The irreverent singing, songwriting, guitar-playing duo now known as Zack and Danny's Happy Hour had an equally ridiculous beginning. "It was spring of 2008 and Zack texted me to ask if I wanted to help him write a song about secret bathrooms" Danny Hoshino '11 begins. "I didn't know what that meant, but I had an inkling." He didn't elaborate any further as to his inkling, but suffice it to say, from this cryptic text message, the duo was born.

"The idea sat dormant for a while," Zack Ezor '10 picks up, "but I had a friend come up and visit me and he said 'I'm going to the bathroom, and I want you to write me a song before I get back,' and the association came up again." Despite the delay between text message and actualization, the song was written quickly and in the fall of 2008, Zack and Danny had plans for a full concert. "The way we scheduled the show, we determined we would have a show before we had any material," Zack said. However, without the haphazard planning it wouldn't quite be Zack and Danny.

Zack and Danny have played a handful of concerts during the duo's existence, including one last Jan Plan, one this fall, and a final show set for tomorrow.

Most of the songs the duo play were composed during a creative streak in fall of 2008. "When we get a good idea, the song writes itself" Danny said. "We sat down on the stairs of Miller three days before our concert and thought about writing a song about a male lady bug. We sat down and wrote the song in half an hour." Song writing consists of ad libbing creative verses and doing back and forth chords. "When you're two people you only have one person other person to rely on," Zack said "so you rely on yourself for the creative material." To which Danny added, "Especially when one person doesn't carry his weight." Laughter ensued. The creative process is organic, lacking discipline and structure, as in the other musical outlets the duo is involved in.

In addition to their duo, Zack and Danny are members of The Megalomaniacs, Colby's only co-ed a cappella group. Being involved in the Megs together provided an impetus for the duo's formation. "If we hadn't done Megs, we wouldn't have been friends," Danny said. "The fact that we were singing together 6 hours a week helped."

While the Megs and the duo are both music making ventures, they sit very separately for Zack and Danny. In comparing their involvement with the duo and the Megs, Zack said, "Being in the Megs is like being on the third or fourth date, but being in Zack and Danny is like being in married couple, we really don't try any more." Which is not to say that they do not take their duo seriously. But having an unstructured activity poses its time committment problems.

The fact of differing class years has posed a slight hurdle for the duo too, as Zack was abroad last spring in Uganda, and song writing stopped. Danny will be studying abroad in the Turks and Caicos during the spring, and Zack will have graduated. So for all practical purposes, Zack and Danny's Happy Hour's time at Colby is coming to a close. Entitled "The End of Happiness Tour," the show this Thursday represents " the first and final leg of the tour" said Zack. "We're going to pull out of the stops and play everything we have written." To witness Zack and Danny's Happy Hour for the last time, come to the coffeehouse this Thursday at 9:00 p.m. It's an event for the ages.