Maddie Conley
Online Editor
The Pulse office was packed full on Saturday with a bass, keyboard, saxophone, drums and four members of the Texas-based indie band The Human Circuit. Streaming live on WVMM Pulse FM, The Human Circuit played an original song and were interviewed by Student Director and Music Director of the Pulse Mikaela Mummert.
Band members Mat Oldiges, Andy Manns, Thomas Grant and Dexter Zabriskie with Pulse staff Dakota Vaughn, Mikaela Mummert and Maddie Conley
“I love bringing in bands from all over to get to know them and see their journey together as musicians, creating relationships, learning and experimenting on what we can do to bring music to Messiah students,” Mummert said.
Band members Mat Oldiges (vocals/keyboard), Andy Manns (drums), Thomas Grant (bass) and Dexter Zabriskie (saxophone) performed a “stripped down” version of their song “How it Used to be” and discussed the making of their most recent album Electric City.
The band’s performance at the Pulse was arranged due to a nearby stop on their tour at the Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center.
The Human Circuit has many contributors to its music. There can be up to nine people in the band at a time. “With each album, the actual song writing itself has gotten a lot more collaborative,” Oldiges said. “What was just me hanging out in my bedroom for a while ended up being too much for me to have fun by myself. Friends started showing up and the band kept getting bigger.”
Making it on to the North American College and Community Chart was thrilling for The Human Circuit. “It’s become a lot more than I think any of us really planned on it being,” Oldiges said. “We want even more now that we’ve tasted it.”
Being an indie band is a full-time job, but for the band, it is worth the stress. “If I’m going to be stressed, music is a good thing to be stressed about,” Oldigies said. “When you go to these different cities and play shows and start growing that, that’s just something magical.”
Community is important to The Human Circuit as they love getting to meet people and experience different crowds. This energy comes across to the people they interact with. “It was fun to get to know them and their recent Pennsylvania experiences like trying Scrapple,” Mummert said.