Photos/MALLORY TURNER
Story/ANGIE PICCIRILLO
Chances are at some point in your life you were a #fangirl or #fanboy for a particular musician — maybe it was for Guns N’ Roses or the Backstreet Boys, but I’m positive you know what I mean. For some of us, we’ve never escaped being part of the fandom for certain artists and we still turn into screaming-jumping-dancing-crazy people who know every word and vocal run of every song from every album.
Nowadays, besides creating social media fan accounts and traditional fan clubs, fan communities have come together to join forces and become not only a built-in street team for an artist, but also a family to each other.
Two years ago, Alt-pop musician Colin Rigsby, who goes by moniker Vesperteen, thought he was simply releasing his music as a fun solo project — with no expectations. After multiple successful and mostly sold out tours across the U.S. — the Vesperteen fan base was born, and began to multiply quickly.
Today, they’ve appropriately named themselves the “VesperTEAM” — and they’ve not only come together as best friends and family members for each other, but also for Colin himself. “All the people from the shows began interacting with each other. For the past year or so, I’ve heard story after story of people who became best friends either online, or at one of my shows —It’s amazing to see.”
Along with waiting in long lines and seeing multiple shows together — Colin says the VesperTEAM drives to shows together and his favorite thing of all, sends him fan art. Since Colin is also a visual artist who creates all of his own album art and graphics, he loves to see what his fans come up with. “There’s so many talented Vesperteamers out there!”
Vesperteen just released a new single, “It Will Never Be Enough,” which was produced with multi-platinum producer, PJ Bianco at the beginning of December and already has over 19K spins on Spotify. Colin wanted to do something special for the fans upon its release — which involved hiding hard copies of the single in several cities a week before the song’s official release, a sort of Vespertinian Scavenger hunt, if you will. “I wanted to have a fun event during the week of the release for some fans to be able to hear the song early,” Colin explains. “So I burned some CD’s with the song and made unique artwork for each city — Columbus, Los Angeles, Chicago, NYC, and London. It was so cool to see people hustling around town to try and get these first. And it was a sweet way to feel the excitement over a brand new song.”
Aly Latherow from Chicago was the lucky fan who found one of the CD’s in her city after following Colin’s clues posted via social media. She says, “My favorite thing about Vesperteen is the amazing community of fans. I’ve met my best friends at his concerts who I talk to every single day and love so so much!” Emma Atkins, a fan from Los Angeles, found one of the CDs at Atomic Records. She says, “Being able to go to concerts with people you love and feel safe around is one of the best feelings in the world, and I have found that with this music, these shows and these people.”
If the scavenger hunt was meant to build excitement over the single release, it succeeded. Aly says of “It Will Never Be Enough”, “It takes Colin’s music to a new level with its amazing lyrics but still has the fun dance beat that really makes it a Vesperteen song!” Emmas adds, “I absolutely love [the song]. I listened to it for the first time in a library of crowded people and I found it very hard not to start dancing as soon as I hit play. It’s pretty much been on repeat since I found the CD.”
As for his next fan-inclusive idea, Colin created a Spotify contest which will result in one lucky fan winning a private acoustic show at their house, thanks to a partnership with Spirit Airways.
As for his plans in 2018, Colin says “My main goal is to bring many more people into this family of music — lots more writing and recording early in the year and then much more touring too!! It’s gonna be a GOOD year. I can feel it.”
CONNECT WITH VESPERTEEN:
INSTAGRAM // FACEBOOK // TWITTER