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.”

Early Saturday morning, Michaela DeSoucey rushed around behind the tables at the Evanston farmers’ market. Shoppers came by the dozen, money in hand, asking for bags of spices and vegetables. She moved with the skill of a veteran marketplace seller: reaching over the stand to grab a handful of greens, making change with wad of cash in her apron, and then turning to the next customer with a smile.

It looked like she was doing a full-time job. But after leaving her post at the farmers’ market, DeSoucey would go back to working on her sociology doctorate at Northwestern. DeSoucey just helps out at the Kinnikinnick Farm stand in her spare time.

For over five hours every Saturday, May to November, a piece of rural Illinois comes to a nondescript blacktop parking lot at the corner of Oak and University. The farmers’ market has been set up in Evanston for more than 30 years. Like most markets of its kind, it offers organic produce, fresh bread and other farm-grown consumables. But beyond that, it provides a change of pace for some Northwestern students and alumni.

DeSoucey met the owners of Kinnikinnick Farm, David and Susan Cleverdon, about two years ago as DeSoucey was working on her second-year Master’s thesis on local food movements. She went to local markets, asking for interviews with farmers.

“David is incredibly smart and vocal,” DeSoucey said. “He invited me to come out to the farm for a day.”

DeSoucey kept in touch with the Cleverdons during the following summer, even though her research was complete. In summer 2006, she asked David for a job at the stand. She has been working with the Cleverdons for two seasons now, sometimes helping out at their farm near Rockford, Ill., as well as at the market.

“[The farm] is beautiful,” she said. “It’s off of a small dirt road, the kind of place that you can’t get to unless you know where you’re going.”

The Cleverdons have set up shop at the Evanston farmers’ market since 1995, and they picked this location with good reason. David says there are three great markets in Chicago: the Green City Market, the Oak Park farmers’ market and the Evanston farmers’ market.

“Evanstonians are fanatic about their farmers’ market,” he said. “They come even when it rains.”

Top: NU alum Gene Lim plays guitar at the market. Below: Music sophomore Carrie Elko helps out her father, Roy.

A short distance away, past a booth giving out balloons promoting the Evanston Public Library, a man sang and played guitar for the crowd. Gene Lim, Northwestern class of ’84, came to represent his church, Evanston Bible Fellowship. The church has no permanent home right now, he explained. They could no longer afford to pay the lease on their previous building, so in the meantime they meet every Sunday at the Century 12 movie theatre.

Lim first experienced the market when he was a freshman at Northwestern in 1981. He has been coming back to entertain the crowd with tunes for about ten years. After a heartfelt rendition of “Please Please Me” by the Beatles, Lim paused briefly to pass out EBF fliers to anyone willing to drop a dollar into his open guitar case. He began playing again, with a familiar line from Don McLean: “A long, long time ago, I can still remember…”

Like most farmers’ markets, Evanston’s sells only organic food and produce. There’s only one rule: What you sell you must grow and make yourself. Although simple, the restriction keeps large corporations at bay. The majority of the merchants there are small farmers from northern Illinois.

However, a few of the more dedicated sellers come from farther away. Roy Elko of Elko’s Produce and Greenhouse leaves at 1:45 a.m. from Cambria, Wisc. to arrive at Evanston for the 7:30 a.m. opening of the market. He’s been coming since the market first started.

“I came here 30 years ago on my wedding day,” he said. “I’m still married to the same woman.”

When Elko isn’t selling corn, pumpkins, or other gourds, he shows off pictures of his daughter. Carrie Elko is a sophomore flute performance major in the Northwestern School of Music. She rolled her eyes as he flipped through pictures of her frolicking around as a five-year-old.

“I get to walk over here bright and early on Saturday mornings,” she said.

Her father went on to show off more pictures of himself as a young man at the market 30 years ago. Elko said he doesn’t believe in sitting down on the job, and that he hasn’t done so for the entire time he’s been coming to the market. Carrie rolled her eyes again and let out a long, “Daaaaad…”

The farmers’ market ends with the coming of winter. The final day this year is Nov. 3. Evanstonians will resort to Whole Foods again for their organic needs. But come next summer, the market will return. Elko and his daughter will also return. Elko smiles as he talks about the people of Evanston: “They keep me coming back.”

Photos by Sheena Agarwal / North by Northwestern.

Some photography by Jessi Knowles / North by Northwestern.

7 pm 1914 Sheridan Rd / Free
Come for a night of creative expression from NU students in the form of signing and spoken word poetry!

