It all started at poetry day last year when senior Cole Troia met Eisenhower alumna Francis Johnson. The two musicians became friends and Johnson invited Troia, who has been playing the guitar for nine years, to one of her gigs.

“She said to come up to one of her gigs, so I went to one and I sat in,” Troia said. “I just kept sitting in until we started working together.”

Shortly after they started working together, the musicians wrote a song. Troia wrote the music and Johnson wrote the lyrics, but there was no way to produce it. But, an unexpected opportunity presented itself.

“We found out about this opportunity to go to Fort Wayne, Indiana,” Troia said. “I took off a day of school and we went down there.”

Sweetwater Studios provided the young musicians with a drummer, piano player and a bass player to record their song.

“We started the day at 9 a.m. and we finished recording around 5 p.m. We went out to dinner and when we got back, the engineer had it full mixed for us. So, we had a full song,” Troia said.

Originally their song, “Out Loud”, was an acoustic song, but the producers put a spin on it.

“We brought them an acoustic song and left the studio with a fully produced rock song,” Troia said. “We went in and didn’t know what to expect, but we really liked the production and the final piece.”

Troia previously recorded with a band in Rust Belt Studio in Royal Oak, but the experience in Fort Wayne taught him more.

“(I learned) the full extent of what gets put into making a song that you would hear on the radio and how there’s so much collaboration and how there’s technical stuff that you don’t see and you just hear it,” Troia said.

Although he doesn’t plan on pursuing a higher education in music, it will always be a part of Troia’s life.

“I’m going to school for product design and innovation at Western Michigan University,” Troia said. “But, I’m going to always have music in my life.”