A new student band, “Warrior Groove,” has taken the Warrior Nation by storm, debuting last semester to the students on the Warren Performing Arts Center stage across the hall from the Counseling Services Center. 

This band was made and assembled entirely by Warren Central students. These band members are all mainly seniors including co-founder, manager and bassist John Miles, saxophonist Derek Holt, pianist Jake Collins and former guitarist and new drummer junior Quinn Sexton. The Warrior Groove also consisted of one more member senior and percussionist D’Wan Ellington, or Bishop, who has since left the band.

“[Bishop] and I always talked about starting a band, [but] we never really thought it would get to this scale though,” Miles said. “We never actually [took that step] of starting it until around early October.”

Starting as just a dream sophomore year after “jamming around” together, Miles and Ellington were finally able to see the band come to reality after two years of an idea. In the middle of October last year, Miles says that it was then that Ellington and him decided they needed more members to make their plan a reality. This was when they decided to invite Sexton, Holt and Collins.

“Honestly, after all that time I didn’t actually expect it to happen, it was just an idea that we had but didn’t really have the means of making it a thing. Since it is, for me it feels like a whole other door has opened in my music career,” Miles said. 

As the band is able to choose their own songs, members of Warrior Groove are provided a little more creative freedom playing what they desire instead of what is handed to them. 

“We make people enjoy the music. It’s fun for them to listen and fun for us to play, and that’s how I want it to be,” Collins said. 

Each member has a different range of musical experience, each one having taken at least one performing arts class throughout their high school careers. They have since built on their musical knowledge by taking up the challenge of being in a band together. From doing a few shows near the end of last semester to now having had guest musicians and vocalists play with them, the group’s progress has skyrocketed in just a short amount of time. One of the major gigs they have played so far was the Drama Club’s Valentines Day dance. 

“I think we’ve accomplished a lot in the short amount of time we’ve actually been a band and been performing,” Sexton said. “We’ve only performed a handful of times but each time the crowd gets bigger and bigger and we just get better and better and that’s what’s great too. [I hope we] keep playing, hopefully branch out, start writing originals and play gigs outside of school.”