by: Ayla McDonald
Attention good people of the Champaign-Urbana community, if you are a fan of local music, then make plans to come out to Parkland College from 1-7 p.m. on Saturday, May 4 for the first annual Perimeter Road Sound Recordings Music Festival.
“Elsinore is headlining the festival, so that’s a big deal, they’re a pretty big band in town. We are also doing it in conjunction with the car show, so there will be cool cars and good music. And food too! It’s all local artists, some Perimeter Road acts and some outside acts,” said Matt McFarland, a Parkland student and member of Perimeter Road for the past three years.
The Music Festival will be the first large-scale event to be organized by Perimeter Road Sound Recordings, Parkland College’s own student-staffed nonprofit record label. Occurring in conjunction with the annual Motorsport Club Car Show, the Music Festival will be held in the Parkland Student Union parking lot and will showcase a series of local bands and music artists, including the famed Elsinore. Attendees can expect to hear a variety of music genres, ranging from alternative rock to funk, punk and acoustic pop. There will be free entry to the outdoor event, with food available for purchase.
According to the Perimeter Road webpage at parkland.edu, “Perimeter Road is Parkland College’s student-staffed record label. We provide students who are interested in the music business an opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills they learn in the classroom to real-world experiences. Selected up-and-coming musicians are given an opportunity to record, release and promote their music free of charge.”
Perimeter Road is currently staffed by fifteen students who are majoring in a variety of music related fields and who are all musically inclined to some degree. Many are members of bands that have recorded with the label. This semester Perimeter Road is working to plan their upcoming Music Festival, and is recording an album with the local band The Flaming Churros.
“One of our goals is to bring exposure to Parkland College through both events, and to ourselves as a label,” said Adam Porter, Communications and Radio Assistant Professor and Faculty Advisor for Perimeter Road. “By announcing this and promoting it on social media, I feel like a lot of people have learned about us that maybe didn’t know about us before, just based on the amount of new views… we’re nearing 7,000 views. I always wondered what we could do to better engage the community and I feel like this might be it, or at least a good step in the right direction.”
At a staff meeting on Friday, the Perimeter Road team was excited to tell the Prospectus about their experiences working for the label and encouraged other students who are interested in music to check out Perimeter Road Sound Recordings.
“We’re making it the first annual in hopes that we can continue to do this in the future”
“With the label specifically, there’s a lot of different things we can do with it,” said Luke, a Parkland student and Perimeter Road staff member majoring in Communication and Media Arts and Production. “For example, I came in wanting to just do recording music as an engineer, but I quickly found that I liked the social media aspect of it, and I’m kind of pseudo-running the Facebook page and the Instagram page, and I am having a lot of fun with that… there’s a lot of different things you can do with a record label… anybody can come in if they have something to offer.”
If their first Music Festival proves to be a successful event, Perimeter Road aspires to continue the event on an annual basis. “We’re making it the first annual in hopes that we can continue to do this in the future, but this is just kind of one of the things that the label does. We also sign bands and put out real albums,” Porter said. “If anybody wants to get involved with helping with the festival in the future or learning more in the studio, or just joining the group and learning all the music business stuff, they would contact the Perimeter Road either through email or our Facebook page.”
To contact or learn more about Perimeter Road Sound Recordings, or to find a line-up of Festival performers, visit the Perimeter Road Sound Recordings Facebook page.
