Campus Celebrity: Emma June Ayres

Many seminal and talented musicians have wandered the halls of UMass at one point or another before moving on to bigger and better things. Frank Black and Joey Santiago defined indie rock and grunge with the Pixies, Buffy Sainte-Marie was a major figure in the folk scene of the 1960s, and Amherst native J Mascis helped to put Western Mass on the map for alternative rock with his band Dinosaur Jr. Fellow Amherst native and UMass senior Emma June Ayres, along with her band June and the Bee are making a name for themselves around Massachusetts, having played at the Iron Horse numerous times and gearing up to release an EP in the fall. However, Ayres has another cause she’s fighting for, a movement called “What the FAC?,” which has been gaining traction around the school. We talked with Emma to get the scoop on these two facets of her life.

HC:So-what is “What the FAC?” all about?

EJ:As a senior, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my tenure here, majoring in Arts and Education, and I became pretty hyperaware and critical of the dilapidated and inadequate facilities given to the Arts Departments, and the discrepancy between the facilities afforded to STEM fields and those in the FAC. I honestly feel like I can’t leave this campus without doing something to make people aware of this, and I also feel like people need to be reminded of how much power one individual can have, and that the school just seems to accept a unnecessary level of apathy toward arts education and facilities. At least for me, I’ve tried to educate myself on these matters and do some research, but I still would like to know what the budgeting system is that deems making the FAC ADA compliant unnecessary but builds a $20 million new Blue Wall. You don’t come to school to eat, you come to get an education.

HC:Can you explain how the FAC is non-ADA compliant?

EJ:The FAC isn’t particularly wheelchair-accessible. There are no elevators in it as well as a maze of stairs, which makes it extremely hard to get around if you’re not mobile, and god forbid there should be a fire in there when a wheelchair user is in the FAC. I hope to bring visibility to these unacceptable issues, and have a discussion about them with the Chancellor.

HC:Are there any other problems you’ve noticed?

EJ:First is that there is not nearly enough practice space, in the FAC or otherwise, for the music, dance, theatre, and visual arts majors. The second is that the theatre department only has one lab space, which is akin to saying to the folks in CNS “Alright, you guys have one lab and you have to fight over that.” These deny students the ability to practice. Also, the classrooms and practice rooms in the lower part of the FAC have no windows and you cannot hear the fire alarm, which is pretty problematic.It’s not really a state-of-the-art education, but what we’ve been doing in our letters to Subbaswamy is unpacking the jargon they use and turn it back on the administration. We’re dealing with an administration that doesn’t keep its promises.  When UMass has money, they should ask the STUDENTS how they want it spent to better address their needs.While all the fine arts students make do, I get a sense that we’re accepting far less than we deserve.

HC:Switching gears for a bit, what has your band June and the Bee been up to recently?

EJ:We’ve been refocusing our efforts in a sort of turnover of the band, but now the members are solid and we’re really focused on deliberately crafting sound. This summer, Eli (her brother and guitarist in June & The Bee)and I saved some money and built a studio in our parents’ house, and we recorded from July to August. The finished product will be ready soon, we’re just in the mastering stages now. I feel it’s definitely a celebration of our two-year history as a band. I definitely want to keep collaborating with my brother with this, it’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime partnership.

HC:Awesome! Odd question, but given that you’re June, which one of you is the Bee?

EJ:That’s Eli, actually. Our parents called him Bumblebee when he was little, and since we started out as a duo so I guess it seemed right to call ourselves that. It’s actually been awesome to play music with people you grew up with and in a place you grew up in.

HC: How has Amherst been to play in?

EJ:It’s great, we have a very diverse support system of fans here. Even with different venues, different lineups, and different fans, there’s always an underlying joyful energy here. It’s such a great experience to play music that people are dancing to!

HC:That definitely shows! Your last show at the Iron Horse was absolutely resplendent with joyful energy. Was that your first time there?

EJ:It was actually our sixth.

HC:Sixth? How?

EJ:Our first show was there through some crazy luck. A band from Boston called Gentleman Hall was hanging up posters in the Student Union, so I talked to them and found out they needed an opener for their show at the Iron Horse. Since we were local, they hired us, and the Iron Horse has been pretty good to us since we packed the house for that show. Most recently, we headlined there with Kitchen Jams, so I guess we did something right!

HC:What’s the strangest show you’ve ever played?

EJ:We ended up playing at a kebab shop in Manhattan at two in the morning one night. We were walking back from a show we’d played in New York but still really wanted to play, so we set up on the street and played for a bit. Then the police stopped us, but we still wanted to play. We asked the owner of a kebab shop if we could play there, and he said “as long as you play ‘Hotel California,’ you can play here.” There were people dancing on the floor, on tables, wherever, and it turned a sleepy little kebab shop into a raucous music hall. There’s probably questionable footage of it on Youtube somewhere. Spontaneity really caters to what we do. There’s no pretension, and they joy you can harness in a moment, even in a kebab shop in Manhattan after midnight, is the best.

HC:One more question: If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

EJ:I’ve actually had a profound passion recently for ringtailed lemurs . They’re pretty awkward, but they play it off by being mildly charming and equally hilarious. They just seem like delightful prancing beings with a mischievous gleam in their eyes. I’d like to be that.

Be on the lookout for June and the Bee’s new EP coming out soon, and make sure to catch their next Western Mass show at The O’s on November 21!

All photos taken 10/4/2014 by Jessica Sterner

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