By Erianne Lewis | Arts and Life Editor
The fall semester not only brings in a new season for Baylor students, but also marks the return of the highly anticipated Common Grounds concerts.
Common Grounds, known for its secret sauce and backyard hangout spot for students, resumes its concert sessions on Thursday. The first performer will be singer-songwriter Jordy Searcy.
Searcy, born and raised in Louisiana, appeared as a contestant on season seven of NBC’s “The Voice”, alongside celebrity coach Pharrell Williams.
Searcy said he always wanted to be a guitar player and that’s where he concentrated a lot of his energy. He realized, around that time, that he enjoyed writing the songs the most.
Searcy said one of the biggest reasons he is doing music now is largely because of his family.
“I grew up with my parents doing music as their full-time job, in a few different ways,” Searcy said. “It was kind of a way of life; I grew up playing in church a ton. I knew from a really young age, like five or six, that I wanted to do music for a living.”
Hayden Smith, venue manager and live events coordinator for Common Grounds, said Common Grounds is thrilled to be able to bring back its concert series.
“It’s something that has been important to Common Grounds for a long, long time,” Smith said. “We’d been in contact with all of the agents and the artists, that we usually book with, and had booked with prior to COVID. We are finally at a spot where we are geared up and ready to resume normal operations.”
The concerts will be held at the eighth street location. The venue’s reported capacity is 800 people. Smith said that determining which artists perform at the venue is a strategic process.
“We typically will book anywhere from 10 to 15 concerts per semester. We first look at the calendar of the school year, and try to book around dates that students would be able to attend,” Smith said. “Usually, artist management will reach out to us, because they’ll be linking up a tour for their clients through close cities.
If a band is routing through [Waco] on a particular weekend, [and] we have that weekend available, it’s also not going to be a conflict with a major student event like Pigskin, then we are able to go from there and try to reach an agreement that makes sense for everyone.”
Smith said that he believes the return of the concerts mark an important return to routine within the community.
“I’m really excited and proud to be a part of the return of normalcy within Waco, and within Common Grounds,” Smith said. “I am proud of the artists that we have coming through and the calendar that we’ve put together for the public. I think there’s really kind of something for everyone.”
Searcy said that he couldn’t put a name on the type of music he makes.
“I think [the music I make] is mostly based around song making,” Searcy said. “Singer-songwriter is about the easiest way [to describe it]. A lot of times I’ll just call it ‘dude with a guitar music’, is kind of what I do.”
Searcy said he wants people to come out to the show because it is an experience unlike any other.
“Our goal for the show, is to make an awesome experience, that people will never forget,” Searcy said. “I’m so inspired by bands I grew up listening to, like Colony House or Need to Breathe. Whenever they put on a show, it’s like mesmerizing, so we are doing whatever we can to like do our version of that.”
