On Saturday night, the Entertainment Board (E-Board) received word that Local Natives, an indie band from Los Angeles, would no longer be able to perform at Ivies. Working quickly, the E-Board inquired for and received a contract from Dr. Dog, a Philadelphia-based psychedelic rock band, to serve as a replacement. The band will join the remaining lineup, Mac Miller and Janelle Monáe, at the April 30 concert.
The reasons behind Local Natives' retraction were not made clear to the E-Board, according to Morgan Andersen '12, a co-president of the group.
"We got absolutely no concrete information," he said. The agent the E-Board works with said the band cited "unspecified personal reasons" as the cause for their inability to perform at Ivies.
Megan Brunmier '08, the program adviser to the E-Board, said that Local Natives did not breach their contract by withdrawing from the concert, as they had yet to return a finalized and signed version of the contract to the E-Board. The process of contracting with a band is fairly drawn-out, Brunmier explained. Local Natives sent their contract to Bowdoin around the third week of February, and the E-Board returned a packaged contract to the band consisting of edits to the initial contract along with a Bowdoin-specific contract the week prior to Spring Break.
Brunmier said that at the point in the contracting process that Local Natives pulled out, the band was "under no more obligation to [the E-Board] than [is standard] industry courtesy."
Andersen explained that upon hearing the news about Local Natives, the E-Board weighed its options as to how to proceed and determined that it would be in the student body's best interest to try to find a new band. Working with suggestions of available bands provided by their agent, the E-Board narrowed down the options of bands they thought students would enjoy seeing.
"Dr. Dog was definitely one of our top picks," said Andersen, "particularly [because] they did relatively well in the small-acts survey we sent out at the beginning of the year...for us, it seemed like [Dr. Dog] was a very good choice to replace Local Natives."
Andersen emailed the news of Local Natives' cancellation and the announcement of Dr. Dog's addition to the student body on Wednesday afternoon.
This Ivies will not be the first time Dr. Dog has performed at Bowdoin—in the fall of 2007, the band played to a packed Jack MaGee's Pub in a WBOR concert.
Andersen noted that though he believed a concert featuring only Mac Miller and Janelle Monáe "would be a great show," it would lack the balance of musical genres a third act in the vein of Local Natives or Dr. Dog would provide.
Brunmier pointed out that Local Natives and Dr. Dog have toured together in the past, and indicated that perhaps students holding out for Local Natives wouldn't be too disappointed.
Junior Patrick Martin was not very concerned about the swap either way.
"Really, I don't care that much," he said, indicating his indifference.
"I was more excited about Local Natives," said sophomore Emma James. She and a friend looked up Dr. Dog's music upon hearing of the change, and described their findings as "interesting."
"I think [Ivies will] still be fun regardless," she said.