• Baylor alumni (now profs) get the band back together as ColorBox

    ColorBox

    Seeing your professor outside of class in “the real world” can be a little weird. Seeing them on stage in a rock band? That’s just too much. But that’s what you’ll see with ColorBox: a band with a name “so hipster, even the band doesn’t know what it means,” according to the drummer — who’s also a Baylor marketing professor.

    Flashback to Baylor, circa 1999. Freshman acting major and drummer Sam Henderson was playing in a student-run worship band, Out of Silence, with guitarist Stephen Bolech. For four or five years, the two performed with other permanent and semi-permanent members. Eventually, the time came for most of the band members to graduate and move on with their lives, leaving Henderson and Bolech to start a new band under the name Bright Size Life.

    The duo quickly added two musicians who had been rather gung-ho about playing with the old band: Brett Christenson, a drummer and music major turned marketing student, and Clayton Faulkner, a bassist and student at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) who had grown up with Bolech in the small town of Yoakum, Texas. The four played together for some years, until May of 2005, when it was Henderson’s turn to graduate.

    The band broke up. Faulkner moved to Houston, where he became a worship music minister. Christenson headed to Dallas to get his MBA. Bolech already had a job at Baylor, working in Moody Memorial Library.

    Years passed, and the members went their separate ways, but the dream was never forgotten. And whether by fate, providence, or pure chance, the members were eventually drawn back to Waco.

    After his wife decided to return to her position at Baylor, Henderson also got a job as a Baylor theater professor. Christenson became a lecturer in the Hankamer School of Business, teaching in the very same classrooms where he was taught. With Bolech already at Baylor, that made three out of four band members living in Waco. All that was left was convincing Faulkner to make the occasional three-hour drive from Houston to Waco. Luckily, he agreed. The four began practicing under the name ColorBox, arbitrarily given by Henderson’s 4-year-old daughter.

    Last month marked a full year since ColorBox regrouped. You’ll find them performing all around Waco, including tomorrow, Dec. 5, at Truelove, where they’ll be giving away their brand new (and always free) EP.

    Sic ’em, ColorBox!