Musical trio More Than Words performed everything from pop to country to Christmas music at the Russell House Acoustic Café Tuesday night.
Bandmates Cameron Larkin, a first-year business major, and Crystal Burbage, a first-year pharmacy major, have known each other since first grade, but didn’t discover that they each shared a passion for writing and performing music until their sophomore year of high school.
“I heard him at the school talent show and was like, ‘Whoa, you can sing?’” Burbage said.
For the following year’s talent show, Burbage, a classically trained singer who has traveled the country performing for the American Choral Directors Association National Women’s Choir and Larkin, who had no musical training, performed Lady Antebellum’s “Dancing Away With My Heart.”
But it wasn’t until their senior year that things really started to blow up.
For their graduation, they co-wrote “Stepping Stones” about “the things people said we wouldn’t miss till now.” Their school principal, who was reduced to tears during the performance, set them up with a live showing on Charleston’s WCIV-TV.
“It was the coolest thing ever,” Burbage said. “With all these lights on you, you start to fantasize about what that life would be like. Being the talent was a powerful feeling.”
When they came to USC this fall, the band adopted first-year chemical engineering major Cameron Wilkes to form what they jokingly refer to as “The Cam sandwich.”
More Than Words performs with a chemistry that reflects the members’ lifelong friendship.
“When a harmony comes together you step back and go, ‘Wait, did that just happen?’” Burbage said. “I live for that.”