With 13,413 combined views on its YouTube channel in an eight-month span, WKNC’s The Lounge has been nothing short of a hit.

“The Lounge is a unique and intimate live session in the WKNC break room,” said John Kovalchik, general manager of WKNC and creator of The Lounge. “And we kind of force artists to do things that they don’t usually do because it is such a small space.”

The Lounge is a video series that invites both Raleigh-based and national bands to come and perform, encouraging them to perform their songs differently than they were originally recorded, according to Matthew Brown, creative services manager of WKNC.

Walt Lilly, a senior in communication, program director at WKNC and co-creator of The Lounge, emphasized that The Lounge is very open to what the artists want to play.

“Our goal is to give artists the freedom to do whatever they want,” Lilly said. 

Brown said The Lounge was influenced by a different project that WKNC was doing at the time.

“A while ago we used to do these things called sessions where we had folks come in and we would do a pretty decent recording,” Brown said. “Then one day as that kind of fizzled out, Walt and John looked at it and said, ‘Wait a minute why don’t we do the same thing but also videotape it?’”

According to Kovalchik, he came up with the idea based on some projects that other college radio stations were doing across the country.

“I pretty much came with the idea to Walt and was like, ‘Hey, I got this idea: I think it would be really cool if we have lots of bands come in and perform. We do that anyway, but why don’t we just have a camera in their face and click record on a laptop?’” Kovalchik said.  

The Lounge was officially launched last summer, according to Lilly, but they did a test run first to figure out the production side.

“We started out last summer. We did a test with a member from the band Ghostt Bllonde. He is a friend of ours,” Lilly said. “So we just plugged in a bunch of stuff and just let him do his thing for, like, 20 minutes and just sort of figured it out.”

According to Lilly, a big challenge to getting The Lounge started was finding equipment to use.

“We spent a long time figuring out what equipment we would use, but then we figured out that all the audio equipment we used for Fridays on the Lawn could just be plugged into an interface to record,” Lilly said. “And we just used the WolfTV cameras.”

Lilly said the team was worried about whether the project was going to flourish.

“Well, when we were first starting out I was really worried that we wouldn’t have enough people to work on mastering the audio,” Lilly said. “But I’m surprised that we are still doing it, and it’s gotten to the point where we figured out how to get full bands set up, and we’ve had a lot of promoters reaching out to us.”

According to Kovalchik, getting bands to perform for The Lounge was easier because of WKNC’s existing connections.

“WKNC is in talks with a lot of artists, record labels and promoters already just to get airplay on the station and to get regular interviews, so we just went to them and explained the new project,” Kovalchik said. “But actually what we did was we first did a dry run with a friend from Ghostt Bllonde and just had him perform in the lounge essentially like what we had thought in our heads then showed it to bands who were thinking about performing.”

According to Lilly, WKNC hopes The Lounge will give lesser-known artists more exposure.

“The first thought was, ‘Wow, people who don’t even live in North Carolina or care about the music scene at all or know anything about the Triangle can stumble upon the T0W3RS video or the Ghostt Bllonde video,’” Lilly said. “So we are really trying to broaden the viewership of a lot of the artists that come in and work with us.”

Kovalchik said that in addition to getting exposure for lesser-known artists, The Lounge also brings national acts to the N.C. State community. 

“It’s a great way to have these national acts. Usually we grab them while they are on tour, so it’s not like they are coming for this specific reason, but it is something that might make them think more highly of the Triangle music scene and the N.C. State community, Kovalchik said. “They might want to come back here and play more shows here or do more interviews with WKNC.”

According to Lilly, The Lounge has had about 13 or 14 bands come in the past year and is looking forward to having more. Some of the artists featured include T0W3RS, The Love Language, Tweens, Matthew E. White and Jackson Scott. 

Kovalchik said he is looking forward to The Lounge’s future.

“It has taken a while to jump off to where it is now, but I’m happy with it, and I guess I didn’t think it would happen, but I’m happy that it did,” Kovalchik said.

WKNC does not post The Lounge videos on a specific schedule, but viewers can look out for at least four videos every month.