Misterwives played in front of an empty stadium over spring break.
Student Association’s annual Springfest concert is typically well-attended and well-received by students, and in addition, it brings good press to the oft-criticized SA. Unfortunately for the organization, a grave error was made when planning this year’s concert.
Headliners MisterWives and The Mowglis, both misunderstanding the concept of Springfest, came to TU to play over Spring Break to an empty Reynolds Center.
MisterWives vocalist Mandy Lee admitted on Twitter that she expected “a smaller group since they wanted us to perform over the break, but we never thought the turnout would be this low.” The turnout, Lee was quick to discover, was zero.
Lee was not willing to villainize SA for the incident, however, calling it “a legitimate lapse in communication that happens to bands a lot more often than people know about.”
This unfortunate incident has made SA the laughing stock of social media, however, with hashtags like #MisterWhere and #Breakfest gaining hundreds of posts every day since the incident.
Springfest Committee chair Andrea Akats apologized for the mistake in an all-campus email, calling it “atypical of our committee and something that will not happen in the future.”
Though all bands scheduled to appear were willing to come to Tulsa again and waive the second performance fee, SA couldn’t find the money in their already-tight budget to pay for the artists’ travel a second time.
Their solution, though a dangerous gamble, was impressively unique and resourceful. Reaching out to TU’s musically inclined students, SA facilitated the creation of local cover bands MisterVVives and The M0wglis to perform tomorrow.
Inspired by bands like VVeezer and OutCast, these bands strive to bring as authentic an experience as possible for Tuesday’s performance.
MisterVVives lead singer and Vocal Performance senior Angelica “Mandi Lei” Retter sees this opportunity as a silver lining to get her on the map before graduation. Lei and the rest of the band have spent the last three weeks studying everything they could find on MisterWives to ensure accuracy.
Of course, appeasing the irate student body isn’t going to be easy. “A lot of them are mad at SA and mad at us by extension,” Lei notes of the student body, “but I think we’re gonna surprise them with a killer performance.”
Lei reassures students that the show will be worth the strife. “After everything that’s happened,” Lei states confidently, “we’re definitely gonna turn it up to 11 when we get on stage.”
