THE BEAT
SMOOTH
SAILING
Cardboard Sailors, an emerging band in Athens, hopes to gain recognition beyond the county limits. BY MAYA MEADE | PHOTOS PROVIDED BY CARDBOARD SAILORS
M
ax Pelletier, a super senior at Ohio University and lead singer of Cardboard Sailors, had dreams of making “dreamy” rock music and sharing it with the world after he wrote a simple tune that he recorded on his phone in April 2018. Starting a band was always something he had hoped for, but it didn’t become a reality until fall of 2019. Max met senior guitarist Ted Wharton in a fraternity on campus three years ago. Together they recruited sophomore bassist Collin Spens, sophomore vocalist Kaycie Wissman and sophomore drummer Ethan Hamilton, completing the band. “ (Ted and I) were just talking about how we wanted to start a band or something,” Pelletier says. “And then we got back to school and we decided we were going to do it the old fashioned way and put up flyers for people. We did the whole audition thing for a lot of people.” Wharton and Pelletier started playing music together during the summer of 2019, having very little previous band experience. Wharton had only performed in a cover band in high school, making the start of Cardboard Sailors very experimental. Having little to no experience in producing music, the band put in hours of time and effort to learn what resources they could use to make their music sound the way they wanted it to. Their first EP, “Dreams or Something,” came out in January. Receiving positive feedback from friends and family encouraged Cardboard Sailors to keep sharing music and shortly after releasing the EP, the band released a single titled “Not for Me.” “‘Not for Me’ was a song we worked on for a while,” Pelletier says. “We had all these parts. Colin felt like he put his best part into it, I felt like I put my best part into it. When we recorded it, it took us a lot longer compared to the first EP. Everything was mastered a lot better and everything just got a lot more serious because we got to thinking, ‘Is this the best thing for this music?’” “Not for Me” quickly reached 1,743 listeners on Spotify, reinforcing the positive feelings they had about the song as they were writing it. “It is by far our best song, and that’s not me saying it just
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backdrop | Fall 2020
