By Kimberly Wethal
News Editor
The sidewalks leading up to the Williams Center were lined with students waiting with friends and acquaintances from their Residence Halls.
The duo Timeflies performed in the second annual Welcome Back Concert in the Kachel Fieldhouse on Sept. 1, as the finish to a weekend full of new student orientation activities.
Many of those students didn’t know who the duo Timeflies was, or researching them today to learn a few songs before the concert tonight. Many stated they were there just to have fun.
For some, they’ve “loved Timeflies since freshman year” and were excited to start their senior year by seeing the duo live, while other fans chalked tonight’s concert up to one of the many times they’d found themselves in Timeflies’ audience.
Others had never been to a concert venue like this before and were unsure what to expect, except good music and a good time.
This year, it was a first-come-first-serve policy for concert-goers, instead of giving freshmen students dibs on attendance like last year’s B.o.B performance.
Timeflies has officially been a duo since October 2010, but began to perform together three years prior in 2007 in Boston.
Junior Evan Conroy, a “die-hard fan” of Timeflies, has attended four of their concerts previously.
“I just like their style of music,” he said. “My favorite is when they do their freestyle rap and acoustic [songs].”
He didn’t even mind when Timeflies said derogatory phrases about UW-Whitewater when they performed at UW-Oshkosh’s Bye Gosh fest, stating they’d probably hand it back to the rival school at tonight’s concert.
Freshman Dan Miller said he was coming to his first-ever concert because he was looking for something to do.
“I’m looking for something exciting,” he said.
At 7 p.m. when the doors to Kachel Fieldhouse were opened, hundreds of students made a mad dash inside, with the lucky few finding their way to the front.
The concert was opened by DJ and UW-W senior Andrew Eppen, who goes by the stage name McCoy’s Boy. Playing a style of electronic dance music, he performed for nearly 40 minutes before Timeflies took the stage.
Eppen said he “feels very loved” after the strong student response during the concert, which he referred to as his best show.
“The experience when I’m performing is unlike anything else,” he said. “When you’re on stage as a performer, the connection that you make between yourself and the music and the audience, it’s on a whole different level.
“You can’t see it, but it’s always there,” he added.
He was chosen to open for the Welcome Back Concert after participating in a Facebook contest put out by the university, where he had to send in a video of him performing. Career and Leadership Development Associate Director Jan Bilgen called him last Friday to ask him if he’d perform.
Timeflies then took the stage for an hour show afterward, playing a mix of their own songs and covers of other artist’s songs.
