Most college students spend their spring break trips sprawled out on beaches across the South attempting to get a little sun, a little sand and a lot of booze. But for Jacie Coressel, junior in political science, a casual evening popping champagne with Scott Avett from Grammy-nominated band, the Avett Brothers, was a trip more her style.
Coressel traveled to Europe with family friends over spring break in what she calls a "fly by the seat of our pants" kind of trip. With St. Patrick's Day in Dublin, Ireland, and an evening in London hanging out with Scott Avett after one of his shows, it's a trip she will likely never forget.
The Avett Brothers, a folk-rock inspired band taking the world by storm, hail from Coressel's hometown of Concord, N.C., where she saw them play many times before they achieved their growing popularity.
"They always used to play in downtown Concord and I would go watch them," Coressel said. "I've been obsessed with them forever, so when they got really big I kind of felt like I had a sense of ownership of them."
Coressel's family friend who accompanied her to Europe happened to attend high school with the brothers, and after seeing their show in London, the band's manager invited them back stage where they had the opportunity to hangout with Scott for approximately two hours.
This wasn't the first time Coressel had made one of the brother's acquaintance.
"(My friend and I) actually ran into them in the mall once before," she said. "We have a really small mall in Concord. We were those girls who went up to them and asked for an autograph. I felt really bad because Scott was with his kids and Seth was with his wife, but they were just so cool about it."
While Scott admitted to Coressel that he didn't remember that fateful day at the mall quite as vividly, she said both brothers haven't let the fame go to their heads and they each possess an infectious, down-to-earth personality that seemed to stick around for their second meeting.
"They are just so down to earth," Coressel said. "They're just really good, family-oriented, small-town men. They're still connected to their roots, which I thought was really amazing because, I mean, they're playing a show in Europe and they still have these great personalities. They haven't been caught up in the fame."
Coressel said whenever she meets a fellow Avett fan, she feels a sort of connection there. It's a universal fandom, with incomparable loyalty and endless love for new and old sounds that vary between records.
When it comes to The Avett Brother's music, Coressel is a huge fan of it all, but she tends to prefer their older stuff, with albums like Emotionalism, rather than their newer sound in the wildly successful album The Carpenter.
"I like their new stuff, I really do, but Emotionalism is probably my favorite album," Coressel said. "Their older stuff is definitely better to me just because I grew up listening to it. I feel like their style has changed a lot because they have become more famous, which I understand because they're trying to adhere to popular culture, but I definitely like their older stuff a lot better. It's all great though, I can't really complain."
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