On the bass guitar, Greg Jordan, professor of business law and ethics, plays alongside drummer Jason Kriaski, senior Christian studies major.
By Kathleen Hartsfield
Staff Writer
An element of solidarity comes from playing music in a band with friends. Student bands such as “Flying Colours” and “Pseudo Shark” attest to the idea, but a new kind of bond has emerged.
Take “Dovehouse,” a local band whose members include Union faculty and current or former Union students.
Dr. Gregory Thornbury, vice president for spiritual life and dean of the school of theology and missions, plays electric guitar; Dr. Taylor Worley, assistant professor of Christian thought and tradition and associate dean for spiritual life, plays acoustic guitar; junior French and English major Jay Griffith is on keyboard; junior Teaching English as a Second Language major Rob Griffith is on bass guitar; and junior English major Taylor Hare plays drums.
Thornbury plays guitar and provides backup vocals for another hybrid band affiliated with Unionites, too: “Blue-Eyed Sun.”
Other members include Dr. Gavin Richardson of the English department on guitar and vocals; Professor Greg Jordan of the school of business administration on bass guitar; Union alumnus Benjamin Duffey on keyboard; and senior Christian Studies major Jason Kriaski on drums.
Blue-Eyed Sun emerged when Richardson and Thornbury were asked to play at a faculty/staff banquet in 2011.
The band’s name comes from a drawing Thornbury’s daughter gave him of a sun with blue eyes.
The group came together through various connections.
Kriaski took a world literature class from Richardson; Thornbury is Kriaski’s academic adviser; Duffey has a friend who was in a band with Richardson.
The cover band is made up of an unexpected mix of people, but another madcap feature involves its musical styles — almost exclusively Rockabilly and retro country, Thornbury said.
“I like the fact that Blue-Eyed Sun is very much Jackson,” he said.
Set lists teem with oldies such as “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brothers and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank Williams.
“Eclectic is the direction we’re going in,” Richardson said.
Similarly, Dovehouse covers songs by the bands Crowded House and Doves. Crowded House is a pop rock band founded in 1985; Doves is a contemporary English indie rock band that came out with its first album in the year 2000.
The band formed after Thornbury and the Griffiths discovered they had musicl tastes in common.
“I was just so excited to find anyone on campus who loved one of those bands,” Jay Griffith said.
He added the idea of forming the cover band was kind of a joke.
“Rob was like, ‘Yeah, do you want to make a cover band where we only play songs by those two bands?’ and Dr. Thornbury said, ‘Yeah, we can call it Dovehouse — and then we did it,” he said.
Dovehouse played its first show at Casey Jones Village Music Highway Crossroads in November 2011.
The relationships that have formed within these bands go beyond the distinction of student and professor.
Kriaski discovered “professors are just as cool as students are,” he said.
Playing music together has established an uncommon bond between students and their professors.
Kriaski explains the dynamic.
“When you’re making music, there aren’t those distinctions; we’re all musicians,” he said.
Richardson said their normal roles are “sublimated to the identities of what [we’re] doing in the context of the band.”
Members have written original music, but they are not collaborating to produce original music.
However, they are covering songs they and their audience like.
Richardson said playing music in a group — and hearing something close to what you hear on the radio — brings a “kind of thrill” from the music being “greater than the sum of its parts.”