Around one month ago, psychology and English student Saga McAllister joined a cover band of five other students, completing the roster for the band Non-Dairy Surprise—which formed last October. Together, they’ve covered artists from Amy Winehouse and Kings of Leon to Harry Styles while also working on original songs that the band plans to produce and release on Spotify and Apple Music later in the year.
The indie-rock band consists of six members, from different academic backgrounds and life experiences, making the band unique. The band consists of Saga McAllister, who studies psychology and English, with vocals and rhythm guitar, David Vincent, who studies computer science, as the drummer, Jacob Lewis, who studies physics, as the co-lead guitarist, and Kailey Hicks, who studies ecology and biodiversity, as the bassist, Marcus Lee who studies biology and physiology, as co-lead guitarist and Kalyn O’Donnell, who studies ecology and biodiversity, as the lead singer. The band members joined with different musical levels. To keep things interesting, they have been known to switch instruments on the day of a performance.
“It’s cool to be part of this team, we’re all in it together. You still get nervous when you’re getting ready to perform as a band, but it’s kind of like, oh, well we’ve all really worked hard on this together. And it’s something we can be really proud of when we get up there,” said McAllister.
McAllister and Kalyn O’Donnell are the two members who begin the songwriting process, although they accredit the final versions of the songs as being a collaborative effort with the band.
“I don’t think I could move through the world without synthesizing my experiences and writing about it. I feel like there’s something very cathartic about taking the things that happen to you in your life and turning them into art,” McAllister said.
O’Donnell resonated with McAllister, stating, “When a song comes on that you enjoy and other people enjoy, that just creates such a cool commonality. I was telling Saga that I used to like to write songs, but then I got really discouraged because I thought I was never gonna be able to make this into music, so I would just stop writing. I realized that, honestly, writing about your experiences is the coolest thing ever.”
The band’s universal passion for creating music, despite the fact that none of the members are music majors, is a rarity with the number of bands and artists that come out of Lamont. The band members find that this aspect of their group is what makes their experience in the band so much fun. Non-Dairy Surprise embraces its journey in the music community together with joint collaboration and a passion for creating music together.
“Kailey has never touched a bass before playing with us, and now she sounds amazing,” O’Donnell said. “None of us are majoring in music and we’re all just really passionate. I think that it kind of propels us forward because we’re not annoyed and don’t get burnt out as quick; I think that’s because music isn’t our job or our major,” O’Donnell expressed.
“We’re all unapologetically ourselves. That’s really important for us to show people. I also am unapologetically queer, and I make that pretty obvious when I’m performing. I say the image that I think that a lot of us want to show is that we’re unapologetically ourselves and that [the audience] can also be [themselves] by dancing along and not caring what other people think,” O’Donnell said.
In addition to the band consisting of members from multiple different academic majors, O’Donnell and McAllister discussed their respective experiences with being women of color and openly queer in the DU music scene. The two songwriters and creators discussed how these identities contribute to their sense of oneness and uniqueness on campus.
“I think our band is unique because we have two female songwriters. We also stick out because we’re not an entirely white band on this campus. I think we’re just badasses,” O’Donnell noted. McAllister continued by stating, “I think being a woman in a male-dominated industry is hard. Being a woman of color in this industry is also hard in a different way.”
Despite the challenges of navigating the music scene, Non-Dairy Surprise continues to embrace their differences and make music for themselves.
Non-Dairy Surprise will be playing at the DUPB (University of Denver’s Programming Board) mainstage event on Wednesday, May 11 at 7 p.m. They plan to play covers and two or three original songs. Find out more about the band on their Instagram.
