By: Madlen Hulme

Dave Plakon is just your average college senior, slaving over the books and working towards a digital arts degree at Stetson University. There’s just one catch- he’s also the bassist for An Introduction to Sunshine, an indie-rock band from Orlando, Florida that is rapidly gaining popularity in the college scene. The winners of mtvU’s Best Music on Campus award, AITS released their first EP in March, titled “Everything’s Been Done”. Just this past summer, Dave and fellow band members, Michael, Chandler, and Mike, made a road trip to the famed Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago, selling their CDs along the way for gas and food money. I recently caught up with Dave to find out how it feels to be an undergrad rock star.

MH: So, we know there are four guys in An Introduction to Sunshine. How did you meet each other?

DP: I’ve known the drummer, Chandler, since I was like, three I think, real young. We started playing in bands together when we were younger. We were in our first band together, played our first show together when we were like fourteen. We also played in church bands and stuff. And then I moved away to Nashville, and I came back home for summer, I was going to college in Nashville at Belmont University, and I came back home for summer to stay at my parents, and he called me up, he had this band together, An Introduction to Sunshine, and he wanted me to record their demo because I do production and recording stuff as well. And so he asked me to do the demo and then very soon after I did the demo, the bassist dropped, so he asked me to step in. That first summer we had a lot of success, things got off the ground pretty quickly, so I decided to transfer down to Stetson University, which is where I’m going to be graduating from this year.

MH: Wow, so how many years have you guys been together?

DP: Two years.

MH: How would you describe your sound?

DP: How would I describe our sound…um, a big part of our sound is…we love making lines that will stick in your head, and you won’t be able to forget them. But part of our influence is also the folk movement, a huge influence, as well as like, Conor Oberst, is one of Michael’s influences. But yeah, we’re also very influenced by the nineties. We love the nineties so we’re trying to bring back some of the great late nineties vibe…For most of us, Third Eye Blind, Smashing Pumpkins…stuff like that. Also modern stuff, we listen to a lot of modern stuff like MGMT, we liked a lot, um, Vampire Weekend.

MH: I love both of them, that makes me really happy!

DP: Yeah, we’re way into both of them. Actually saw MGMT at Lollapalooza, which is a festival we went to.

MH: That’s my next question. We know you took a road trip to the music festival, Lollapalooza, and can you tell us about your experience? What happened, how it was?

DP: It all started, I guess, in the summer. Michael and I were just sitting around my house, and we have, we pressed an EP in March and so we had like, 900 of these things sitting around, and we’ve already paid them off, so basically, I mean, whatever we make on them doesn’t even matter. So we were like, I mean, we saw the Lollapalooza line up, right, and I don’t know if you know who played it, but it was ridiculous, some of the best music that’s going on right now was going on at Lollapalooza. So we’re like, we have to go to this, but Lollapalooza is in Chicago. A lot of gas money, you know, a lot of money just in general. There’s no camping so you have to pay for a place to stay. So we came up with this idea to road trip up the East Coast to New York City, across to Chicago, and then back home selling our CDs on the side of the road for gas money. (laughs) And sometimes we would just play on the side of the road, you know, with guitar cases with our CDs there, and then sometimes we’d just walk around a city block with an iPod and an iPod dock, and our CDs and just be like, hey, we’re on the road, we’re trying to get to Lollapalooza, we’re accepting any donations at all for our CDs and a lot of times people couldn’t give, so we would just give them away to get our music out there, you know. So it’s really good for us because we got to get our music out there, across the country, as well as go to Lollapalooza, you know, one of the best music festivals. And we just decided to make it, just to wing it, and we just, we didn’t have any places to stay, didn’t know what we were doing really, we just had a schedule of cities that we were going to. So we would roll up into a city, try to sell our CDs to make gas money for the next trip, which usually ended up being around 30 or 40 dollars, because we planned it out as a 3 to 4 hour drive. So while we were selling our CDs we would talk to people, and try and like, see if they were…we would start conversation and try to make friends and see if they would be willing to let us stay at their place. So we met all these random people across the country that let us stay at their place, and just crazy things happened because of it. Like, we ended up getting on this music festival randomly in Indiana and just playing some random shows, really cool, just by coincidence, just by running into people and talking to them and letting things happen. We also brought a videographer along…

MH: I heard you made a documentary about the trip.

