The band, made up of Aaron Kaufman '09, Dylan Frazao '10, Pete Jones '09 and Andy Rooks '10, first got together in 2007, winning Battle of the Bands (at that time with Colin Olsen, not Kaufman, on vocals) in spring of that year. Kaufman joined them the next year, and in spring 2008 they had their first concert in Sayles, which, as Kaufman tells me, "was a secret show that we advertised simply as 'Sayles. Saturday. Midnight.' There were a bunch of posters with simply those words and a duck." Since then, they have played numerous shows in Northfield and elsewhere, and got second place in the Minnesota College Battle of the Bands at Macalester. The band is breaking up because, as Kaufman wrote about in his admissions blog, two of them are graduating and their bassist is going off campus in the spring. The last show was a release party for their CD, "Duck Bus: The Movie."
The mood on Saturday was anything but glum, as students filled the Evans Dining Hall to dance, mingle, and listen to Duck Bus go out with a bang. The space was quite loud and echoey, so it was difficult to hear exactly what was being said or sung onstage, but no one seemed to mind. The music was rollicking and joyful, including original songs and covers, one of which, amusingly enough, was T-Pain's Lollipop.
The crowd loved it, dancing, jumping and thrashing along with Kaufman and demanding "one more song" at the end (apparently no one thought of the word "encore"). I personally regret not going to more of their shows, and wish I could see them again sometime, which I suppose testifies to how excellent a final show it was. Duck Bus, you will be missed.
