Boyer’s band Signal City takes the spotlight at Lakers Game

By Yuka Noda
Staff Writer

Any sports worth watching would not be complete without a band or a singer singing the national anthem. To fulfill his passion as a musician, senior Cameron Boyer and his band went all out to sing at the Los Angeles Lakers game.

Boyer’s band Signal City performed the national anthem at the Lakers vs. the Atlanta Hawks basketball game at the Staples Center on Sunday, March 15 with over 17,000 people in attendance.

“It was a little nerve-racking, but once we step out on that floor, it was like home to us,” Boyer said. “We’ve played in front of crowds of 15,000 before so it was second nature to us.”

The National Basketball Association selected the band to sing the national anthem after Boyer and his band members created an audition tape of themselves singing the song. They sent the tape to a radio broadcaster for the Lakers.

“I was looking forward to singing in front of such a large crowd,” dark player senior Derek Zeoli said. “This was the first time I have done something of this magnitude. I was excited also because we are the first high school band to sing the national anthem at Staples Center.”

Boyer started forming his band in 2009. Today, the band has four core members, which include the lead singer Boyer, rhythm guitar and keyboard Cameron Olsen, lead guitar and bass Brennen Bates and drummer Cole Carson.

“We all love music and wanted to be in charge of ourselves and take music into our own hands and pursue it, so we formed a band,” Boyer said.

The band started out with just Boyer and Carson, but over the years, they have gathered the rest of the band members through posting an advertisement on Facebook and recruiting members from other bands.

“We found our bass player on Facebook because we opened a Facebook page looking for bass players to audition,” Boyer said. “He was the best.”

For their performance of the national anthem, Boyer and his band decided to incorporate a dark player, a person who practices and performs with the band on occasion to create a four-person harmony due to the fact that the drummer was unable to make it.

“Sunday was amazing,” Zeoli said. “We were a little worried about some spots before we sang, but it sounded really good during the performance. Before I was a little nervous, during I was fairly calm and was focusing on the music, and after I felt really good at having delivered a great performance.”