Pictured Above: From left to right, Alex Roberts, Keegan Bradford, Bryan Gorman and Levi Bradford pose for a photo. Their band, Camp Trash, released an EP album in January.
Courtesy of Alex Roberts
By Edyn Gottlieb
Where do students go when the Zoom class ends? If you’re senior graphic design major Alex Roberts, you’re in the recording studio.
Born in Orlando, Roberts moved to Sarasota in 2004 where he grew up. He later received his associate’s degree from the State College of Florida before enrolling at USF St. Petersburg in 2017.
“I had friends who had gone to USF and really enjoyed their experience,” Roberts said. “And then I found out they had a really strong graphic design program and that was the green light.”
Roberts chose to commute to USF, remaining in Sarasota where he had met his future bandmates in 2012.
“We all grew up loving and listening to music and going to shows together,” Roberts said. “I was playing a lot of hardcore metal music and (bandmates) Brian (Gorman) and Keegan (Bradford) were into indie rock, but the Sarasota music scene was pretty intertwined. We all got along.”
Bradford, a guitarist, and Gorman, a vocalist and guitarist, started the band that would later be known as “Camp Trash.”
“They would get together during summer vacation and just play,” Roberts said. “They would write songs in a day and then they would perform them at shows that night.”
In 2019, Bradford and Gorman invited Roberts to fill in as their drummer for a show so, with Bradford’s brother Levi as the bassist, the soon-to-be band played its first and only live show together.
After the show, it was decided that Roberts would join the group permanently, and from there Camp Trash was born.
While the band hadn’t released any music, it started to attract a following on its Twitter account @camp_trash.
“We joked on Twitter that we were a band with no music,” Roberts said. “We were essentially a meme page. When we announced that we were really a band it just kind of caught on.”
Gorman and Bradford eventually decided they wanted to take the band in a more focused direction. At the beginning of 2020, they decided to record four songs and send them to different record labels hoping one would bite – and one did.
Count Your Lucky Stars Records signed Camp Trash in July 2020 and the band released its EP titled “Downtiming” in January.
Courtesy of Alex Roberts
The band is now working to record its first full album, which they hope to release later this year.
In addition to being a drummer, Roberts does all the design work for the band.
“I design everything for our band, so it has been cool going through the process of creating merch and vinyls,” Roberts said.
Roberts wants to continue his work in graphic design after he graduates and hopes to be employed by a design agency in the future.
Courtesy of Alex Roberts
