Besides the commotion of students picking up yearbooks, the West Gym was an explosion of noise as juniors Cooper Avery, David Krejci and Griffin Nelson performed at this year’s Rockin’ Out the Jungle.

The trio forms Chess Club, a pop-punk band with Nelson on vocals and guitar, Avery on the drums and Krejci on the bass. It came about in their freshman year when an old band fell apart.

Chess Club’s musical style comes from Blink-182 and Green Day, bands which the members grew up listening to. However the band isn’t a carbon copy of 90s alternative, but sounds more like a revival of it. According to Avery, the group wanted to make their music different and exciting to perform.

“When we’re writing a song, we start instrumentally and we just play whatever,” he said. “Then Griffin writes the lyrics.”

On Friday, May 13, the band performed for the second year in a row at Rockin’ Out the Jungle. Avery saw it as a good opportunity to promote Chess Club.

“It definitely makes it a lot more real for our classmates because they just hear about it and not a lot of them get to see it,” he said. “They get to see that we can actually play our instruments.”

Chess Club isn’t simply a garage band, though. They perform multiple times a month at venues all around Lawrence and even plan to tour the Midwest this summer.

“Touring bands come through Lawrence a lot for house shows and we’ve met them through playing house shows,” Avery said. “We just asked if they could help us out with getting a connection there, and they did.”

Cities on the tour map include Lincoln, Nebraska, Kansas City, Kansas and the Tulsa, Oklahoma area.