As students begin to return to in person activities, with fuller capacity on campus now campus after a year and a half long wait, there has been a sense of excitement in the air. With new and traditional events occurring this year, CWU kicked off the school year with a live band in the SURC pit. 

Cigman Fraud is a band made up of five CWU students. The group has been playing since May, and played their first gig only a few weeks after forming. Andrew Parker is the lead singer and rhythm section, Jonathan Anderson is on bass, Shaun Howard is on guitar and Nate Goodman is on drums.

According to Howard, Cigman Fraud is a play-off of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist.

“One night we were sitting outside our house, I believe we were smoking a cigarette,” Howard said. “We were talking, and I think I was going on about one of my rants about psychology.” 

He said that one of the members of the band made a joke combining the word “cigarette” with “Sigmund,” which sparked the idea for the band’s name.

During the show on Sept. 30, the band performed all original songs and one cover song.

“There is some new stuff that we didn’t play at the last performance that we are playing tonight,” Howard said before the show.

Parker said he gets his own inspiration from the rock band The Strokes, but that when the band gets together, the creativity is shared. He said they spend a lot of time working together to produce new songs.

“A pretty common way that we end up making music is we get ideas down, I’ll record it and then Andrew has his quiet time by himself and just clicks a bunch of computer stuff, and then he has a song,” Howard said.

Before performances, Parker and Howard said they listen to “Come Sail Away” by the Styx to get excited before a gig. 

“We’re hoping to get an EP, an album together and see where that goes,” Parker said. 

The Fall Concert Series, put on by CWU’s Campus Activities, is a series that includes all sorts of musicians. 

“Our music events were the most popular, so now that a lot of artists are back to travelling it just seems like a really good fall type event,” Robbi Goninan, Campus Activities Director, said.  

According to Goninan, the band performed last spring during student appreciation week.

“It was really successful, but of course we had a limited number of students on campus in the spring, so it was just really bringing the band back out to more students now that we are at full capacity,” Goninian said.

Peter Fuller, a student at CWU majoring in music performance, attended the show. She said she knows Parker and Howard personally, and was excited to go out and support her friends. 

“I’ve actually listened to some of the recordings and songs that they’ve done tonight,” Fuller said.

After the show, Fuller said her favorite song of the night was “Gently Knew You Sedan” which was a song she had never heard before. 

“I’ve heard one of the early recordings they did of ‘Troubled Eyes,’ and knowing the story behind it and seeing them doing it months and months again later is really cool,” Fuller said.

The group can be found on their Instagram @cigmanfraud

Singer-songwriter Phillip-Michael Scales will be performing at the SURC pit before his debut LP releases with Dixie Frog Records Oct. 7. In the following weeks, more artists with different musical styles will make an appearance as part of the fall concert series.