For the last 15 years, the annual Guitar Festival has been an event featuring a variety of Lafayette groups and bands performing different songs. This year’s festival will be on Friday, April 11, at 7 p.m. featuring Tuesday Night Rock Band, Wednesday Jam Band, Monday Jam Band, AcLab Country Club and Guitar Ensemble. Admission is free.

“The guitar festival is just a straight up rock show. Guitar Ensemble starts it, so you get a little tiny bit of jazz, a little classical and then the rest of it is legitimately a rock show,” Guitar teacher Traci Bolton said.

As the producer and manager of all of the musical groups, Bolton said that picking out the songs to perform was a team effort.

“Each band gets to pick out the songs that they think will be fun to play, and we try to put those together in a whole setting. [TNRB members] are all like classic 70s rock tunes. [We also have] country, some 80s and some modern,” she said.

Currently, Bolton has been preparing with her groups for around three months and filling in the cracks and making sure everything runs smoothly.

With the show coming up soon, another group has been rehearsing. Not to play the songs, but to sign them. This year marks the second year where students from ASL classes will be signing the songs’ lyrics for deaf viewers.

World Language teacher Julie Bates began this collaboration when Bolton contacted her last year.

“Bolton contacted me that we should collaborate and have students sign the songs that they’re doing in the guitar festival, and I said absolutely,” Bates said. 

Ever since then, Bates said that there have been plenty of volunteers who want to sign songs for the festival this year.

With around 10 volunteers, Bates has been helping them prepare for the festival since February. 

“Students come and meet me in AcLab, I have a Google folder and a document with all their lyrics in English. They start translating into ASL and then I work one-on-one with them during AcLab while they’re practicing and double checking their ASL grammar and signs to make sure it’s fitting the song correctly,” she said.

Bates is excited for them to perform and said she will definitely be at the festival, watching her students perform.

AcLab Country Band has been preparing for the festival Since Winter Break and will be performing a total of four songs. The band’s songs will be signed by senior Kyra Orrick and juniors Julia Dean, Connor Kash, Riley Kummer, Julia Woody.

Currently playing the guitar, banjo and the steel guitar, senior band member Nathan Roberts has been playing for 4 years now.

Signing up for Guitar 1 as a freshman, Roberts decided to join AcLab country, where he picked up the other two instruments.

“It makes the songs just sound a little cooler and a little more authentic if they have other instruments,” he said.

With this being his second year performing in the Guitar Festival, Robert’s has been practicing along with his bandmates.

Out of the four songs to be performed, Robert’s favorite piece to perform will be ‘Fishin in the Dark’ by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

“I grew up listening to it as a kid, and it’s really fun to play with a good vibe to it,” he said.

Robert’s encourages people to come to the festival.

“There’s a lot of different groups and there’s a lot of different varieties of music. [There will be] lights and smoke and all the things that a real rock concert would have,” he said.

With her team, junior Ella Nolan will be performing a total of three songs for the festival.

Nolan, who has been playing the guitar for three years now, has been practicing with her group during class time.”

“We have been doing about one hour of ensemble prep for the past two weeks,” she said. “But what we’re doing right now is running through each piece pretty much the entire time.

Even with all this preparation, Nolan believes the number one challenge is to get everybody in class at the same time. Another challenge is working with different levels in the ensemble.

“We have people at very different levels, and working us all into sounding good as a cohesive group is the most challenging,” she said.

When choosing the songs to perform, Nolan and her group went to Bolton for guidance.

“What Bolton did was she pulled out a book of all these classical repertoires and we played through the book, and we picked our favorite,” she said.

Nolan said she always feels a little nervous before going on stage.

“Most musicians feel nervous when performing. It’s kind of like playing a sports game. But I know this is just a fun activity that we like to do. There’s no ratings, it’s not scored. It’s just a fun chance to share art with people,” she said.

Sophomore Luke Matheus, one of the bass guitar players for Wednesday Jam Band, has been playing the instrument for a year and a half now. 

Besides playing the bass, Matheus has been involved in guitar since freshman year. He now enjoys playing the bass for the different sounds it makes. 

“I like the lower sounds of it and the patterns that go with it,” he said. 

To prepare for the festival, Matheus makes sure to take time to listen to the songs he’s playing. 

“I’ve been prepping by having the songs playing in the background just so I get to know the group’s parts more,” he said. 

The group will be performing four songs and will be signed by seniors Maddy Cox, Bethany Messenger and Kyra Orrick, as well as juniors Avery Holder and Riley Kummer.

“It’s a very fun concert and has a lot of well-known songs in it that people can sing along to,” Matheus said.

Monday Jam Band will be performing a total of four songs: ‘Learn to Fly’ by Foo Fighters, ‘Beat It’ by Michael Jackson, ‘The Reason’ by Hoobastank and ‘Song 2’ by Blur. The songs will be signed by Senior Bethany Messenger, and juniors Audrey Dahl, Julia Dean and Mary Kirtley.

As the lead guitar and rhythm guitar for Monday Jam Band, junior August Nagel has been playing guitar since 8th Grade.

With the concert nearing, Nagel and his team have been focusing on rehearsing their songs full out.

“Tonight for our rehearsal we’re going no music and standing up like a full concert run,” he said.

Although Nagel said there are some sections in certain songs that aren’t solid yet, the biggest challenge for them is different.

“[It’s] getting everyone to show up,” he said. 

Nagel and his team picked out all the songs they wanted to perform. Out of all the songs,  ‘Learn to Fly’ by Foo Fighters is Nagel’s favorite to perform

“I chose that one,” he said.

Although there have been some challenges with getting ready, Nagel said he’s not worried about the show.

“I’m pretty used to the whole layout by now. I know what’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen. I just need to go on stage and not mess up,” Nagel said. 

As one of the singers for Tuesday Night Rock Band, junior Mary Kirtley has been part of the band for two years now.

However, she began singing in 6th Grade.

“I performed at my church for a while. When I got here, I joined the band and have been doing that since,” she said.

Even though TNRB has practice every Tuesday night, recently they have been rehearsing extra. 

“Because we’re writing an original and taking on some harder songs, we’ve been practicing for an extra 30 minutes each [rehearsal], especially since we are going to a recording studio and recording our original, we have to spend a lot more time to make sure we’re prepared,” Kirtley said.

TNRB will be debuting their original songs during the festival, something that they have been doing in the past years. Junior Rylee Stoffel has been helping Kirtley with writing the song.

“My strong suit isn’t really writing music, so writing the original has kind of been hard, but I’m very thankful for Rylee because she loves writing music and she’s so good at it,” Kirtley said.

Besides their original, some songs the band will be playing include ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin and ‘Renegade’ by Styx. 

Additionally to being a singer for the band, Kirtley will also be translating some of the songs performed.

“I’m also in ASL, so I’m interpreting the song, and I always love doing that. I did it last year, so I’m really excited for that because that is a lot of hard work,” she said. “I just love performing with all the groups.”