{"id":16303,"date":"2021-09-02T14:24:31","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T20:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=16303"},"modified":"2021-09-10T13:48:30","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T19:48:30","slug":"knights-hosts-concert-features-sparky-the-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2021\/09\/02\/knights-hosts-concert-features-sparky-the-hills\/","title":{"rendered":"Knights hosts concert, features Sparky & the Hills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Gabriel Huff<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men\u2019s social club Knights hosted a back-to-school concert Aug. 28 in Searcy, featuring the band Sparky & the Hills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Celebrating Harding students\u2019 return to campus, Knights held the concert Saturday in Citizen\u2019s Park in Downtown Searcy. The night primarily consisted of music, singing and dancing, with senior Bob Plunket serving as a DJ to begin the event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

About an hour into the concert, a pickup truck rolled onto the street, carrying the main attraction of the night: Sparky & the Hills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSparky! Sparky! Sparky!\u201d the crowd said as band members hopped off the truck\u2019s cargo bed and walked onto the Citizen\u2019s Park stage via a path formed by the audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five-man band led the night with performances of their own original songs, opening with \u201cRock and Roll Band\u201d and later performing their first released song, \u201cPretty Girls,\u201d along with some cover songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sparky & the Hills consists of five members: acoustic guitarist Eric Johnson, guitarist Jarod White, lead guitarist David Leibas, bass player Whitney Burton and drummer Michael McIntyre. White, an undergraduate senior in Columbus, Ohio, said the group debuted in Columbus in 2019 as a three-member band, with Burton and McIntyre joining later. Since their debut, the band has officially released 10 songs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knights\u2019 concert marked the first time the band has performed outside of Columbus. White said he was excited about the performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt means a lot,\u201d White said. \u201cI think it will be really important for us to not only branch out of Columbus, but really see if this is something we want to do and do more traveling.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the concert, the band also sold T-shirts, bags and stickers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Alex Minzler, Knights\u2019 treasurer, said the social club, Harding deans, the City of Searcy and the band were all involved in planning the event. The entry fee for the concert was $5, which went toward White County Domestic Violence Prevention Inc., a domestic abuse shelter. Minzler said there were over 300 ticket sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than going through the process of forming a band for the concert, the club invited Sparky & the Hills to perform since Johnson, a Knights\u2019 member and senior at Harding, was in the band, Minzler said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur plan as Knights executives coming in this year were just [to] have as much fun as we could with the short amount of time,\u201d Minzler said. \u201cEspecially with COVID restrictions kind of backing off, we feel like this is a good time to come in and hold events like this.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Junior Abby Foust, who attended the concert, said she enjoyed having a large group of people together again after experiencing two COVID-19 semesters and felt happy for the students who entered Harding as freshmen last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe sophomores are now enjoying a little bit of campus life they didn\u2019t get last year, and that\u2019s really cool to see that we get to have a little bit of normalcy back with this,\u201d Foust said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Men\u2019s social club Knights hosted a back-to-school concert Aug. 28 in Searcy, featuring the band Sparky & the Hills.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15068,"featured_media":16304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15068"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16305,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16303\/revisions\/16305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}