CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 John Hauldren has been a Chicago Cubs fan all his life. During the team\u2019s last homestand, he got a text message from a high school friend. It was the first text he had received from him.<\/p>\n
Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong had just used \u201cFront to Back\u201d \u2014 a song from Hauldren\u2019s electronic music group, Levity \u2014 as his walkup music in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like \u2018What? Like, no way,\u2019\u201d Hauldren recalled. \u201cI, like, had to do my research for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sure enough, it was true. Hauldren confirmed the authenticity of the moment through a tangential connection to the emerging star.<\/p>\n
Crow-Armstrong\u2019s girlfriend has a cousin who is friends with the girlfriend of PJ Carberry, another member of Levity.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy girlfriend, her cousin and her sister actually all just went to go watch them in Arizona,\u201d Crow-Armstrong said. \u201cI had already been talking about making one of their songs my walkout, so I just decided to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crow-Armstrong, a 23-year-old Southern California native, also uses Larry June\u2019s \u201cStill Boomin\u201d for his walkup song. He said he isn\u2019t a big fan of dubstep \u2014 the subset of electronic dance music where Levity lands most of the time \u2014 but he likes Levity\u2019s stuff.<\/p>\n
Music is a prominent part of Crow-Armstrong\u2019s daily routine, and he enjoys the process of picking a walkup song.<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic\u2019s the best thing ever. I mean, literally, universally, it is the best thing ever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hauldren, 26, has a similar opinion when it comes to Crow-Armstrong\u2019s baseball team. Hauldren is the youngest of four siblings in a White Sox family from suburban Chicago. He grew up going to White Sox games on the South Side.<\/p>\n
But he was always a Cubs fan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just kind of stuck, and a lot of my friends were Cubs fans, too,\u201d he said. \u201cSo thankfully my dad would suck up his pride or whatever you would call it and take me to a Cubs game every once in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
The beginning of Levity goes back to Hauldren and Carberry connecting at the University of Iowa in 2017. They met Josh Tarum through mutual friends, and they started making music together.<\/p>\n
Hauldren and Carberry live in Chicago, and Hauldren worked on much of \u201cFront to Back\u201d at their place in Bucktown \u2014 not far from Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy window is the skyline of Chicago and stuff,\u201d Hauldren said. \u201cAnd so seeing that song get played at Wrigley Field when it was made watching the skyline of Chicago and being very close to Wrigley Field was just insane to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Crow-Armstrong used the song as his walkup music, Hauldren posted on Instagram about how much it meant to him. He tagged Crow-Armstrong in the post, and the two talked. They are hoping to meet up at some point.<\/p>\n
Levity played Coachella<\/a> this year, and it is going to Lollapalooza<\/a> this summer in Chicago\u2019s Grant Park. But Hauldren said his connection with Crow-Armstrong ranks right up there when it comes to his most memorable experiences with his group.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just very happy that if someone ever plays a walkout song for us, that it was the Cubs,\u201d he said. \u201cLike I couldn\u2019t be happier that, you know, of all the teams that it was my team.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n