Corvallis, a new student band at CHS, is made up of sophomores Olivia Gutierrez, Cam MacLellan, Luke MacLellan and Owen Taylor. They officially created their band in August of 2025, but met each other through freshmen classes.
The group couldn’t figure out a name until they landed on Corvallis, the street where they practice together. Corvallis practices in the MacLellan’s garage, but sometimes they practice in their house if they’re brainstorming songs with their acoustic guitars.
“We’re working on a song right now, we have the beginning verses and the chorus, we’re still debating the name but something with rain is what we’re thinking,” Luke MacLellan said. “The original riff Olivia made in the song had a fall vibe to it, kind of like a rainy, cozy day.”
Cam MacLellan plays the bass and sings, while Luke MacLellan plays the guitar and also sings. Billy Joel, Radiohead and Jeff Buckley are music artists that have inspired them to start playing music.
”We struggled with setting up our equipment in the garage, [but] I found a better way to set up the amplifier[s] and the interface,” Cam MacLellan said. “We have a Mac [computer] in the garage that we’ll use to mix and change all of the microphones and inputs that we plug into. We also use Logic Pro to record our music, SM58’s as our microphones and an electric drum set.”
Drummer Owen Taylor has been playing since he was three years old and is in marching band at CHS. The band members highlight how Taylor is always ready to jump into playing music, helping with the group’s indecisiveness. He hopes to pursue his music career in college through UC Berkeley or Boston and become a music producer for big bands in the future.
“I really like how I get to keep tempo with the whole band, I feel like I’m kind of the root for all of us which makes me feel really good while playing,” Taylor said. “I have to make sure to keep a solid beat to not mess up the rest of the band.”
Gutierrez plays the piano, the guitar and sometimes sings if a song needs an extra melody. The type of music they play is diverse, including folk, rock, alternative rock and jazz.
“We really want to create more songs and get enough cover songs so that we can do shows in the future,” Gutierrez said. “We’ve struggled with agreeing about cover songs that we want to practice and perform later in the future. We all have different songs that we want to play.”
They try to meet up to practice at least once a week, usually on Sundays. They haven’t landed any shows to play at yet, but hope to play at places like Prager’s Brothers and other local venues.
“I remember in our first practice we wrote a song and finished it, we called it ‘September’,” Cam MacLellan said. “Olivia created most of the song, it’s about [our] past relationships and being in love.”
Corvallis thinks they work so well together because of how close they’ve become after playing for months together. With Gutierrez and Luke MacLellan’s writing skills, Taylor’s passion and Cam MacLellan’s bass skills, they feel like they’ve grown far from where they started.
“Lately rock is the main genre that’s in our songs, we mostly sing about life, sometimes specific things happening in our lives,” Luke MacLellan said. “When we play, we all click, like when we write our songs and play the guitar, everything flows.”
