Students Alex Card and Anthony Isoldi will be rocking stages across the U.S. alongside other famous musicians this summer with their band Mighty Mongo at The Vans Warped Tour 2012.
Card and Isoldi have attended USFSP since their freshman year in 2008. The band officially formed in fall 2008 when Card and Isoldi met in Residence Hall One. Isoldi lived in the dorm room directly above Card and after a few weeks of overhearing Isoldi’s guitar riffs, Card ventured upstairs and befriended him.
The two bonded over their shared passion for music. They spent their free time jamming together and soon after Isoldi called childhood friend Scotty Chmura to play drums with them. The three clicked and Mighty Mongo was born.
The band started playing gigs at bars and restaurants in St. Petersburg and Tampa. They branched out into Gainesville and Citrus County, and eventually began to travel to Orlando, West Palm Beach and the Florida Keys.
A few years later, the band added a second vocalist, Lindsay Vitola.
Their booking schedule continued to grow.
In 2011, Mighty Mongo recorded its first studio album called “Let’s Make Serious Life Decisions” which was also available on iTunes. While the band continued to move forward, Card and Isoldi balanced full time school schedules and earned good grades. Card, lead singer and bassist, is a history major and Isoldi, lead guitarist, is an English literature major.
“It is like any job,” Card said of balancing the band, classes and homework. “It is extremely time consuming playing gigs, recording an album, practicing and booking shows. There have certainly been times when we were doing homework at a bar and were tired in class, but we managed to do it.”
Card said that while education is important, but life experiences are what college is about.
“Going out and exploring outside the classroom, pursuing a dream, finding out what you like and don’t like—that is how you learn who you really are,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing, we are learning about ourselves. We are pushing each other to accomplish these goals. We have built a company for ourselves.”
Adjunct Fred Ulrich recently had Isoldi as a student in an upper level writing class, and said he was a good writer, “always spot on.”
“Anthony’s personality was very unique. He was inquisitive, creative and always appreciated new and different ideas,” Ulrich. He chose to study and report on topics that other students knew very little about. He liked to study things that no one else knew.”
Ulrich was also impressed with Isoldi as a musician. “On our first day of class, he gave me a CD of his band’s latest recording. That began a bond that was not based on academics alone,” he said. “As a former guitarist, I appreciated what Anthony was doing. I was most impressed by him as a student, as well as what he is trying to do as a musician. He is chasing his dream, and I think he will catch it.”
Both Card and Isoldi are graduating this year—just in time for their summer adventure with Warped Tour. When Mighty Mongo was asked to play on the tour, the band members were ecstatic. “This is the fuel for the fire of our dreams,” Card said.
Most bands not signed with a record label usually get one or two dates around their hometown if they get the chance to play Warped Tour. Mighty Mongo was asked to play 15, including Orlando, Tampa and Miami.
Photo by Daniel Mutter
