If you live on the lower floors of Piano Row, you might have heard a mellow beat and groove seeping out of a fourth-floor suite last Sunday. These sounds were the result of meticulous student coordination and planning, all in the hope of producing something exciting for Emerson students.
On April 13, Four Cat Stew, a rag-tag band composed of Emerson and Berklee College of Music students, played for an audience of around three dozen students, all packed in a Piano Row suite living room. They huddled next to their instruments by the suite window as students crowded around them, nodding their heads to the beat.
Behind the crowd, in the suite kitchen about five yards away, theatre design and technology sophomores Ian Sonnabend and Spencer Swetlow helmed the live mix, with monitors and interfaces laid out on the kitchen counter. Bright purple neon lights stood above them, illuminating the band on the other side of the room.
The band, Four Cat Stew, first met Sonnabend and Swetlow when the two arranged to put on a concert in Emerson’s Judee Wales Watson Theater below the Little Building.
Teddy Davis, a VMA sophomore who acts as Four Cat Stew’s drummer, described how the four-man group only came together after Sonnabend and Swetlow gave them the chance to perform.
Sonnabend and Swetlow approached Davis and his suitemate, VMA sophomore Emmet Arkin, to see if they could form a group for the show. Arkin and Davis reached out to Berklee second- and third-year students Brandon Spenlove and Graham Lent.
The group is made up of Davis on drums, Arkin on bass, Spenlove on guitar and keys, and Lent on guitar. Their team-up arrived in time for Sonnabend and Swetlow’s concert, where the newly formed Four Cat Stew played their first gig alongside three other bands in the Judee last October.
“It was all for that first show. We all jammed together one time, and we were like, ‘We’ll rehearse for this show.’ We didn’t have a plan for after that either. It was kind of like, ‘Let’s just do this to do this,’” said Arkin. “We threw four songs together. We didn’t have a name until like a week before the show.”
Following their October show in the Judee, Sonnabend and Swetlow didn’t have to look much further than their own Piano Row suite for their next concert. Setting a date a month in advance, the two roommates didn’t have much time to arrange the appropriate accommodations before the show date.
“He was offering us an hour in the dorm, where they would tech it from the other side of the room,” said Davis. “That was the idea—I thought it was brilliant.”
Sonnabend and Swetlow acquired all of the necessary equipment second-hand, with the band bringing their own amplifiers.
“They were pretty insistent on recording it right, getting the audio through a PA and everything, and I said ‘Well, let’s do video as well and do the whole nine yards and get like a good quality recording of the show,’” said Davis.
With guest musician Caroline Ranucci, another Berklee student, on keys, Four Cat Stew had a show on their hands. Setting up shop in the cleared living room, the band kicked into gear as students began piling into the fourth-floor suite.
Carter Baral, a sophomore VMA student, heard about the show from an Instagram post. Because he only lives one floor down, he decided it was worth going up a flight of stairs to hear some funky tunes—he ended up pleasantly surprised.
“The music was great and I was especially impressed with the live sound quality/mixing and the band’s chemistry,” said Baral. “I definitely appreciated that it was only one floor away, and I would for sure go to another one of these shows.”
