Considered the “Live Music Capital of the World,” Austin boasts an explosive nightlife and dedicated local artist support. However when DJ and alumnus Sam Elkind, ‘23, radio-television-film, attended UT, he resorted to co-founding management organization Movement Nightlife to ensure he and his friends could get gigs closer to campus beyond fraternity parties.
Now Elkind runs the company West Campus Music, which primarily organizes gigs for UT student artists. The company helped organize this Thursday’s event Bevo’s Fall Crawl. The bar crawl stops include The Cauldron, Moody’s, Cain & Abel’s and Victory Lap featuring 13 different artists (DJs and bands) and a schedule detailing their set times on West Campus Music’s Instagram page.
“There’s so much talent in the college space,” said Elkind. “These kids maybe get to open for a fraternity party or a bigger DJ … (so West Campus Music tries to get) them on bigger stages, get them into places they might not have the opportunity to (perform at) while being a college student, and encourage them to bring their friends out.”
The crawl’s lineup is largely made up of fraternity members who have previously DJ’ed or performed at various Greek life events. Government junior Matheus Lucian said he appreciates being able to connect with the niche group of students that gig. He sometimes performs multiple times a week either at spirit events or bars.
“It’s so cool being able to connect with other organizations,” the Pi Kappa Alpha member said. “They’ll contact me for work, and I feel like otherwise that connection wouldn’t have been there.”
Lucian said he often gets gig opportunities from the group chat he is in with all of the other fraternity DJs at UT. He and another DJ for the crawl, alumnus Ermias Belay, 24’, biology, said it’s fairly common for fraternities and sororities to have DJs that are from fraternities and develop their skills through Greek life gigs. The crawl offers students the chance to blur the lines between the college town and nightlife of Austin.
“People in their mid to late 20s moving to Austin don’t know about West Campus or about the UT culture or the nightlife for students,” said Belay, the only crawl performer who isn’t a current UT student. “So those bars are here for us (to expand our community).”
Belay, who has worked with Elkind previously, said he approached Elkind with the proposal for the bar crawl after two of his friends from Arizona State University approached him with the idea. They’ve since planned and marketed the event together, and Belay said he hopes it can become tradition.
“It’s very scary to try to be an artist,” Belay said. “There’s so many outlets (and) so many ways to do it, and for us to be able to provide that (outlet) is really cool.”
