The moment flying protein bars greeted junior Tyler Busse, who had just then arrived to our interview, and laughter—Busse’s included—filled the tiny Conservatory room, I knew the members of student band Eli Orion and the Everything had a special kind of chemistry. The group consists of junior Eli Hooker-Reese—better known by his stage name Eli Orion—who serves as the band’s songwriter, singer, and guitarist; junior Hana “Roadie Number One” Ramos, guitarist; sophomore Tyler Donnelly, drummer; junior Isaac “Roadie Number Two” Corby, guitar and piano; and “Gig-Getter, Fun-Haver, Point-Five Roadie” Busse, bassist and unofficial manager.
An LUaroo mandolin performer and Lawrence alumnus Tashi Litch ‘24 approached Orion after one of the band’s sets and suggested that they consider taking things on the road. Orion approached Busse with the idea, both of whom are co-presidents of the Lawrence University Band Booking Committee (BBC) with experience in connecting with figures in the music industry, and they began talking about the possibility of touring in Fall Term, which then turned into weekly meetings about people and places to contact.
“We looked around and we had a tour planned,” Busse said. “The only thing [left] to do was play it.”
While this is not the first out-of-town gig the group has had, this is Eli Orion and the Everything’s first official tour—as well as the first tour for each individual member—making a string of stops across the northern Midwest. When asked about the tour’s name, Orion said that the “Pop-Rock” part came from him releasing music everywhere on the spectrum of sound last Spring Term, to which he thought no label but the umbrella term “pop-rock” could encompass the vast differences between tracks. As for the second part of the name, Orion thought it would be hilariously ironic to call the band’s first tour the “Reunion” tour. They played four songs that they have not released yet, as well as numerous tracks from Orion’s 2024 album “Everything You Didn’t Want to Hear.” The difference, according to Orion, is that the four newer songs were a collaborative process. Whereas his old songs were all individually recorded and produced, these ones are products of Eli Orion and the Everything.
The band met up on Wednesday, March. 26, in Busse’s hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they would be playing their first show of the tour at the Green Room music venue. The Green Room was the biggest venue they would play at, with 80 to 100 attendees, Ramos estimated. Some of the attendees Busse even knew, which he admitted added a layer of nerves for him. Their first show on tour went smoothly—the band shouted out “the sound guy” with reverence—and the band agreed that they also learned what they needed to give an even better show the following day at the Contented Cow pub in Northfield, Minnesota. There, they played with Milwaukee-based Lawrence alumnus Ridley Tankersly ‘17.
Their first Wisconsin stop was at The Rigby event venue in Madison on Friday, March. 28. On their way to that show, Orion suggested on a whim that they create a new song, and soon, the band was singing each one of their parts and fitting them into the whole. They had gotten so comfortable with it—and gotten so comfortable with one another’s individual musical styles—that they even performed the new song that night despite having never actually played it on their instruments before then. Shockingly, the band recalled it went incredibly well. They now are torn between whether to leave the song as “a thing that happened on tour” or turn it into something formal.
Corby said the group had planned their final show to be in Appleton when they would be back in school, though Busse spoke for the band when he said that their second-to-last show on Sunday, March. 30 at Anodyne Coffee in Milwaukee felt more like a gratitude-filled journey’s end than their last, calling the final show at the Stone Arch Brewpub a “victory lap.”
The Pop-Rock Reunion Tour marked a lot of firsts for the members of Eli Orion and the Everything, including playing with a backing track. Donnelly spoke enthusiastically about how it helped unify the already close-knit band’s sound and said he looks forward to more work with backing tracks in the future. Corby, Busse and Orion agreed with Donnelly, both adding that the tracks allowed them to create a nexus between in-studio elements—large choral backup vocals, synthesized elements, and the like—with the live experience. Though Orion said they have found unique ways to play their recorded parts live on their instruments, he enjoyed the sonic largeness that this new playing style made accessible to the band.
“[Our band] is called ‘the Everything’ because there’s something I find really enjoyable about maximalism and everything being there,” Orion explained. “And so, to have not only the musicianship but also the production that I love to do, […] to be able to combine those things even more ‘everything’ was pretty awesome.”
Busse said that though he was somewhat skeptical of playing to a backing track for the first time, he found a groove—and a musical balance—in this new playing style.
“The tracks really lended themselves to the type of music we play,” Busse praised. “There is so much on the album that relies [on] and is inspired by those more electronic elements that gets lost when we play them in a rock-band setting, and so to marry those two I think puts us over the top […] it’s just the best of both worlds.”
Over the course of the tour, the band members learned to be their own roadies; Orion recalled the huge difference in speed between the chaos of packing up after the first show versus the ease at their last. He said that being in a band—especially if that band is Eli Orion and the Everything—means learning, well, everything there is to know about the work that goes into a tour, not just jamming out.
When asked about what comes next for Eli Orion and the Everything, they joked that they would be releasing bees into the audience at their next show. If you like honey and/or sustainable pollination practices, I recommend you be there. In other words, the band was rather elusive when answering this question. However, they revealed that they will be performing at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house and are trying to plan a show in a large space on campus.
Overall, Corby said that this tour felt like a culmination of why they chose Lawrence—to meet like-minded musicians and have “meaningful” music-making with them. Orion almost cut them off with how quickly he agreed, saying that this tour braided together his three core values in making music: creating, organizing, and connecting with others. Busse said he was proud to represent music at Lawrence off-campus.
“We are five people very connected to the music scene here, and to have the opportunity to bring that out to others and to bring a very good impression of it was very special,” Busse said.
Ramos and Donnelly, too, said they found a new love in traveling for tour.
“It really felt for me like ‘this is what I’m supposed to be doing,’” Donnelly declared. “Going out, traveling to different places, and spreading our music that way […] is what really calls to me.” Throughout the interview, it shocked me how well these five bandmates were able to at connecting connect their own experiences to or expanding expand on what another one had said, even finishing each other’s sentences and cracking an inside joke or two when the time struck. To me, they appeared to be a well-oiled musicking machine with each member both excelling in their own part while also creating something unique as a whole. While Corby joked that the band is full of malarky-making timewasters, it seemed to me that that very randomness—suggesting a tour in passing, writing a song in the car and performing it for the first time that night, and learning their roadies as they went along—is paradoxically the band’s cohesiveness, and, therefore, their power.