Local bands often shape and represent their community and its culture. The Manhattan Project, a four-member local band with a unique ability to blend genres, serves exactly that purpose for Manhattan.
Though primarily categorized as alt-rock, their range of musical abilities as one group creates sounds reminiscent of ‘90s grunge, classic rock and a skill for improvisational performances that make each of their shows unique.
Their versatile abilities can be attributed to the different musical backgrounds each member brings to the table.
Parker Floersch, vocalist and guitarist and junior in physical science, has been musically trained for the majority of his life. He has primarily resonated with jam bands and blues-based music.
“I grew up in the choir system, so I’ve sang basically my entire life,” Floersch said. “For as long as I can remember, I wanted to play guitar, and I got my first guitar for my 11th birthday, so that puts me going on 12 years of playing the guitar. I was just always infatuated with music … my mom was a big proponent of showing me classic rock and older music, so I grew up on stuff outside of my generation, and that always made me want to be a performer.”
Similarly to Floersch, Keeton Foust, bassist and sophomore in mechanical engineering, inherited his love for music from his family.
“My older brother trailblazed a lot,” Foust said. “He taught me my first song on the guitar, which was the “How I Met Your Mother” theme song. He put out that path for me … the first instrument I ever got into was the ukulele. I went to online school for all of freshman year, so I would spend my whole day in my room just playing ukulele because I was bored. Then that eventually turned into bass, because a lot of people need bassists, and I thought it was fun.”
In contrast, Zander Barkemeier, drummer and senior in finance, found his love for the drums and music more organically. His main interests lie within the ‘90s grunge genre.
“I grew up in a non-musical household, so it wasn’t really pushed on me to learn anything,” Barkemeier said. “Then, in very early high school, my little brother picked up the drums, but didn’t care for it that much … so, I thought I’d try it. … Then I found I have a natural thing for it, and I really liked it. By the time of late sophomore to early junior year, it took over my entire life. I quit all the sports I was doing, I quit any other hobby or activity I was a part of, and I only did music. I just practiced for hours in my basement, and then I joined a couple bands in the area. I gigged every weekend for about two or three years.”
The band came together after the young musicians met at Jam Cat Collective, a club for musicians on campus to meet and interact.
“We all started going to these meetings, and I had met Keeton probably twice before one of those meetings,” Floersch said. “ … Then one time we both went, and Zander was there, and he was the only drummer in the club that had really known what they were doing at the time. So, we asked him immediately if he would like to come out and jam.”
After the three met through the Jam Cat Collective group, The Manhattan Project came to life. According to Floersch, their unique name pays homage to home.
“We recently expanded and grabbed Luke, another guitar player, and we became a four-piece band, which has been really helpful for the intricacy of our live performances,” Floersch said.
With their different musical backgrounds combined, the members of The Manhattan Project possess a spirited style of performance and collaboration.
“I feel like what we are at the heart of our band is a jam band,” Floersch said. “Often on stage where we’ll just do an open jam section as one of the songs for our set list, where somebody just plays something, and then we all load in together and see what becomes of it. And again, we all come from quite different backgrounds, so it is interesting to see what comes out of that … We do a little bit of everything, which is a lot of fun when we’re playing covers. We’ll play country music, pop music, we’ll play some heavier stuff, almost metal, even … alt rock, everything in between. So, it keeps it refreshing for us. We’re kind of fluid throughout genres like that.”
Like other local bands, The Manhattan Project strives to contribute to and retain a vibrant live-music scene in Manhattan. However, local law restricts live performances outside of Aggieville in Manhattan, making performance opportunities for local bands scarce.
Floersch feels that maintaining a live music scene in Manhattan creates a strong community.
“Live music is everything to people like us,” Floersch said. “It creates community, it creates involvement and if anything, it detracts from environments that create danger, that create anything that the city should be worried about. So, it’s huge to have that kind of access as a young musician and for people who are just as into music as we are, even without being a musician. We have a large network of friends that we’ve come to love simply because they are music enjoyers.”
For Floersch and Barkemeier, the most memorable experiences of performing as a band are the instances in which they felt immense support from their community. Floersch reminisced about one of these moments, when they played their first show at a rooftop bar in Aggieville, opening for a local band named South Wind.
“A big piece of the community is knowing the other bands and supporting each other, and South Wind helped us out with our first big opportunity,” Floersch said. “I remember playing to the sunset, we’re facing out towards the beautiful sky, beautiful colors, just feeling so proud of the effort we put in.”
Barkemeier will always remember a feel-good moment where their audience became immersed in their performance.
“With a lot of backyard parties, some people will watch, and some will be off doing their own thing,” Barkemeier said. “We do a cover of ‘Linger’ by the Cranberries, and right when we started that song the entire crowd stopped what they were doing and all ran up to right in front of where we were, and the entire crowd interlocked with each other and started swaying and singing along with us, and they all had their flashlights out so the entire yard was like one big flashlight.”
The band will release their first original on all streaming services on April 30, just in time for a live show later that night.