Meet FlooringCo. | Headlining Indie Rock Band Reflects on Penn State’s 2021 Movin’ On | University Park Campus News

From a basement in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to the annual Penn State Music Festival and now in Nashville, FlooringCo. made its mark in the world of music.

Flooring Co. is an indie rock band made up of four young adults – Jonathan Essis, Karsen McLaughlin, Marty Gildea and Sam Trively – who all want to pursue a musical career together.

They have been playing music together for a year as a group FlooringCo., although in total they have been playing together for about three years, according to lead singer Essis (junior-computing and music technology).

“We rebranded ourselves and took it seriously making indie music,” Essis said.

The band has an intricate network of relationships that has brought the members together – Essis is a cousin of guitarist Gildea, who studies music and philosophy at American University.

“He was picking up an instrument, and I was picking up an instrument that he didn’t pick up,” Essis said.

According to Essis, Gildea and guitarist Trively, who is studying business at Lebanon Valley College, are neighbors. McLaughlin was in a few bands with Essis’ older brother, thus connecting her to the band.

McLaughlin, who recently graduated from Cumberland Valley High School, plays drums and sings background vocals for FlooringCo.

According to McLaughlin, she started playing instruments at a young age, just like her bandmates. She said her classmates started a band around their freshman year of high school and she was later included in the music school band, which morphed into FlooringCo.

“We thought we could take that out of music school,” McLaughlin said.

According to Trively, the families of Gildea and Essis are co-owners of a local flooring company, and because the group often practices at Essis, the group thought of the name “FlooringCo”. would be a “cool tribute that sticks out of the language well,” Trively said.

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McLaughlin said the band played at high school pep rallies and at a few restaurants, but that Penn State’s Let’s move 2021 was his “greatest performance” to date.

“We got together at the last minute,” Gildea said. “Karsen was busy with high school, [and] it was hectic getting there and getting everything ready.

In order to secure their spot at Movin’ On, the band won “Battle” on April 15, where they performed against other bands and received the most student votes.

According to Trively, “sort of [it] worked”, and the group was “super lucky”.

McLaughlin said the band performed their original songs at the event, including “Suburban Psycho” and “Vacancy.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, it was easier for the group to get together and train because school was online, except for McLaughlin, who didn’t have the ‘luxury’ of fully online lessons. .

Yet Essis said the coronavirus “has stopped [them] in the middle of their tracks,” and the band members struggled to juggle schoolwork and music.

“The way I balanced things out is that I didn’t,” Trively said, adding that he ended up dropping a few classes to focus on music.

Essis said the biggest challenge for him was whether he wanted to “commit 100% to the band or take the most comfortable route to finishing college.”

The group has decided to venture into the music industry for the time being, with some members taking time off from their respective universities.

According to Gildea, the band plans to move to Nashville soon and continue the music.

“You might as well do what you can while you’re young,” McLaughlin said. “I have the opportunity to do it for as long as it allows me. I might as well take the chance before it’s gone.

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