[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]The garage was cramped. There was no air conditioning, and they had all been playing for about an hour. Juniors Lane Ledesma, Mihir Lulay and Alex Fantine (R.L. Turner) were on their guitars. Suddenly, the faint ring of the doorbell was heard.

Just like that, Sideswept had gotten it’s very first noise complaint.

“It was called Sideswept, but not for long,” Ledesma said. “It kind of started as a joke, one of those self-deprecating jokes all about our hair. We all had a very similar hairstyle, swept to the side, and we just thought it would be a funny little joke name.”

Lulay and Ledesma met through theater, and from there, they reached out to friends to find band members.

Sideswept had a bad habit of changing names. It switched through several short names, but ended up as Hurricane Culture, before it again changed to Black Terrace, which was the name of Lulay’s street. Eventually, it came back to Sideswept after some people left the band.

“We went through several major lineup changes,” Ledesma said. “One of our guitarist, Alex, dropped out due to time constraints. We got a new singer who was really awesome and helped us write a lot of our songs, but he also had to drop out due to time constraints. Our bassist had to leave because he lived far away and couldn’t make it to practice.”

Dealing with frequent lineup changes isn’t the only problem that Sideswept has. Most of the band members are a part of extracurriculars that take up large portions of their time, with two members in theater and another in band.

“When it comes around time for shows, we’re often at school until 6:30 p.m.,” Lulay said. “Sometimes, with musicals, we’re here until 10 p.m., 12 p.m. even. It gets pretty difficult, trying to manage that time, especially when you have to go in [to practice] on weekends. Luckily, we always get, at the very least, Sundays off.

The problems don’t stop there: drummer and senior Dylan Thompson, who had known Lulay since middle school, broke his right arm during summer exercises for school band, and has been unable to attend band practices for several weeks.

“I actually just got out of my cast,” Thompson said. “I was in my cast for seven weeks, and my arm was broken for eight and a half. It’s still stiff; they said I can’t play with it ‘aggressively’ for four more weeks.”

Despite the consistent setbacks, the band remains hopeful in releasing a demo by January. They are working toward writing new music and preparing it for release.

“Right now, I’m setting up a recording studio in my house using the money that I have saved up,” Lulay said. “Basically what we want to do is start recording our own material, start getting it onto some CDs, show people what we actually do and we hope that that can bring more exposure to us so we can get a couple more gigs.”

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]