PHOTO: EVAN DELL PHOTOGRAPHY
middle child The musicians behind the aggressive musicality of Lakeland’s local hardcore act, Middle Child, hold a passion for pushing the boundaries of creativity in music and live performance. “Josh approached me when I was first at Southeastern; after noticing that I played the drums, [he] asked me if I wanted to play in a band,” says junior Daniel Benefield. “We just started playing music we liked and we thought our friends could get into [it]. We’ve just been doing that ever since then.” Middle Child has a 3-track studio release and is in the middle of recording a follow-up record set to be released sometime in April this year. “We don’t know what we want to do with music; we don’t know what image or genre we fit into,” says Benefield. “Josh, our frontman, and I are both middle children in our families. We used to be kind of like our band, in a way of not really fitting in or knowing really what we want to do. We just wrote what we wanted to write and played where we wanted to play. It’s Middle Child.” Middle Child frontman, senior Joshua Bowlby, leads the hardcore group with his vocals and unbound energy that draws the crowd into their shows. “I think some things just deserve to be screamed,” says Bowlby. “When you feel alone or unaccepted, you just kind of wish that someone would just shout, ‘I accept you’ or ‘I love you,’ you know? Not all of life is pretty or nice to listen to; some things are just aggressive or deserve to be screamed about. We want to address those things and let people know that they’re not weird for feeling the way they do, but we do want to meet those issues head on.” Middle Child’s music can be found on Bandcamp and YouTube. 19
SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE - 19