For a project she needs to graduate, Sweet Briar College senior Virginia Everett is trying to produce a high-quality, multi-act rock concert on $300.

It’s tough.

So are realities in the workplace, where budget constraints present the same choices: Find more money or make due with what you have. It’s a challenge that Everett, a transfer from George Mason University who will graduate from SBC in December, is glad to have.

The opportunity to stage such a show is why she switched from a business to a theater major for her Bachelor of Arts. “I wanted the hands-on production experience that theater could give,” Everett said. “[Studying theater] you literally can take the theory and put it into action the very next day.”

Everett’s indie band rock concert will be held 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 15 in Murchison Lane Auditorium. Featuring young, unsigned but up-and-coming performers playing a mix of all-original acoustic, folk and rock, the concert is free and open to the public.

Two weeks ahead of the big day, up to her neck in lighting designs and shoring up commitments from the four acts she expects to perform, Everett took time to talk about the project.

Wanting to warm up with Sweet Briar talent, she asked sophomore Michelle Raymond of Chester to open. “She’s got a style similar to Jewel’s,” Everett said.

Tim Cahill and a guest artist will headline the show. Everett knows Cahill from her days at GMU, when she managed his former band. Cahill, a guitarist and vocalist whose myspace page lists his music as acoustic, folk rock and experimental, plays regularly in restaurants and clubs in the Northern Virginia area with his band Rouge Regime.

Shane Cooley, a freshman at William and Mary from the Northern Neck, also will perform. Playing a mix of acoustic and contemporary rock, the 19-year-old singer-songwriter has written more than 100 songs and has recorded nine CDs since starting out at age 13.

Everett also hopes a fourth band, a pop rock foursome from Fairfax called My Favorite Highway, will make the gig.

Although she isn’t dictating the song selection for the approximately two-hour show – the artists' original music, no covers – Everett did want some input into the play lists. She also needed to translate the music into visual images for her lighting designs. That meant listening to “hours and hours” of music, she said.

For Everett, the indie rock concert is about helping talented performers who are trying to make their marks in music to network with each other and find new audiences, as well as introducing listeners to new music. It’s a precursor to her post-college ambitions.

“I’ve dreamed of being involved in the music industry since I was about sixteen,” she said.

Although Everett’s played piano since she was 4, her interest lies in producing, not performing music. Some day she’d like to tour with a group as its production manager.

“I love artists. I love their particular take on life. I want to be the type of person who helps them on their way to becoming famous musicians.”

For information, e-mail everett06@sbc.edu or call (434) 381-6120.


— By Jennifer McManamay, SBC staff writer