When I pushed through the front door of The Story — a new venue on Franklin Street — one warm evening, I didn’t have many expectations. Humid air enveloped me as I stepped into the cramped space, beer-filled plastic cups rattling around me as I got my bearings, shouldering my way through the thickening crowd of professors and law students alike. Spring formal wear, bright floral dresses and accompanying khaki-clad dates, speckled the crowd at the annual Carolina Public Interest Law Organization auction with pops of fuchsia and bright blood orange. These details though, I’ll admit, I noticed later. Instead, all I really could focus on was the plinking, sputtering notes of Wagon Wheel drifting towards me.
Slinky had arrived and, before I knew it, I was a dog.
Slinky and the Dogs is a local band, formed last summer to primarily perform covers but has begun dabbling in creating original work. What makes them unique, though, is four of the five band members are pursuing graduate degrees at UNC — three of whom are law students.
Emily Kocher, who is a second-year Carolina Law student and the group’s lead singer, is often seen at the front of the stage jiggling a tambourine as she croons along to classic crowd favorites. Mary “Wheels” Moyer, also a second-year student, is on drums when she’s not stepping in as the new Carolina Law Student Bar Association president. Colin Shronts and Luis Proano both play guitar and bass, but Proano leans into a quiet mystic whereas Shronts (another second-year law student) leverages the suave charisma of a rock star into his vocals and lyricism. Angel Choe is the bedrock of the band: calm, cool and collected while she dabbles in singing, playing the guitar, writing lyrics and balancing her course load as a fourth-year pharmacy student. While relatively new, the band has already performed at He’s Not Here and Pantana Bob’s, and have no plans to stop any time soon.
What’s in a name?
Sitting on the front steps of the UNC School of Law, soaking up the last hours of sunshine before a long rainy weekend, I only had one question in mind. When it comes to Slinky and the Dogs, which one of them is Slinky?
“We’re all Slinky,” the three band members in front of me — Kocher, Moyer and Shronts — said at once before dissolving into snickers reminiscent of an inside joke.
“We’d been trying to come up with names for like a month or two,” said Moyer. “We were using random word generators, trying so hard to force something, and then Colin went to Disney World with his little brother.”
Turns out, Toy Story Land and the Slinky Dog Dash roller coaster provided the strike of genius they were waiting for.
“Every time the ride would go by it would go ‘woah!'” Shronts said, pumping his fist in the air with a dramatic flair you’d expect from a theater kid, not a law student, before punctuating it with what would become his signature nonchalant shrug. “I didn’t know Slinky Dog was cool like that.”
What’s in a name? In this case, the exact essence of the sound they sought and subsequently brought to Chapel Hill. Slinky and the Dogs is bluesy, folksy on occasion – but entirely rock n’ roll, continuously challenging the high-strung legal stereotype. They’ll tell you they were friends first, and admittedly “not Musicians with a capital M,” but making music together came naturally, with the same swiftness and cliché of Slinky’s famous “woah!” marking the start of something great.
The Show Must Go On
Slinks and the Dogs’ first few shows were small, free, and mostly attended by their friends and law school peers, but one of their favorites was the one where nothing went to plan – a show in the midst of hurricane season, and an early test for the budding band.
“It was the second gig we did at my house,” Moyer said. “I had some friends coming in town and I was like, ‘Oh, this will be fun with friends from undergrad.’ And then the power went out. The power was out for like thirty hours at my house.”
“Colin and Luis, his family lives an hour and a half from here, they picked up a generator and we used it to power basically just our amps. It was just a wild party. The lights weren’t on, the weather…” Moyer paused, gesturing around her as she remembered. “It just felt like we were in a twilight zone.”
The fire alarm started going off, roads were blocked off by fallen trees, and they only had a single stage light, but they all agreed – “very rock and roll.”
Even when it goes wrong, being in the band still his favorite thing he’s ever done, Shronts was quick to add, disclaiming how he was going to be “soft again.”
“Just this whole experience, meeting everybody and getting up on stage and watching people dance and sing to music that you’re making and writing, it’s euphoric,” he said. “There’s nothing like it. And the fact that you can do it with people you really love being around, you can’t ask for anything better than that.”
“We’re all Slinky”
When other law students are in the crowd, it makes it even more special, according to Kocher. While Slinky and the Dogs have professional careers planned ahead of them (Shronts focusing on finance, Moyer heading to the Navy for a summer internship and Kocher with an experience in private law on the books in the coming months), the band has been vital in balancing the challenges of law school and life.
After a recent show they played at bar review, they were reminded of how imperative it is to those around them, too.
“After the hurricane show, so many people came up and were like, ‘that’s the most fun I’ve had in law school,’” Kocher said.
So much fun, in fact, that even as the rain poured down, the lights flickered and the generator fizzled that stormy night, the audience crackled with electric energy and reveled in the opportunity to be carefree. Arriving to Moyer’s house, amidst a storm of epic proportions, they only wanted to know one thing. “Where do we park?”
“It’s obviously super fun for us, but then to give them something to go to and a place where they’ll know everyone and get to have a fun time is really nice, especially in law school,” Moyer continued. “You have to really weigh if you want to go out or give yourself a day off so I feel like it gives people an excuse to be like I’m going to go see my friends but I’m also going to take this time to relax and enjoy myself and be around my friends.”
The contentious nature of law school isn’t lost on this local band. In a lifestyle where their job is to pick sides, having something simply shared and celebrated is the balance they’ve been looking for.
“We get trained to argue and learn how to engage in confrontation,” said Shronts. “So, to be able to have something where that’s not needed, everyone is just there to enjoy, it’s really wholesome.”
“Everybody agrees on Slinky,” Kocher said, bringing us full circle, and back to the dogs. They can all agree on one more thing: it’s always fun, but it’s best when the crowd is just as excited as they are.
“Our main hit is called ‘Dog House’ and our friends really embrace barking as we sing it,” Moyer said.
The other bandmates agreed, chiming in that they are all “one team” when they’re on stage. Like the old saying goes, in a world where you can be anything, be Slinky… or something like that.
To demonstrate, Moyer broke into a series of lighthearted barks, as her bandmates laughed loudly around her and joined in.
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