Rockwell City teen fronts her own band, playing shows across the state

Lauren Villarreal will tell you she doesn’t really set goals, at least not in the traditional sense.
But Villarreal, a Rockwell City resident who will be a senior this fall at South Central Calhoun High School, has achieved an awful lot in her first 17 years. Not least of the goals she never explicitly set but has definitely met is that she is making her dream of making music professionally come true. She said she often finds herself doing something and realize that was a goal – recording music, performing in front of a live audience, booking shows at music festivals – just one she hadn’t put into words.
Her overall goal, she said, is more personal than a particular performance or level of success.
“Recording music that I enjoy listening to,” she said. “I am the pickiest person I know.”
Villareal takes music seriously. When she talks about how she came to form and front her current band, Seven Minutes ‘Till Midnight, she’s earnest and engaged, an attitude that often leads listeners to believe she’s older than her 17 years, her mom, Teresa Villarreal said. 
Read more in the July 4 edition.