By Emma Zaremba
Features Editor
“I’m gonna muster every ounce of confidence I have, for you I will.”
Tuesday evening, singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger performed on campus in the Rathskeller. Earlier in the school year, the Campus Activities Board (CAB) sought out the artist, who’s originally from Rochester, N.Y.
Geiger, whose career took off at a young age, first made his appearance in the entertainment industry when he entered into the TV reality show “In Search of the Partridge Family” in 2004. From there he signed with Columbia Records, according to IMDB.
At the age of 16, Geiger reached fame with his hit, “For You I Will” off his first album, “Underage Thinking.” In 2006, it entered at number eight on the Billboard charts and from there launched a three-year international tour, according to IMDB.
Since then, Geiger has produced a sophomore album, “The Last Fears,” released in May 2013.
Junior biology major and CAB performance committee chair Anisha Satish described how the club found Geiger and scheduled his performance.
“CAB goes to a conference every year called NACA (National Association for Campus Activities), so a bunch of our executive board members went this year and saw Teddy Geiger perform there,” Satish said. “After that, they got all of his information from his agent, and we looked at it while we were picking events for performances this year.”
As head of the performance committee, Satish expressed that selecting Teddy Geiger to perform this semester was a group decision.
“All of us talked as a board and thought it would be good to have Teddy Geiger come,” Satish said. “It was kind of mixed (responses) because not everybody knew about him, but when we had our general board meeting, we played a video of ‘For You I Will’ and more people recognized him. It was pretty positive.”
When asked about the decision to play smaller venues, Geiger shared the convenience of NACA.
“Mostly, we booked a bunch of stuff through NACA this year,” Geiger said. “I’ve been doing some club gigs, and it was going fine, but honestly, the NACA gigs are such a good set-up.”
Tuesday wasn’t Geiger’s first trip to Bonaventure. In an interview, he shared his memories of visiting Bona’s at a much younger age.
“My cousin went here,” Geiger said. “My first actual radio play was the song ‘Amazingly Fat Cows’ that I recorded on my computer and sent to my cousin. He got it played on the station here. My first college party experience was visiting him here as well.”
Geiger summed up starting out as a young performer as a good experience, especially because of the location.
“It was great (starting out),” Geiger said. “I had a bunch of friends in town who I played with and had a band. We did a bunch of playing in ‘Battle of The Bands.’ There’s actually a pretty strong music scene in Rochester because we have Eastman (School of Music), and there were a couple of good local venues in town that we could play at.”
Music gigs in Rochester gave him his start, but participating in a reality TV show is what really got Geiger on the right path.
“I met a couple of music producers, and (one) introduced me to Columbia Records,” Geiger said. “That was kind of the push.”
A couple factors encouraged Geiger to continue with his passion, even though it wasn’t always an easy balance.
“My parents were super supportive as well,” Geiger said. “Especially once my grades started slipping because I was spending so much time on music. Then my mom was like, ‘you better make this work,’ but they’ve been awesome this whole time. They’ve always been supportive, I’m lucky.”
After growing up in Rochester, Geiger said it was nice to perform close to home, once again.
“It’s awesome (performing here again),” Geiger said. “I actually just moved back to Los Angeles, so it’s cool to be able to get a little of the east coast (again).”
Satish noted the large turn out for the show.
“We had a pretty good turn out of about 230 people, when the Skeller has a capacity of about 300,” Satish said.
The attendance at the show, which started shortly after 7 p.m., took sophomore journalism and mass communication major Jessica Stender by surprise.
“When I walked into the Skeller around 6, there weren’t a lot of people, so I was expecting a very small turn out,” Stender said. “I didn’t expect the whole Skeller stage area to be filled with people.”
Senior journalism and mass communication major Alex Ross shared Stender’s surprise at the crowd.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect, really,” Ross said. “I thought it would be a good show because it’s a small venue. I was surprised. There were more people than I thought would be there, most of them girls, of course.”
Ross recalled her grade school days, when Geiger’s hit “For You I Will” first struck the music scene.
“I was a huge fan,” Ross said. “He was really popular when I was in eighth grade, and I remember two girls on my field hockey team came to practice with Teddy Geiger T-shirts on because they had gone to a concert over the weekend. I was so jealous.”
Stender said she too had spent her younger years as a Geiger fan.
“I was a fan of Teddy Geiger when I was growing up,” Stender said. “I listened to ‘For You I Will’ and the song he opened his set with all the time.”
Since then, Geiger’s music has evolved due to a lot of influences.
“Coming from Rochester, there’s just a lot of music that I hadn’t heard of, although I’d heard a good deal,” Geiger said. “But it opened up after that. I met a lot of musicians on the road that I was playing with, and they played me a bunch of stuff. Meeting different people in music has kind of pulled me in different directions. Also, I’m just a little older, so that has changed things as well.”
Listening to Geiger after all these years didn’t change Ross’ middle-school adoration for the artist.
“He was really good, sounded amazing and he interacted with the students,” Ross said. “It was like eighth grade all over again.”
Stender’s expectations were met after finally seeing Geiger perform live since she first started following his music.
“I was beyond pleased with the performance,” Stender said. “I actually enjoyed listening to him live better than on CD. After the concert I went back to my room to listen to him some more. It made me want to go back to the Skeller and have him continue to play and just sing along with him as he played.”
Although Geiger shows up to perform, he hopes that his audience takes away more than just music.
“I just hope everyone has a good time, more than anything and enjoys themselves,” Geiger said.
Aside from his captivating on-stage performance, Geiger’s off-stage presence was also noted by fans.
“He was pretty friendly,” Satish said. “He signed autographs for everybody and took pictures, I think he had a good time.”
After talking to him, Ross found Geiger to be easy-going and personable.
“I had my picture taken with him, and then I hung around for a while after the crowd thinned out,” Ross said. “He and I got to talking about skiing a little bit, which was cool.”
Tuesday night’s show proved to be a hit for the Bonaventure community and CAB, according to Satish.
“It was actually exciting, because even before the doors opened we had like 80 people waiting,” Satish said. “That doesn’t usually happen, but I’m hoping that this event kind of encourages people to get more involved with CAB and come to our meetings.”
Two albums later, Geiger is still driven to create music.
“I’ve always been inspired by music, and it’s always been something that I’ve gravitated toward,” Geiger said.
