Final Destination: Exit 31

There are some pleasant (and lucky) surprises that can be found on and around campus this spring: a forgotten quarter on the washing machine, open lanes at the pool or free machines at the gym, dollar night at Balch Arena Theater, semi-formals, Sound Bites, benefit shows, and stir-fry night at Carmichael. This undergrad was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when she stepped into Brown & Brew for a late night snack to find the sound of Chris Martin's voice and Seth Pasakarnis's lyrical guitar filling the coffee house.

The Boston-bred duo, named Exit 31 (as in the Mystic Valley Parkway exit off of I-93 North), has been in action for a few years now. Both men are engineers with a love of music. Martin, a senior electrical engineer and captain of the Tufts hockey team, picked up a guitar about two years ago when he met Pasakarnis, a first-year grad student in geo-technical engineering. Pasakarnis has been entertaining his friends and family with his music since the tender age of five.

As for the future, the duo recently entered a reality TV contest, Nashville Star, on the USA Network, for which students may have seen commercials, possibly thinking the competition was only for cowboys and Dixie Chicks. The contest consisted of the submission of a cover song, firstly. Eighty of these songs were chosen, including Exit 31's, and those eighty songs were then cut down to twenty. A live performance competition was held to weed out ten of the twenty competitors, and Exit 31 then proceeded with the nine other finalists to Baltimore where, according to Martin, "it was just like American Idol." Three judges got down and dirty with the bands, telling them what was what with their music.

The two favor cover songs over their own material, though Seth loves to write, and the crowd doesn't seem to mind. Their covers of Creed, John Mayer, The Dave Matthews Band, Stone Temple Pilots, Tenacious D, and almost everything alternative-rock are well-received by audiences at Brown & Brew, ATO, Hannah's Bar, and their home base bar, the Wave in Waltham. Most songs seem to be chosen for Martin's voice range, though they do perform an upbeat rendition of Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer."

At Brown and Brew that evening, Seth and Chris showed how they loved to get the crowd going, making this rock alternative a nice reprieve from the hip-hop scene.

The two have a very nice sound: not harsh, but not fall-asleep soft. They rarely have problems with something that plagues musicians everywhere: intonation. No one likes walking into a bar and listening to off-key karaoke. Seth and Chris keep it together through raucous frat parties and packed bars.

To find out whether or not Exit 31 will win the Nashville, tune in on March 8 at 9 p.m. on USA. And if seeing the handsome duo on TV just doesn't do it for you, check them out at Hotung caf?© on April 24. Of the Tufts bands, Exit 31 is up-and-coming. With a unique sound to rival any, and Seth's motto of "music is who I am," future success, if they reach far enough for it, is imminent.