’s music is only one of the many facets of a way of living they aim to embody. The members express music as “one of the avenues in which we can express keeping it curbside because it’s not just music, it’s not just art, it’s not just big sculpture, it’s not just galleries, it’s not just graffiti, it’s everything. It’s a lifestyle.”

The group met at LMU after choosing the school for a variety of reasons, from the small class sizes and the honors program to the beautiful campus, nice weather and a chance for a new adventure. Sutton shared he originally planned to attend school on the east coast but, “while I was touring schools there was a blizzard and being from Texas and I’m not used to the snow,” said Sutton. “So, when I came out here, I just fell in love with California.”

One of Johanson’s creative projects freshman year was designing a t-shirt which had a picture of a t-shirt that said Curbside on it, a design that would further their Curbside vision. “From there, I said I’m in” Sutton remarked. The creation of Curbside has affected each of their LMU experiences since. Palen shared “my freshman year I was actually about to transfer student, I was going to go back up to Vanderbilt in Nashville, but it was because of the great friendships I made and these people that I decided to stay.”

The camaraderie which clearly exists within Curbside is what they aspire to bring to LMU’s campus through their performance as well. Alving shares if he could change something about the world it would be “for everybody to be nice to one another,” a conversation starter which quickly led Curbside into a collaborative discussion of how to make people comfortable with themselves and caring for others. While a focus for the group is the integration of mind, body and spirit, they express their own mission as akin to LMU’s. While Gresback wasn’t able to make the interview, Palen shared that even without having heard their conversation “if he was here he would tell you that his goal for the show, he’ll literally say like ‘I hope that everyone’s nice to one another and I hope everyone’s just having a good time.”

Curbside is looking at their opening for Fallapalooza as one of many exciting events they have in the works, others of which include a gallery and a formal for people who don’t already have a formal to go to. You can keep updated on everything they’re planning on Instagram and check out more of their music on Soundcloud.

By: Tygre Patchell-Evans