Though having just begun their musical journey together, on-campus band Dried Fruit has been gaining traction in Lawrence University’s music scene. The band is composed entirely of first-year students, with songwriter Zeke Huntsman on the drums and keys, lyricist Audrianna Hall on the mic and violin, Abe Schwartz on the guitar and bass, Hayden Forsyth on the guitar, drums and bass and Gio Adamavich on the guitar and bass. The band has come far since their assembly at the beginning of the year, Adamavich claiming jokingly that Dried Fruit is “the Second Coming of Paul McCartney.”
Dried Fruit would first band together throughout Welcome Week 2024, except for Schwartz and Hall, who met at a pre-orientation bonfire event. As for the rest of the band, it was part luck and part effort that they would find one another. Schwartz met up with Huntsman in his record group and then approached him at a Sankofa party to ask if he played drums — to which Huntsman replied, “not really.”
Forsyth met Huntsman through his orientation group and would later nerd out about music with him, clicking almost instantly. Huntsman had been on the hunt for a band himself, tracking down and getting every incoming Lawrentian musician he could find to try to pull together a group. Then, in a stroke of luck, he met Adamavich — who’d been lugging three guitars and a bass into his new room — moving in right across from him. Since everyone was connected to each other in some capacity at that point, the group would start to get together and jam regularly after that until they realized that something beyond just casual jamming was rising between them.
As for their name “Dried Fruit,” Forsyth remembered Huntsman passing time at a First-Year Studies lecture by making a list of random band name possibilities. That lunch, the band would deliberate, with Schwartz advocating for the name the Cookie Cutter Girls and the group bouncing around The Ladybugs or Watershed. They would settle on Dried Fruit, Forsyth claiming it to be the tamest of the bunch, for the reasoning that they all liked fruit, according to Hall.
The members of Dried Fruit had a somewhat difficult time answering the question of what kind of music they play.
“I think we do have a distinct sound, we just can’t put it into words,” Schwartz explained.
Since each person comes from a different musical background and has vastly different musical inspirations influencing their individual style — everything from Elvis Presley to Dominic Fike to Steely Dan — Adamavich said they each bring a different sound into the Dried Fruit style. Nevertheless, they took a crack at describing their unique sound.
Adamavich described it as indie alt-rock with a little distortion, Hall chiming in that her violin adds folky elements to it as well as bouncing around the label soft rock with Schwartz. Hall said that both she and Huntsman are classically trained, so their instruments inject a classical strain into the tunes they play. Schwartz added that the band has some jazzier elements too, as well as punk ones thanks to Adamavich. He and Forsyth pointed out that their numerous guitarists in the band resulted in lots of their music being guitar driven. Schwartz added that though their music is definitely alternative, stating that Huntsman on the keyboard adds a dance-like “magical” touch to it. Adamavich expanded on that, adding, “Like a unicorn.”
In the end, the members agreed that Dried Fruit’s style is whatever they choose to play. They settled on the label indie alt-rock for now but said their versatility could be redefined again and again as they come into their sound.
Huntsman and Forsyth have been teaming up to learn the drums since Dried Fruit lacked only a drummer at its creation. Over the past school year, they have worked hard to break into the skill.
“We have no more than two drummers,” Forsyth joked. “We don’t have four.”
Dried Fruit’s first big show took place in Harper Hall on