“We decided to have a venue on wheels.”

Sophomore Noah Tidmore leans back in his chair in The Commons, explaining the idea of “The Bro Show,” a series he films alongside the project’s audio guru Payton Pruitt.

The two invite artists to come perform their music in or around Pruitt’s van, The Bro, then offer a professionally-shot film for the artist to use as promotion.

“I wanted to do it to give artists that we believe in and all that stuff some good content because I know Noah’s really good at video and maybe I could at least do decent with audio,” Pruitt said. “A lot of people have some videos, but it’s not great quality.”

Pruitt purchased the van in May 2014 for $1,000, fixed it up and sold his car to use The Bro as his main vehicle.

“When I got (the van), the dude before me had taken off (most of) the letters,” Pruitt said. “It used to say ‘The Brooks Printing Company’ or something, but he’d just left ‘The Bro.’”

The two film any artists who perform at the van free of charge.

“(They are doing) something in or around the van,” Pruitt said. “It’s always in the shot.”

Tidmore and Pruitt said they see it as a service to the artists as well as themselves.

“Quickly after it was ‘Oh, we’re just going to do one a month,’ it kind of turned into, ‘Let’s give content to people who deserve good content but don’t often get it,’” Tidmore said. “It’s our main hobbies, and we’re able to put that into practice and consistently get better.”

The pair said the most famous act they have filmed so far is Seryn, an independent band currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee. However, their current goal is to be able to take their work on the road.

“In about a year’s time, (we hope) to get sponsored for a road trip,” Tidmore said.

Pruitt said he would want to film a series over several days, uploading content more often.

“We’d like to do a road trip, do Bro Shows and maybe go to SXSW or something,” he said. “(We’ll go) anywhere as long as our expenses are covered.”

Alumni Tate Hipps also helps film these takeaway shows — shows where footage is shot in one take, “completely raw.”

“One of the strategies I understand they’re doing is they’re building just a really good base,” Hipps said. “Then, they’re going to try to go for the bigger artists. All the views and subscribers and all that will come, but they’re just trying to build this good foundation.”

“The Bro Show” is only setting limits in terms of how they film, but not who, Tidmore said.

“We’ve kind of restricted ourselves artistically in a good way to confining all the videos to the van,” he said. “With normal takeaway shows you can go anywhere – that’s the freedom in it. But we decided, well, we can take the van anywhere.”

Tidmore said he writes emails to reach out to various artists, and he said he cannot be afraid of rejection.

“A lot of times, I’ll be writing up an email for somebody I really like and they’re pretty big,” he said. “I’ll be like, ‘ah, they probably won’t respond,’ and then sometimes we do get responses. We don’t set our goal too low because if we did we wouldn’t be getting these artists in real life.”

Pruitt said the two have been looking for a rap artist. However, anybody who writes or plays “good music” is welcome to submit their work.

“If there are any students that are singer/songwriter, contact us,” Tidmore said. “We can’t get everybody, but we want to hear your music if nothing else. With a school this size there’s got to be talent.”

Keep up-to-date with “The Bro Show” on Instagram at broshowmusic. For inquiries and potential filming, email [email protected].