Sarah Alfano is a professor at SDSU, who also happens to be a bassist in a Minneapolis-based band, “Hot Freaks.” 

Alfano teaches the course MGMT 334, small business management, in the Ness School of Management & Economics at SDSU. Alfano is a temporary professor this year, and is currently running Medary Acres in Brookings with her parents. 

Alfano grew up in Brookings, and from an early age she took piano, guitar and bass lessons. Later she was involved in her middle school and high school jazz band. 

In high school, Alfano joined a band called “The Wrights,” named after the Wright brothers. This band would play shows around Brookings in places like bars and hotels.

“They had all-ages shows and you could go and pay five bucks and see a bunch of bands,” Alfano said. “That was the only thing to do when we were in high school if you were underage. We would play a couple bars downtown randomly that used to have live music.”  

In college, Alfano joined another band called “Buffalo Moon.”  

“All of us were from South Dakota except for our singer,” Alfano said. “He was from Ecuador.”  

Alfano attended the University of Minnesota to earn her undergraduate degree. Later, she went to graduate school at South Dakota State and was a teacher’s assistant.  

During her senior year, her friends from SDSU moved to Minneapolis and started the band Hot Freaks and asked Alfano to join. 

“I was asked to play in a band with them… I was taking 17 or 18 credits and working part-time, and playing in another band at the time… I almost said no, but then I was like ‘Whatever, I’ll just see what happens,’” Alfano said. 

The band was active for about three years before their hiatus. 

“We kind of just stopped playing shows,” Alfano said. “It wasn’t like a messy breakup. I think that would’ve been late 2014 to 2015.”   

In the summer of 2021 though, TikTok got a hold of one of Hot Freaks’ songs, called “Puppy Princess,” leading the band to gain additional listeners and an increase in streaming numbers on Spotify.  

“We put out a record in 2013,” Leo Vondraeck, the frontman and lead singer of Hot Freaks, said. “We put it online and… broke up a year and a half later. Eventually, people were starting to find out about it… and it kind of had a viral moment on TikTok three years ago.”

During this time, the band wasn’t aware of the popularity of their music on the app. Along with this new recognition, they received offers from record labels.

“At the time, we only had Facebook,” Alfano said. “That was our only social media, and we were getting all these messages from people [from record labels] saying, ‘I’m from Capitol Records’…all these big labels…[saying] ‘we want to talk to you.’

The band thought it wasn’t real at first, but later ended up signing a one-song licensing deal with Elektra Records.  

“That was kind of the beginning of our reunion,” Alfano said. 

The band getting back together also came with some challenges involving getting back into the swing of things as a band.  

“It was like learning how to walk after a traumatic brain injury or something,” Vondracek said. “Figuring out how to practice and play shows and record… it was fun.” 

Although it was an accomplishment for them, it didn’t mean that the work stopped there as a band. There was more work for them in navigating the music industry. 

“In hindsight, that was amazing,” Vondracek said. “In a way though, it kind of reminds you… continuing the work of the band is still kind of a nonstop thing and you look for these level-up moments, and that was the biggest one by far, but you got to do the work and hope for the best.”  

Alfano said that their outside managers assist with show and tour setups, decision-making and licensing contracts, while a business manager handles bookkeeping and taxes. 

“We’re up to at least seven people [team members] that are pretty actively involved,” Alfano said.  

Alfano is able to use her business experiences and knowledge and apply it to the band.  

Otherwise, the band members themselves do individual promotions and work for the band like selling merchandise online.  

“We’re really lucky we have different things to work on… different skill sets that we share pretty complimentary,” Alfano said. 

This summer, the band had their first headline tour, called “Cruis’n USA,” that had 33 official shows and lasted seven weeks, Vondracek said. 

Alfano said her experience on tour was fun and talked about fans of the band.  

“Being able to perform in front of people that know our music and care about it, and spend money to come see you play and then buy your t-shirt and make you a bracelet with your name on it, is a really really crazy experience,” said Alfano. 

Besides touring and seeing fans of the band, the other part Alfano enjoys is being with her bandmates. 

“I really love my bandmates; we all just have a lot of fun together. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, we always have fun.”  

Leo Vondracek said he enjoys having Alfano in the band.  

“We love Sarah,” Vondracek said. “She’s great, she’s a great collaborator… we have a lot of fun hanging out… I feel like she doesn’t get too wrapped up in the self-important nature of being a rock star; she’s humble.”

Vondracek also thinks it is good that Alfano teaches at South Dakota State.  

“It’s really cool that she’s teaching,” Vondracek said. “We’ve always been able to arrange duties outside her being a professor. I think because it’s just another one of her things that she can do outside of our band stuff.”  

The tour finished up during the first week of classes this fall. 

Alexis Moran, a junior advertising major, is a student of Alfano’s in the small business management course, who finds Alfano’s course helpful. 

“I have learned a lot from the course,” Moran said. “[She] shares a lot of helpful information [and] makes learning about how to run a small business fun by relating to her band and how they market their earnings and whatnot.” 

Alfano says she enjoys teaching the course because of her business experience with Medary Acres and with business that happens in her band as well.  

“I really like the class that I’m teaching and the subject matter because that’s what I have the most practical experience with,” Alfano said. “It’s really fun to teach other people about a topic I feel I’m pretty knowledgeable about and passionate about.” 

Similar to Alfano, each of the five band mates has their own separate lives and schedules in different locations.  

Alfano said Cody Brown, the drummer in Hot Freaks, is a freelance video director and editor. Celeste Heule plays the keyboard and runs a mobile sauna business with her boyfriend. 

For Vondracek, he lives in Los Angeles and does ‘odd jobs’ when Hot Freaks is not together. 

“He does odd jobs so that he can do music when he needs to. He’s done weddings, DJing, valet,” Alfano said. 

When it comes time for them to make music or play shows, they have to coordinate their schedules in order to meet.  

With Alfano’s schedule and priorities changing throughout the year, she says that Hot Freaks plans to continue to make music as soon as they can. 

“Our next big step would be to record new songs and get those out as soon as we can,” Alfano said. “It’s a little scary that we’re kind of going into unknown or untreaded territory, but it’s kind of exciting because we don’t really know what’s going to happen. I know that everybody is really interested in recording a new album.” 

With the new chapter of Hot Freaks, Alfano says that there are more possibilities for the band and more recognition in the future.  

“It seems like everyone wants to tour again in the future,” Alfano said. “There’s always possibilities of songs getting used in a commercial or a movie, and that would be exciting. We’ve learned a lot and we’re just gonna see what happens and keep going.”