Cheer Up! The Early Years

Cheer Up!
The Dropouts originally started as a couple of theater kids, when Nick Barnett and Scott Wilson wrote the musical ''Cheer Up! For their friend's theater group, Boredway''. The Musical follows it's main character, Aaron, as he tries to find love and balance his work, social life, and mental health. A lot of the songs written for the musical eventually found their way onto multiple Dropout albums.

Through the casting process for the musical, Nick and Scott met Nikki, who was brought on to play one of Aaron's best friends, Rebecca. The musical gained a cult following and a good amount of popularity, even leading to a small theatrical adaptation of it's story. When making the movie, Jimmy Rodriguez and Nathan Taylor were brought on to help make sure the music sounded the best it could for the studio versions of the songs, this process also brought on the main members of the ''Dropout Brass Section. ''

The Band is Formed
After Cheer Up! finished it's run both in theaters and on stage, Nick and Scott realized that they both wanted to do more in music rather than theater, and called on Nikki, Jimmy, and Nathan to help them. With that The Dropouts were formed. The name had been decided on after they learned that both Nick and Jimmy were college dropouts.

Bad First Date
Using the connections they had made from the success of ''Cheer Up!  They were able to scrap together an EP to show to record labels, that they named Bad First Date ''since they thought that they weren't going to make a good impression on anybody. The EP consists of almost the same songs as their debut album ''Party Down! but with a few more songs from Cheer Up! ''because of time restraints. Without an entire production company behind them like they had for their musical, the music on the EP is a lot more rough and unpolished than they would've liked.

"While it [Bad First Date] sounds really unfinished and like 'baby's first record', there's a weird nostalgia that I have for it, and the times that we were in when making it. A lot of us had only recently met each other and here we were, taking the next big step in all of our lives together. That being said, I don't think anything was lost in the transition from Bad First Date to Party Down!,  as the latter really is everything we were trying to do in the EP, but just couldn't for whatever reason." - Nick Barnett

Eventually, the EP was found by producer Jeremy Hunter, and he picked the band up to create their first album.

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Party Down!