Maddie had already sung ‘Riptide’ once at a school talent show and once at a live music venue in Charlotte before a stranger with an acoustic guitar stopped her on a blocked-off street in Raleigh and asked her to do it again. She said yes. Her mom, dad, and sister were standing right there watching. Her sister, who had just moved into North Carolina State University that day, quietly mentioned that Maddie had been valedictorian. Reggie, the musician behind the guitaro5000 project, had not known that until that exact moment, and it caught him off guard in the best possible way.
Eight blocks, 80,000 people, and one open mic that nobody planned
Packapalooza is NC State’s official welcome festival for incoming students, stretching across eight blocks of Raleigh with food, games, and roughly 80,000 people navigating the particular anxiety of a major life transition. Reggie arrived as an outsider by his own admission. He never went to college and said plainly that he had no idea what to expect. What he brought was a guitar, a willingness to stop strangers mid-stride, and a project called Sing With Me Live, which invites everyday people to perform songs that genuinely mean something to them.
The formula is disarmingly simple. He asks. Most people say no. He asks again. Some say yes. And when they do, he figures out the chords on the spot and they go.
Maddie sang ‘Riptide’ with real command, her family watching from a few feet away. An a cappella group called Grains of Time, founded in 1968 and described by its members as the oldest a cappella group in North Carolina, turned the sidewalk into a full performance before sprinting off to their own 2:15 show. A young man whose brother had just arrived from Dubai as a first-year business student chose ‘Pompeii’ and then stood quietly moved when a small crowd had gathered around him without his noticing. ‘I loved everybody stop to watch,’ he said afterward. ‘It was amazing.’
The race to the main stage and the song that pulled it all together
By mid-afternoon Reggie was running late, more than a mile from the main stage with barely a minute of margin. Even sprinting through the festival grounds, someone stopped him to sing. He almost said no. He paused, listened to the opening line, and let it go for a few bars before pushing on.
On stage he announced to the crowd that he had spent the day finding people who had never sung in front of an audience. He brought them up with him. Then the whole gathering, students who had met each other hours earlier if at all, sang ‘Stand By Me’ together. ‘You might be meeting someone for the first time today,’ he told them between verses, ‘but they could be a friend till the end.’
Reggie put it directly before leaving the stage: ‘I had no idea what to expect when arriving to NC State University. And how was it? It was an amazing day.’
The sister who believed first
Before the valedictorian detail came out, before the song started, Maddie’s sister said simply that she knew her sibling would achieve great things at NC State. Reggie noted that he had no evidence or reason to believe it yet either, only her certainty. Then the evidence arrived anyway.
Maddie walked away from the festival saying she always looks for opportunities to sing, and that she had found one. Her sister, the new student, had one full college chapter still ahead of her.
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