Logan Williams is a music and technology major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who was passionate about music from a young age.
“I’ve been interested in making music for as long as I can even remember,” he says.
“The whole stereotypical, I used to beat on pots and pans in my house, that’s my whole
story… I started out doing that.”
Today, Logan is the drummer for local alternative rock band, State of Youth.
Logan often produces the band’s music and collaborates with other artists on the UMBC campus. He spends a majority of his time in the music studio available to students the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, which provides him with plenty of equipment essential to recording and mixing music.
When he has downtime from working on his personal projects, Logan will play the drum kit that is in
the live room.
Logan got his very first drum kit at age eight when he begged his grandmother to buy him a
First Act, a brand that manufactured musical instruments for young kids. His grandmother paid
thirty dollars for the kit at Goodwill.
“I loved this thing with all my heart,” Logan says.
He taught himself how to play drums and create music beginning in the fourth grade. “I had this
program called GarageBand, and I would just make really bad beats on GarageBand,” he says.
Later, in middle school, he started a band with some friends. Although he wrote a few songs for
the band, which was called Untitled, Logan says, “we never recorded anything and never really got past like, here’s an idea.”
In high school, Logan met most of the musicians who would form the nucleus of his current
band, State of Youth.
The band has played a dozen live shows, mostly local, though they’ve had a few gigs out of
state.
“We started out playing just in backyards. I think our first show as a band, it was in a
barn,” Logan says.
“There was 12 people there, and we just set up our instruments, and played a little set. It was bad, but it was fun. And then, since then, we did another barn party, we did some backyard parties, we did some DIY shows.”
The band’s first notable venue was the North Avenue Market, a restaurant (now closed) in West
Baltimore.
“That’s a pretty big milestone because it was the first show that we considered ourselves a headliner,” Logan said.
One of Logan’s favorite local venues to play is Zen West in Hampden. He says, “It’s such a
cool venue.”
“They have great food. It’s just a great place to be,” he says.
But his love for music doesn’t end with State of Youth. He will work on just about any new
musical project that he can get his hands on, explains his co-producer, first-year student at UMBC, John
Ward.
John met Logan in their recording tech class, Ward says,“He just intrigued me because of how all over
the place he was.”
“He’s incredibly sociable. He tries his best to be flexible and very versatile, which is a pro and a con because he procrastinates like crazy.”
John finds Logan’s creativity remarkable and appreciates his friend’s talent for drawing out the
creativity of others. “Collaboration is this man’s main talent. It’s actually insane,” says Ward.
Logan has spread himself very thin with his busy schedule. In addition to schoolwork, State of
Youth, and his UMBC projects and collaborations, he sings with the Maryland State Boy choir.
He’s been a member since he was eight, he says, “The twelfth of this month marks ten years that I’ve been in that choir; I go Mondays and Wednesdays for rehearsals, and then we also have concerts. I have three concerts this weekend. It’s a pretty packed schedule.”
Logan also plays drums on and off for another band called The Band Deer; and he is active on
social media, managing State of Youth’s social media accounts, as well as finding new
opportunities to showcase his own musical talent online.
Using TikTok, he has duetted other musicians’ videos, adding his own spin to their music.
“I’ll like download the video, add a bunch of stuff to it, add drums, synths, bass, all that, and then
send it to them like, ‘Hey, I did something with your song,’” he says.
Often, the musicians will take notice of his videos, but nothing more really comes from this.
However, Logan has a more formal collaboration in progress at present, working with Ward, his co-
producer, to mix some music for a new student artist, Kat Gill, who makes music under the
name, Machinia.
Logan has recently been working on Machinia‘s cover of “Talking In Your Sleep” by The
Romantics. He says, “It’s really interesting because the original song sounds nothing like our
cover. The original song is a super peppy ’80s-Funk thing; ’80s folk pop-ish like. It’s really like
funky, and fast, and happy sounding,” he says.
“But ours just took a completely different direction. We made it sound super mechanical, and like synth-wavy, and slow and trottie, and four on the floor.”
Logan says he found it, “really interesting to try to juxtapose those vibes. It was a challenge,
but it was a really welcome challenge because it just turned out so good.”
His big project this fall has been wrapping up State of Youth’s debut LP. Logan has been
working diligently with his band members to finish up the album, which they plan to release
sometime this January.
On November 23, the band recently released their new single, “Lonely” onto streaming
platforms. Logan is proud of how the debut album is turning out as a whole and is very excited
for all the songs to be released and to get back into playing shows.
He says, “To see them finally be finished and brought to life, and soon they’ll be out to the
public, that’s another thing I really love about being in a band. It’s just like taking the idea and
developing it into a full-fledged thing for other people to consume, that’s been really cool.”
State of Youth has also booked two upcoming shows, one at Zen West in Baltimore on the 29th
of December and another on Jan 20, 2024 at the Recher in Towson.
Logan is very excited to get back into playing shows with the band. He says, “Being with other people,
even if they’re not taking in every word, just the energy at shows, and when you give it, and then
it’s reciprocated, it’s such a fun thing.”
Cristina Reid is a senior English major and a contributing writer from UMBC professor Deborah Rudacille’s Fall 2023 Beats Reporting Class
