(Colorado Daily)

The end of the spring semester means a lot to Ryder Robison and Greg Daniels, more than it means to most college students.

In May, the pair will graduate, and they’ve got big plans for the future. They plan to quit their jobs. They plan to live in a van with four of their best friends. They’re pretty sure they’ll be broke, and that’s just fine.

Robison and Daniels are the last two members of the local rock band Eiffel to graduate. The other four have been holding down jobs, biding their time, waiting for the day when all six are free of their obligations at home. That day is fast approaching.

Eiffel began about five years ago in another incarnation known as Margarie Reed. Then a four-piece, the band, Robison, Adam Tymn, Joe McChan and Quentin Smith, wanted a bigger sound. They achieved that by adding two more guitar players, Daniels and Chris Sorenson, to the mix.

“Having two new members, that added a lot more input,” says Robison. “You’ve got six incredibly different people giving lots of input.”

The result was a distinctly different sound for the band. The music Eiffel began to make was bigger and more complex, but not necessarily a lot heavier. He band used the additional personnel to shore up areas where they were lacking, and to add layers to otherwise flat songs.

“It’s not that we weren’t happy with what we were doing,” says Robison. “We just wanted to do more. We wanted to progress, we wanted to have a bigger sound. That’s why we have three guitar players.”

Having an extra guitar can add a lot to the sound of a band, but dealing with the logistics of having six members goes way beyone deciding where everyone is going to stand onstage. Eiffel keeps things interesting with the way it utilizes its massive guitar onslaught.

“We don’t have three guitars in the traditional sense like one lead and two rhythms,” says Robison. “Greg (Daniels) is the third guitar and he’s running a lot of sound effects and different things, so it’s adding a lot of texture.

Not that he’s not an integral part of Eiffel’s show. Daniels is the hardest working member of the band onstage. Still working on the developing his role as the third guitar player, e plays rhythm at times, but also doubles the bass part for many songs and adds in chirps and screeches here and there. And as if that weren’t enough, he also runs the lights.

“Greg essentially has his hands incredibly full,” says Robison. “We don’t use the venues lighting system, we use our own lights. He’s running all the lights that we have. And then he’s also playing guitar, so he’s running back and forth between the two.”

Daniels genuinely seems to like all the action, but has doubts about the future of his role as a jack-of-all-trades.

“It’s such a pain in the ass trying to get the sound guys to help you out,” says Daniels. “Just having clubs allow you to do it … you almost have to fight for it. Plus it makes setup time a lot longer.”

Lately, offers from record companies have begun trickling in, and Eiffel stand ready to take the next step, just not too big of a step.

“We’re definitely not ready for a major label,” says Daniels.

“We’ve really only had one solid release on an independent label,” adds Robison, “and we’d really be jumping the gun if we were to jump on a major label.”

Aside from hiring a lawyer to help them over the legal humps of a record deal, the band is just fine tuning its songs, getting everything down tight.

“We pick apart everything we do now,” says Robison. “We feel like we have our niche, somewhat, in what we’re doing.,” says Robison. “We’re still going to be progressing throughout time, but the sound is so much bigger and so much better. The vocals, the guitars, the drums: everything is finally right on.”

All that’s left is deciding which label the band will sign with.

“We’re just looking at what everybody’s offering and we’re goingto take what’s going to work out best for us,” says Robison. “this is our career path. This is what we’re going to be ding for a long time.”

With only a month to go before graduation, that long trip is about to start.

“Everybody else already has their degreesand already has their jobs,” says Robison, “but come may 10, everybody quits and we hit the road.”

“And we’ll be poor for a couple of years,” says Daniels.

“But,” adds Robison, “We’ll be happy.”