Rainbow Week – Beyond Us and Them

7pm Seabury-Western Lounge (2122 Sheridan) / Free
How is the Episcopal Church’s growing embrace of LGBT people affecting the identity of the church and its proclamation of the Gospel? Presented by Liz Stedman, Chaplain to Canterbury Northwestern.

The Game of Love and Chance

8pm Shanely Pavilion / $5
Come See Lovers and Madmen’s Spring Classics Show The Game of Love and Chance!

CSA Spring Speaker – Vienna Teng

8 pm Norris Gathering Place / Free
Vienna Teng is Taiwanese-American pianist and singer-songwriter. Her musical style features a mixture of folk and pop. She has made numerous TV appearances includig the Late Show with David Letterman and the CBS Saturday Early Show

Spirit of the Beehive

8-9:45 pm at the Pick-Laudati Auditorium / $6 for adults, $4 for students
In a small Spanish village in 1940, two girls see Frankenstein at a traveling screening and are permanently unsettled by it. Possessed by its images, Ana and Isabel attempt to track down Frankenstein himself.

Mayfest Battle of the Bands

9pm Nevin’s Live / Free
See the best that Northwestern has to offer in this 2 day battle royale to determine who plays on Dillo Day.

11 a.m. in front of Tech / Free
A string quartet will be performing and marriage equality pictures will be displayed.

2007 Holocaust Educational Foundation Lecture

4 p.m. at Harris 107 / Free
David Roskies, Professor of Yiddish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, will give a lecture entitled “1943: The Jewish World at Ground Zero.”

ComboFest

7:30 p.m. at Regenstein Recital Hall / $3.50
A concert of classic jazz repertoire and original compositions performed by members of the jazz combo program.

Imprisoning America

7 p.m. at Annenberg G15 / Free
NCDC Lecture Series on Race, Poverty & Inequality – Community Panel discussing the aspects of mass incarceration

Andew Bird

8 p.m. at Pick-Staiger Hall / Free

Rising indie star, singer songwriter, guitarist, violinist, whistler and Northwestern ‘95 grad will be performing a “VH1 Storytellers” style show.

“I worked in science research for a couple years, and by the end of it realized that, while I still had the energy within me, I ought to be giving to others some of what has been given to me by so many loving, patient teachers,” Dyson said in a SESP press release.

Kevin Lynch, associate professor of mechanical engineering, won an award last April from the Society of Automotive Engineers for his research and work preparing engineering students for practical challenges. Lynch’s research focuses on robotic manipulation and human-robot collaboration.

Medill freshmen Mike Haas and Nathan Garden decided to raise money the creative way. This afternoon the pair were selling t-shirts at the arch, but not just any t-shirts.

At first glance, the unobservant might take them to be the standard college shirt: solid purple with “Northwestern” written across the chest at a slight angle.

Upon closer examination, the shirts read “Nerdwestern” as clever stab at our student body. At $10 a pop the shirts were selling quite well. Proceeds went to benefit Relay for Life.

Want one of your own? Visit the Facebook group.

8 p.m. at the Norris Louis Room / $5 for students
HALO’s 2nd annual fashion show features student designers, dance groups and 30 models hitting the runway. The show hopes to promote awareness of HIV/AIDS, and all proceeds go to Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Stuart Dybek

5:30 p.m. at McCormick Tribune Center Forum / Free
Dybek gives his first reading as a distinguished writer in residence at Northwestern. The award-winning author will read from his new short story “Pink Ocean.”

“[Special Olympics] is a not a movement about people with special needs, but a movement about all of us,” Timothy Shriver said. Shriver came to speak because NU’s Special Olympics celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The group is the biggest and oldest college-level Special Olympics in the country, and funds and helps with the annual Illinois Area 5 Track and Field Meet, which hosts over 650 athletes.

Throughout his address, Shriver stressed the fact that the Special Olympics shouldn’t be about taking pity on people, or feeling guilty that you have it good in life, but about what you can learn. Shriver said the overwhelming response of volunteers is that they got back more than they gave. Special Olympics, Inc., works with 2.25 million athletes in about 160 countries.

When volunteers see athletes excited to be competing and getting silver medals, or no medals at all, Shriver asked, “What really matters?”

Samuel Stupp, director of the Institute for Bionanotechnology in Medicine, announced his findings that nanotechnology can be used to regenerate damaged tissues and organs. By inserting self-assembling nanofibers into body tissues, Stupp was able to begin healing paralyzed lab mice.