The lights are dim, the air is hot and dozens of bodies are packed closely together — all waiting for the first shriek of the guitar strings to ring against the basement walls. The Bates Box is full of Pitt students waiting to see their peers perform on the small, makeshift stage.
If you’re part of the underground music scene on campus, you may have heard of Quiet Hours, a six-member indie pop band that performs weekly shows at music venues around Oakland and the greater Pittsburgh area. The band has performed cover songs and its original music for the past three years, and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
Evan Heming, the band’s lead vocalist and a Pitt political science alumnus, met senior physics major and bassist, Patrick Bobko, on the fourth floor of Sutherland East in 2019. Heming said the pair casually played music together in the dorm, until they met the rest of the band members and made the group official.
“Pat met Jared at the WPTS showcase I guess and then Jared came up to start jamming with us,” Heming said. “And then we all went out and got Cambodian food and the rest is history I suppose.”
The band began performing after adding Jared Deluccia, the drummer and a senior economics major, and Gabe Field, the lead guitarist and an English literature alumnus, to the lineup in spring 2020. Field said things seemed to be going along great for the band until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, halting live music across the country.
“It did kind of suck that it was right in the middle of our time period where we were starting to figure stuff out,” Field said. “We had played some shows before COVID, and we were just kind of starting to find the groove, and then it’s like, ‘Oh, you can’t play another show for a year and a half.’”
Even with the pandemic, the band persisted. Heming said the members used their time in lockdown to re-record the album, “School Dance,” and reconsider their goals for the band and first big project.
“So COVID happens and we were forced to take a step back and reevaluate. We decided to go to a studio and record [the album] and I think it turned out a lot better than it would have if we would have kept it self-recorded,” Heming said. “So from that perspective, I guess it made us kind of reevaluate what we actually wanted to do with this project.”
While stuck at home, Bobko said the band members also had more downtime to write new music and collaborate on projects while they were physically apart. He said some of their most interesting songs came from this period of not being together.
“I really like some of the tunes that we were able to produce over that time that we weren’t together,” Bobko said. “A lot of the situation sucked. But it’s also the case where, I don’t know if we would have these specifically interesting songs that we have now because it was a product of that whole situation.”
Quiet Hours has accounts on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, but Heming said they have found Instagram to be the most helpful platform to gain a following. They look to connect personally with followers, and make them feel more connected to the members and their music.
“I think the thing with Instagram is we’re super big on trying to get people engaged. With posts, we’re trying to get people to have a reaction to it,” Heming said. “We do a lot of polls and interactive things where people actually feel like they’re a part of it.”
Mikey Morrissey, a senior computer science major, regularly attends Oakland basement concerts. He described the process of getting into your first underground concert show as being rather tricky.
“Usually, either the venue has an Instagram account, or the band themselves will send out a flyer to their friends, and then they’ll send it off to their friends,” Morrissey said. “It’s like once you go to your first show, you’ll have more opportunities to go to others. But sometimes it’s hard to find the right people or find out about the events.”
Morrissey has seen Quiet Hours five times at various basement venues. As an avid concertgoer and friend of the band members, Morrissey enjoys watching his friends perform, but also loves the opportunity to get to know people through attending the shows.
“It’s kind of cool to get to know different people that like the same music as you, and usually you have a lot of other different interests, so you can make friends pretty easily that way too,” Morrissey said. “I’ve met people at some of the shows and will run into them again at other ones and it’s just kind of nice to say, ‘Hey!’”
Following a year of no concerts, the members of Quiet Hours were pleased to see Pitt students eager to enjoy live music again. At their first show of the academic year this fall, Bobko said they had an impressive turnout.
“It was awesome to see the number of people turning out,” Bobko said. “The first show we had here this semester, back in September, I think we had 230 people come in the door which was very good.”
Since starting the band in 2019, the group has been interested in how to grow and maintain its following. But Bobko said they are also insistent on keeping their original ideas and concepts for the band as well.
“I feel like with Quiet Hours, the big thing I always wanted to keep as a focus was that we’re gonna do weird, random things that we want to do,” Bobko said. “But how can we sneak in enough pop content to get people still interested in what we’re doing?”
Quiet Hours is in its third year of making music — and performs with an album, music video and several concerts under its belt. Heming said the band plans to release a new album this year, and let fate decide what happens next.
“Short term I think the biggest thing is just rolling out this album … and there’s probably gonna be at least singles on it that are gonna be out in the next month or so,” Heming said. “Long term I think we’re just kind of gonna let it ride and see what happens. I don’t think anybody has any sort of like, hard, definitive answer.”
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