In order to begin touring with We Are Scientists full time, Tapper had to quit a new job. "[My new boss] was like, "Go and do it."

So, you’re about to graduate from Harvey Mudd College with a degree in engineering. Your Clinic liaison thinks you’re great and has offered you a job—in Maui. But you’re in a band with some friends, and they want you to move with them to New York City, where you have no employment prospects, squalid lodging in Brooklyn and a slim chance of getting gigs. What do you do?

If you’re Michael Tapper ’00/01, you pack your bags for Brooklyn.

“Looking back at it, it seems like a really bad decision. I don’t know why I did that.”

Six years later, Tapper’s band, We Are Scientists, regularly plays to sold-out crowds of screaming fans, has performed on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” and has a five-album deal with Virgin Records. As it turns out, the decision wasn’t so bad after all.

“I always thought there was some kind of dumb luck, outside chance that things would work out to some degree,” Tapper says. “But really I didn’t have aspirations beyond a level of success that allowed a good tour of the United States. I really don’t think I ever even entertained the thought—too much—of making a good living off of the band.”

Music has always been a big part of Tapper’s life. His father is a music teacher, and, while growing up, Tapper sang and played piano, drums and trombone in school and community groups. He also played in rock bands with friends. Despite all this, he never considered music as a potential career.

When he arrived at HMC, Tapper knew he wanted an engineering degree. “It seemed like it would be an intellectually stimulating course of study that would lead to a very concrete job future,” he says. Music continued to provide a break from homework; Tapper played in the Claremont Orchestra, the Pomona College Jazz Band, and several student bands with musical styles ranging from jazz to hard rock. In a couple of bands Tapper played with Keith Murray PO ’99.

Murray, after graduating, started We Are Scientists with two other Pomona alumni, Chris Cain and Scott Lamb. The three lived in Northern California, but Tapper would play with them when he was there or they were in Claremont. Eventually Cain and Murray moved back to Southern California, Lamb left the band, and Tapper became the drummer for We Are Scientists. They played at parties around the 5-Cs, including West Dorm’s TQ Night, and then decided to relocate to New York City.

The first few years were rough. None of the band members had studied music or done any songwriting before, so they were learning how to compose and to play together well. If 20 people came to one of their shows, it was cause for celebration. Tapper began doing temp work in order to have some income, and eventually got a job programming databases at a bank. We Are Scientists consumed most of his free hours; he even spent nearly all of his vacation time touring with them.

But traveling back to California, which they did about once a semester, proved important. “One of the things that kept us from just completely losing morale was when we would come back to The Claremont Colleges. The shows were always crazy,” Tapper says. “The kids were always really insane and really psyched. It was always so much fun to come back and play in Claremont. That was a huge factor in keeping us going.”

Eventually We Are Scientists recorded a demo tape that began to garner interest from music labels. They played some showcases for music industry types, then recorded a full-length album. At the 2005 South by Southwest Music Festival, they played to a packed room that included British DJ Steve Lamacq, who invited them to play live on his BBC radio show. Soon the song “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt” was a hit in the United Kingdom, and the band members quit their jobs to tour full time.

Tapper found himself telling his new boss that he was leaving less than three months after he started. “He was so happy for me. He was like, ‘You know, 98 percent of those people out there in the bank wish they were in a band.’ He was just psyched. I was totally expecting him to be so pissed off, but he was like, ‘Go and do it.’”

We Are Scientists’ first album with Virgin Records, With Love and Squalor, was released in the U.S. in January 2006. Since then, the band’s popularity has continued to rise. Their music has been featured in advertisements and the television shows “The OC” and “CSI: Miami.” The band has toured around the United States, Canada and Europe and has played shows in Malaysia, Brazil, Australia and Japan. They still play free concerts at The Claremont Colleges, though.

“In some ways, it’s a job. In some ways it’s an outlet for creative production, which in itself is rewarding in a lot of ways,” says Tapper. But the band is also a business. We’re a corporation, and we have to think about a lot of the same things that companies think about.”

During shows, We Are Scientists mix their music with comic banter that has earned them as much a reputation as their songs. On their website, www.wearescientists.com, they run an advice column that recently included suggestions for building your own laptop as well as injecting liquids into one’s brain to cure depression. Although the band name is We Are Scientists, they aren’t. Tapper’s degrees are in engineering, Cain’s degree is in international relations, and Murray’s degree is in English.

While Tapper is enjoying being part of We Are Scientists, he doesn’t want a long career as a touring musician. “Some people love it, but it changes how you think about a lot of things,” he says. “I would like to have a more stable, normal life with a home. It’s also hard to have relationships while you’re on the road because you’re rarely in the same place.” What may come after this phase of his life, he’s not sure.

“I don’t let it become my identity, or at least I don’t want it to be. I don’t want to be Michael from We Are Scientists. I just want to
be Michael Tapper, and a member of We Are Scientists too.”