On Wednesday, April 22, 2015 Colonia High School’s Guitar Club hosted a coffee house night at 6:30 P.M. in the cafeteria; featuring members of Colonia’s Poetry Club they called the Coffee House Unplugged.
Colonia High School’s Guitar Club wanted to do something different to showcase the talent of each individual in the club; something to let community of Colonia High interested in coming out to see. So, Guitar Club members and history teachers, Mr. Anthony Perrino and Mr. Jason Muldoon, came up with a coffee house idea, which they later named Unplugged.
It was a night where members of the Guitar Club could perform acoustic versions of either their own songs or cover songs from other artists. There were two bands, Broken Staircase and Second to Last. Also, a few members performed on their own and as duets. To break up the night from just playing guitar, bongos, and singing members of Colonia’s Poetry Club were asked to perform in-between Guitars Club’s performances. Senior Matthew Cowan, senior Nigel Douglas, senior Samantha Girod and junior Devon Devon Savage recited original poems for the crowd.
Guitar Club raised over $800 from ticket sales, which was a fantastic turn out because no body knew how many people would actually come out on this night. Tickets were sold for seven dollars in advance, and they were eight dollars at the door.
One may ask, wait? If this was a coffee house was there coffee? Yes, of course. Guitar Club provided coffee for the night along with cake and cookies. The cake was actually donated by Wegmans, a local food store in the Woodbridge Township community.
It took Guitar Club almost the whole year to prepare for this one night, because they wanted to make it the best they could especially since they had set previously set the bar high at Total Rock, which was another Guitar Club’s performance nights that took place with the Colonia High Jazz Band. All in all, Unplugged was a great success and it was the start to a traditional that will continue for years and years to come.
Guitar Club member and Poetry Club representative senior Samantha Girod stated, “ CHS Unplugged has been an event that the members of Guitar Club have been looking forward to for a long time. All members of the event have spent majority of this year practicing and planning for a successful night. After having a great night at Total Rock, all the members of guitar club knew that they had to keep the success coming for unplugged. Everyone has spent hours practicing and it definitely showed in the performance. From beautiful melodies to amazing original songs, each band that performed blew the crowd away. Also, the members of Poetry Club did a fantastic job following the theme of successful performances as they expressed the beauty of words in their poetry. All together, everyone that attended the event could probably agree that CHS Unplugged was a huge success.”
It’s memories like events such as Unplugged that make high school some of the best years of student’s lives. It leaves them speechless to the point where they don’t know how to sum up the night up in just one sentence. Seeing hands on how proud each performer was of themselves sure makes one note that CHS Unplugged turned out wonderfully.
