September 15, Simmons College opened its doors once again to GrooveBoston for its Visceral Tour 2012-2013. The Holmes Sport Center reached full capacity in the first hour with a total of 650-700 students throughout the night from Wentworth, Simmons, Mass College of Pharmacy, University of Maine and Virginia Tech.

Students raged from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. to the tracks mixed by GrooveBoston Director Bobby Dutton and Operations Manager Adam Weisman. The Moore Gymnasium was transformed into a mobile club with GrooveBoston’s team of light specialists, stage technicians, Dutton, and Weisman. Lights and sounds were blaring from the building and could be heard throughout the Quad.

“Our goal each night is to unite crowds, and create this powerful new reality. It’s not simply about ‘entertaining’ people; it’s about creating this experience,” said Dutton. GrooveBoston is centered around the music, with it’s professional DJs, high-tech stage music and equipment as well as a completely thought-out show from the music selection, to the lights that coordinate with each song, to covering safety measures and building the stage or venue from the ground up.

GrooveBoston works with clients individually to give them the best possible show for their budget. Last year, GrooveBoston brought the Wildfire Tour to Simmons College, and this year the Visceral Tour was the theme. “‘Visceral’ is all about bypassing your intellect, and getting right down into how you actually feel. Your guts, your heart…that’s what it’s all about. Your reality stops when you enter that room; we’re creating something that’s so viscerally there,” said Dutton regarding what GrooveBoston tries to accomplish each time they perform. GrooveBoston was conceived originally as a “mobile club” to create a new market space. Dutton and Weisman crossed paths at a Tufts University event, both Weisman and Dutton’s alma mater. Weisman was the student DJ while Dutton’s GrooveBoston was the main event next door. Weisman joined the GrooveBoston team full-time in 2012. Dutton is currently the president-elect of the International Special Events Society of the New

England Chapter and GrooveBoston’s events have been nominated

for international awards from the organization. “Essentially, it was about creating events with full-scale production, but without astronomical artist fees,” said Dutton. Instead of having to pay a large fee for Deadmau5, GrooveBoston brings electronic remixes of popular songs and are able to add their own creative spin on them. “We are completely open to elements from familiar songs, and acknowledge the importance of making our sets accessible,” said Dutton. “We use a lot of remixes of remixes of remixes, often

with a deeper beat combined with familiar vocals. As we earn the crowd’s trust, we start to take them a little farther, to push their boundaries as we explore things together musically.” Amy Bliss, the Event Coordinator for GrooveBoston this year and last year as well as the co-president of the Simmons Campus Activities Board was pleased with the

turn out in comparison to last year. “The GrooveBoston Visceral Tour event this past weekend came a long way from the GrooveBoston Wildfire Tour we hosted last year in Alumnae Hall, which was done on a smaller scale,” said Bliss. Simmons College decided to include Wentworth officially on the invitation of GrooveBoston’s Visceral Tour, but many colleges of the Fenway were present in the crowd. The prices of a Simmons

student ticket were $10 while other colleges with a student I.D. were

$15. “We put a lot of energy into making these events legendary, and that is all we do. The focus on specialization and social impact, rather than the tradition route of versatility, has really set us apart as a company, and contributed to our brand mystique,” said Dutton. “We love what we do!”