35th and Taylor expanding the music scene at USD

One would be hard-pressed to find a band as committed to making it big as 35th and Taylor is.

First-years Anna Grote (singer, guitar and piano) and Evan Kaler (lead guitar) decided to go to USD for the sole purpose of keeping their band together.

Grote also decided to major in strategic communication to benefit the band.

“What I was thinking I could do with that major is to probably market for the band, but we’ll see,” Grote said. “The goal for our band right now is to become a national act. That’s what we’re working at.”

The two met in middle school at their talent show and picked up a rhythm section soon after with Max Miller (drums) and Jack Osborn (bass), who still go to high school in Sioux City.

Grote and Kaler decided to come to USD to keep the band together.

“We’ve been a band since we’ve been 12 and 13 years old and playing in bars since (then),” Grote said. “Evan and two other guys had a jam band with no singer and then they heard me sing ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ by Janis Joplin, and from there they asked me to join the band.”

Finding ‘the voice’

Soon after the creation of the band, Grote went to an open call audition for “The Voice” in New York, and was sequestered to a hotel in Los Angeles for a month as she prepared for blind auditions.

“I didn’t really think anything of it, I just did it for the experience,” she said. “I got to perform in front of this theater and overall, it was an amazing experience just being surrounded by national musicians and artists and getting to meet the four judges and talk to them for a bit afterwards.”

Grote had the chance to meet Blake Shelton, Shakira, Usher and Adam Levine, which was a boost to her ambition of making it big.

“(Meeting them) was very cool,” Grote said. “I wouldn’t say I was as starstruck as you think it would be. They were just normal people that had good advice. It was an incredible experience to be able to meet them and listen to the advice that they had to give me and learn from that.”

Making a move to Nashville

One piece of advice Grote got from the superstar judges on “The Voice” was to move to Nashville and release an album. The band took initiative with “I Know You’re Trouble,” their alternative blues rock album with notable influences from The Black Keys, White Stripes, Grace Potter and Kaleo.

“That was our first album that we’ve felt as a band that we developed our own sound and we weren’t 13 and recording it,” Grote said. “We went out to Nashville and lived out there for a month and recorded it, so we were really excited to share that with everyone.”

The band worked six-day weeks with Jay Hall, their producer and a co-writer.

“That’s the first time we’ve worked with a producer and not just a studio engineer,” Grote said. “It was tough work. It takes a toll on you. You don’t think that making music is really strenuous work, but being in the studio for 11 hours a day for six days a week
gets tiring.”

Their hard work paid off, Grote said.

“It was incredible and definitely a creative learning experience,” Grote said.

Kaler said the mental challenge of pushing out musical content every day was a helpful process.

“You’re just always thinking and trying to exercise every part of your brain and it was exhausting,” Kaler said. “I thought it was pushing out what we had in our heads. The sound that we got on there was what I heard in my head.”

Nashville’s large music community was also influentail, Kaler said.

“(Living in) Nashville was a really eye-opening experience,” Kaler said. “Everyone there is in a band. Everyone there is someone, to some extent. I mean, the people who work at Starbucks play in a band and have a recording deal. We went from being big fish in a little pond to being a speck in the ocean.”

Filling stadiums, bars and street dances

35th and Taylor also had the opportunity to open for Andy Grammer and Echosmith at the Tyson Events Center in Sioux City, Iowa on Dec. 17 in 2015.

Grote said the concert was the biggest crowd they’ve played for yet.

“That was in front of 5,000 people,” Grote said. “Big crowd, but that was a lot of fun for us, and just being exposed to that amount of people was definitely the biggest crowd we’ve ever played for.”

Grote said she enjoys playing at street dances as well, and remembers their first few gigs at jam nights in Sioux City.

“I think street dances where a couple hundred people are there can be incredibly fun,” Grote said. “It totally depends on the crowd and how much they’re into it. When they’re into it, we’re into it. It’s a much better experience.”

Kaler and Grote do acoustic sets in the basement of The Varsity the first and third Thursdays of every month.

“It’s easier to play when they’re into it,” Kaler said.

Grote and Kaler want to reach out to other student musicians, they said.

“We would love to have other students who are in the music scene come up and jam,” Grote said. “That’s kind of what we planned on developing over time. There’s places to play in Vermillion, but it’d be cool to get that started and get other people involved,
for sure.”