Band got knocked down, got up again

Self-taught guitarist and junior Will Sturgeon was rejected twice from USC’s music industry major before landing in the new pop music program in 2010.

Now record labels are pursuing the sophomore’s beachside pop rock group The Smiles. And after their latest show at the Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip, Sturgeon and his indie band of brothers are poised to ride their potentially hit songs into the musical stratosphere.

There’s nothing like rejection to kick-start a career.

Before he could conjugate verbs, let alone write lyrics, Sturgeon’s parents started him on the piano.

From kindergarten on, he played keyboard in various scholastic groups, such as his middle school jazz band. Then, during his sophomore year of high school, Sturgeon taught himself how to play guitar from one of those notorious “How to” books. He also learned to record tracks.

Although initially rejected from the music industry program, Sturgeon landed on his feet and joined the ranks of fellow musician  Peter Lee Johnson in the pop music program.

His dream of professional musicianship truly began to take shape, however, when he met John McGrath, a senior majoring in creative writing.

“John and I started writing together in the spring of my freshman year,” Sturgeon said. “And by the fall of sophomore year, John convinced Brendan Kirlin, his friend from Baltimore, to come live out to L.A. and play in a band with us.”

To round out the group, Sturgeon and McGrath called on USC’s own Mark Edwards, a junior, to play drums, and The Smiles were quickly invited to play local shows and USC engagements.

The band then self-recorded its debut release, the EP Hermosa, in the basement of a friend’s house this summer.

These are the humble beginnings of a rock ‘n’ roll band.

More recently, The Smiles opened for Young the Giant at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip, which Sturgeon said he considers to be the highlight of the band’s career. He was ecstatic The Smiles could be on the same stage that had featured Bob Dylan, David Bowie, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Prince and Bruce Springsteen.

Since the inception of their collaboration, The Smiles have also played KXSC Music Festival — as the event’s only student band — as well as the Muirstock festival at UCSD and the Neon Reverb Festival in Las Vegas.

“The beginning of this year has been really encouraging,” Sturgeon said. “We’ve gotten some great gigs and attention.”

But even with the bands success, The Smiles are still a band trying to break into the behemoth that is the music industry. So what is it about the music industry that scares people? What is it that deters them from pursuing an exclusive career in that field? And why is Sturgeon not worried?

In this era more than ever, a band needs to have a built-in audience or a proven style to warrant scouting by big players. Because the industry itself is insecure, it is becoming more difficult to find a stable career as an artist.

Successful musicians, too, are often derivative or even blatant mimickers of previous idols, giving the industry a numbing and cyclical reputation.

But something also needs to be said about the abundance of opportunities that still exist as small, budding labels spring up yearly and support new provocative, original and revolutionary artists.

Every week, the radio, television or the Internet introduces us to a bold new artist that we’ve never heard of, or a friend sends us a YouTube video of his buddy back in Baltimore who just played a remarkable live set at a club or coffeehouse.

What’s so encouraging is that the members of The Smiles are living their dream, despite the odds.

People always talk about doing what makes them happy, which has become a cliché, rather than a desired goal. The problem is that it fails to address happiness found outside of a career, such as the joy of family, which may demand a certain kind of career stability.

People can find happiness in any career, even if it’s sporadic, which disguises the underlying desire for change and self-betterment.

Financial stability leads to happiness in a way, but this is not the same as stability of the soul. Doing what you love rids your world of voids, which a life of compromise demands that you fill. When you pursue what you love, you exist in a world of abundance and not of emptiness.

For The Smiles, a band most people probably have never heard of, the music industry isn’t dying. If anything, they are tangible proof that it’s not even broken.

“The dream was always to be able to make a living off of what I love to do,” Sturgeon said.

Brian Ivie is a sophomore majoring in cinema-television critical studies. His column, “Dreammaking,” runs Tuesdays.