The Rotunda of the Liberal Arts center is now home to Marywood’s brand new musical group, The Woods Men.

The group, which has so far performed two songs in the Rotunda, is comprised of members Cody Messersmith, a junior music education major, freshman music education majors Jonathan Mengoni and Ricky Baublitz, and Mark Harvey, a junior guitar performance major.

Since posting their first video to social media, there has been much attention surrounding the four performers. The original video showed the group performing “Afternoon Delight” by Starland Vocal Band in the Rotunda. At the time this article was written, it had almost nine-thousand views and is featured on Marywood University’s Facebook page.

Originally, the performance was supposed to be, as the group called it, a “one-hit-wonder.” After dressing up as the crew from the movie Anchorman for Halloween, the four were inspired to dedicate a song to their favorite characters.

“They sing ‘Afternoon Delight’ in the middle of the movie. They just break out in song, like it’s completely random and we loved it as music majors. We thought ‘Hey let’s sing “Afternoon Delight” when we’re the Anchorman cast.’ And then we recorded ‘Afternoon Delight’ a few nights later in the Rotunda because…the acoustics in there are fantastic,” Jonathan Mengoni, member of The Woods Men, explained.

The four friends did not expect what would come next. Mengoni said, “People of Marywood loved the video. [Juneann Greco, public relations director] approached us and asked if we would make more videos every week to promote the music department.”

The group’s second video featured the Labyrinth in the Rotunda and was dedicated to a cause dear to many. Ricky Baublitz, member of the group, stated, “With everything that happened in France, we decided to do a tribute to them so we sang ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon.”

The second video garnered over 28 thousand views and had 465 shares when this article was written.

Cody Messersmith, member of The Woods Men, said, “It’s been unreal. Collectively we have [about] 40 thousand views [on our videos].”

Plans for future performances include mash-ups of popular songs and classics inspired by the 1950s and 1960s in order to cater to all audiences. The group also hopes to start taking requests for new material through social media.

There is, however, a common goal between the four performers. They hope to one day make it on the Ellen Degeneres show.

Mengoni said, “Yeah, we’ll see how that goes.”

Fans of the group are encouraged to use #TheWoodsMen on social media.

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