At first glance, one may peg Kevin Royer as a lovesick pretty boy, strumming his guitar to win some girl’s heart, but that is far from the truth.
Using a pop format, Royer uses deep and heartfelt lyrics to communicate his frustration with issues affecting all of society. While he usually acts as the frontman for pop-rock band Approaching Zenith, Royer will put on a rare solo performance for Spring Sing 2009 tonight.
School and music have gone hand-in-hand for most of Royer’s musical career. He took his first step on this musical journey during his junior year of high school, when he enrolled in a guitar class.
“I’m not going to lie, I hated high school; the entire experience was miserable,” said Royer, a fourth-year history student. “Having such a relaxing class was such a huge outlet for me.”
The next step came fairly soon after when he was absentmindedly singing and a friend complimented him.
“I think that first push of confidence really got me started doing something I never plan on stopping,” he said.
Since then, Royer formed polar personas for his academic and entertainment selves. “Onstage, I’m loud, I go for the big notes, and pretty much scream into the microphone. … In school, I’m about the most introverted, quiet guy you can possibly imagine.”
As divergent as his personas are, Royer’s roles as student and musician inevitably affect each other.
“I tend to procrastinate in school a lot,” he said. “This usually leads to me being forced to work under the gun and stress myself out to the point of combustion.”
While this may seem like a horrible study habit, it does, as Royer explained, translate into a beneficial skill in the music world. “In the studio, I have to lay down multiple guitar tracks and finish the lead vocal and harmonies very quickly. It’s crunch time in there.”
In other instances, Royer’s link between schoolwork and music is more explicit.
“As a history major, I have been exposed over and over again to memorizing and rereading the same brutalities of humankind that transcend time periods throughout history,” he said. “After a while, the material just made me angry. I deal best with these issues by simply writing songs about them.”
And Royer isn’t kidding. “I wrote a song one time for a class about the emergence of the mercantile class in Elizabethan England.”
But his music is no “Schoolhouse Rock.”
“My basic music instinct leads me to write songs that are very ’90s,” he said.
But just because Royer’s music is reminiscent of the ’90s does not mean that he is stuck in the ’90s.
He admitted that at first, he started writing a bunch of “acoustic, mellow ballads,” but soon found himself feeling out of place. “Instead of being discouraged, I worked on writing more up-tempo work, got with the right producer, and now all I pretty much write are up-tempo, rhythmic tunes.”
For today’s show, Royer hinted that the song he will perform at Spring Sing is built upon the cliche that history repeats itself.
This idea seems to be something that Royer lives his life by.
“I’m consistently unhappy with where I’m at, at any point in my career. This propels me to try harder, work harder, train longer to see how much I can get out of myself.”
It was even a factor in naming his band.
At one point, it was called This Day 4 Ward, a name reminiscent of Royer’s high school days, when he chose it simply because “it would look sick on a poster.”
These days, Royer has different reasons for picking names.
“I wanted a name that meant something. Approaching Zenith mirrors my own ideology on work ethic and musical progress. It denotes the journey, not the destination.”
The part of his journey that Royer is the most proud of is actually getting into Spring Sing. When he gets on stage, he’ll be there to compete ““ but not in the same way that most are.
“My quarrel isn’t with my peers, it’s with myself,” he said. “Every day, I try to better myself and outdo what I accomplished the day before. I’m consistently working towards the neverending goal of improvement.”