DP: It’s not done yet but it’s being worked on. So, unfortunately I don’t have anything to show for it right now. We did just shoot a music video though.

MH: Yes I saw that, how was the experience of shooting a music video?

DP: It was really cool. The guy who shot it, his name’s Alex Purifoy, he graduated from Full Sail, which is the technical media school down here, it’s pretty big. And he recently has been doing some really big music videos, like Trina, he’s doing a Trick Daddy one, Tech Nine, but he’s a rap video producer, he does a lot of rap videos. But anyways, he was in town because he was in between Miami and Kansas City because he was shooting the Trina video in Miami, and I was like, dude, you’re here, let’s shoot a music video. And so we came up with this idea to like… I had this light sequencer lying around. So we had this idea to take lamps and rig them up to this light sequencer and sequence it to the song, and it would be a cool, cheap, easy way to do it. But it was really cool shooting the music video. It was obviously a low budget kind of thing but like, I was impressed with the way it turned out because there were a lot of obstacles, like we ran into all these problems getting the camera, so we didn’t end up start shooting until like 11PM and didn’t finish ‘til like 7AM, and it was in the middle of Hurricane Fay, so power was going out and stuff. I don’t know, it was a crazy time, but I’m satisfied with the way it came out.

MH: So since you’ve had your first EP out in March, called “Everything’s Been Done”, how does it feel to get your music out to a wider audience?

DP: It feels really good, we’re pretty proud of that stuff. We’re writing a new album so like, we’re trying to get that out there just to build some buzz, but we’re really excited about our debut album. But a lot of those songs are pretty old, from when we first started the band, they go way back. But I mean, we’re proud of it, we’re glad to get it out there, but at the same time we’re not necessarily pushing it too hard. The new album, I think, is going to be the material that we’re really going to try to put out there as much as possible.

MH: In addition to making music, I know you’re a senior at Stetson. What are you studying?

DP: I’m a digital arts major.

MH: Do you have any future career goals other than making it in the music industry?

DP: Well, all my career goals are kind of associated with the music industry cause I’m in a band but I also do remixes and I also produce bands. There’s this band from Orlando that we play with a lot called Mirror Pal, and I’m producing their album which is going to drop in January or February or something. I’ve been working on that for the last year and a half or so, so I’m really excited about that. But yeah, I’m trying to spread myself, give myself as many options as possible to succeed, you know? But I mean, digital arts, the stuff I do with digital arts can also give me different opportunities too because its not really associated with anything I’m doing in the music industry right now. It’s more of an academic kind of pursuit of electronic and computer music, and new media kind of things. So, I mean, I could do stuff like that too, and…it’s pretty cool.

MH: So have you had any trouble managing time between studies and your music?

DP: (laughs) Very, very, very much trouble. But especially cause the life of a musician’s not like, nine to five or anything, and you gotta play shows and you’re up all night practicing and stuff, and you have to also make time for class. And aside from just my band, I’ve been doing other things too, so it’s kind of stressful. Especially my senior year where I have so much stuff going on, you know, like the course load is what I came to school for, like all my classes are 400 level, in-depth, serious, major classes that require a lot of time. So trying to balance it all has definitely been stressful at times. Haven’t really gotten to the worst of it yet.

MH: I can’t imagine. So, do you have any advice for other students who are trying to juggle school with following their dreams, whether it be music or something else?

DP: Yeah, I mean, I really think that education is really, really important. For me, it could have been easy to just drop school and do the music thing. I mean, at times I definitely want to do that. But I feel like learning things is very important, even if you’re not interested in what you’re learning, just the fact that you’re learning things that are expanding your mind, forming new connections in your brain, you know, I think it’s good for you, and I think it’s totally worth it. And so, I would say definitely keep going with education, it’s very important but so are your dreams. I think if something major happened, I might have dropped out of school, like we got offered some crazy record deal, but I really haven’t had that problem yet.

MH: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

DP: Check out our EP. Be on the lookout for the album. To college students, you can make school work for your dreams. Some of the songs on the EP were actually recorded for my class, for classes at Stetson. I took what I was doing in school and I turned it into something I want to do as a career or something. It’s totally plausible to take what you’re learning and apply it to the things you want to do in real life. So I would say, find something you’re interested in and dedicate yourself to it.Check out Dave and An Introduction to Sunshine at their MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/introductiontosunshine
The debut EP “Everything’s Been Done” is also now available on iTunes.