Yesterday at noon, southern country-rock singer/songwriter Shooter Jennings performed an acoustic set in front of the UCF Student Union. Shooter, accompanied by a fellow band member, sung a few of his biggest hits such as “Gone To Carolina”. Later that night, Shooter performed at a downtown Orlando venue called The Social.
Shortly after Shooter’s performance, indie band Yankee Racer set up and took the stage. Yankee Racer is made up of UCF senior Aaron Greber and UCF alumni Riley Meek.
Greber and Meek met at a party through a mutual friend and have been jamming together ever since.
Meek compares their sound to that of The Arrows while Greber sums their music up as “a mix of folk-indie-jazzy-blues.”
One of the things people seemed to be most curious about was the origin of the band’s name. As it turns out, a 1998 Wes Anderson film inspired it.
“Rushmore is one of my favorite movies and the Yankee Racers is one of the clubs in the movie.” Greber shared.
Meek, who sang in his band back in seventh grade, has been playing guitar since he was eleven. Greber, on the other hand, began playing the drums first. And although Greber taught himself how to play guitar only four short years ago, he is no stranger to performing for UCF students.
“We started playing at the breezeway in front of Chick-fil-A and pretty much became known as the ‘Chick-fil-A Band,’” he said, laughing.
But now Yankee Racer has upgraded to performing at the Student Union and has no intention of stopping there.
