Somewhere into his grueling college schedule, Medill sophomore Danny Yadron is trying to fit fame and fortune.

His band, Butterfly Assassins, is on the brink of success. It opened for Girl Talk last Friday, and rode the marquee in bold for a Metro show on Jan. 11. And if headlining shows and opening for famous DJs wasn’t enough, the band’s song “Sylvia II” will be used for this spring’s Niteskool music video.

Poised to release their second album, Sylvia, and needing to decide whether to pursue music or school, the band has reached a critical moment in its career.

Adding to the strains of being a college band, the members of Butterfly Assassins aren’t located on the same campus – or even the same state. Yadron alone attends Northwestern, while guitarist Bryan Kveton and drummer Dylan Fischer hail from University of Illinois-Champaign, and singer/keyboardist Brian Trahan and cellist Kate Wakefield come all the way from the University of Michigan.

“Shows are really hard because usually at least three or four members of the band are traveling over 100 miles to play,” Yadron said. “When we do get to practice, it may be only a few hours before we go on.”

Some people have compared the band’s sound to Muse. Butterfly Assassins play more or less traditional rock music with the occasional solo, but heavily use the keyboard and cello. The band adds classical elements to their music too, Trahan said.

Except for Wakefield, who joined the band full time last year, the band has jammed together as What Four since the end of eighth grade. Things began heating up the summer after sophomore year in high school, when they claimed victory at a statewide battle of the bands in Springfield. The win gained them recording time in two professional Chicago studios, Gravity Studios and United Technique Recording.

“The second session at United Technique was the beginning of writing songs the way we write them now,” Yadron said.

From there the band found a local producer and cut a seven-track EP, which caught a little industry attention. The record received extensive play on WOXY, an Internet radio station out of Cincinnati, Ohio. A former WOXY employee from New York City was interested in starting his own label. They were the first band to sign.

Second record, second chance

After picking up Wakefield, the band’s style changed, as did its name, which became Butterfly Assassins. Recording of its next project commenced during Spring Quarter of last year.

“We recorded during Reading Week, so I really didn’t do much studying,” Yadron said.

After 11 days in the studio and an entire summer of mixing, the band still wasn’t happy with how the record sounded. They were months behind schedule and getting desperate. But that’s when luck stepped in. Yadron got dragged to his dad’s company barbeque, where a co-worker casually mentioned that she knew someone in the record industry.

“I was smiling and nodding, when she said he used to produce The Ramones,” Yadron said. “I go from looking past her to ‘What!’”

That someone turned out to be Ed Stasium, a Grammy award-winning producer and engineer who’s worked with The Ramones, Motorhead and Mick Jagger.

“I was astounded because I actually own records by this guy,” Yadron said.

The band decided to take a chance and contact him. To their surprise, he took a real liking to their music and offered to mix the record for next to nothing.

“He made the record sound like a real CD,” Yadron said. “It scares us sometimes.”

The future: band or school?

“We want a reason to take a year or two off school,” Yadron said. Now that success in the music industry has become a viable option, pressure is mounting on the five members to decide what will take precedence in their lives.

“We are consistently trying to figure out the happy medium between doing well in school and being productive members of the band,” Yadron said. “But we are all at the same time being drawn to put more and more time into the band.”

Last spring, Butterfly Assassins took a week off school to travel to New York City; the label wanted to showcase the band to some friends. The trip went well, but while driving through rural Pennsylvania, Yadron realized that he had forgotten to register for his courses. It was the Sunday evening after registration week.

“He started screaming in the backseat of my car,” Kveton said, laughing.

Butterfly Assassins’ goal is to gain enough notoriety to merit taking a time off school to tour and promote, but it still wouldn’t be an easy decision. Yadron thinks they would have to be known outside of the Midwest to even consider it.

“We’ve all tried to put established parameters on (time with the band),” said Yadron. “But we always revert back to ‘we will all kind of know it when it happens’, which can be a very slippery slope. If it does well, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t take a year or two off school to push it.”