Daryl and the Beans Rock the Night with Album Release Concert
- Gia Biagioni
- May 6
- 4 min read
On April 16, 2026, Daryl and the Beans reunited for another exciting performance at Central Michigan University, celebrating the release of their album Hunk Alert. Over the last 14 years, Daryl and the Beans have performed for many students, exhilarated to see their favorite teachers perform their music on stage.
Jeffery Bean, known simply as Bean by students, has been a professor at Central Michigan University for 18 years. He teaches creative writing and some poetry courses. Before coming to the University, he taught at the University of Louisville for 2 years and the University of Alabama for 4 years. Before teaching, he studied jazz guitar performance and was a music major. He played guitar until he was around 22 years old, and he wanted to be a professional musician. However, he experienced burnout halfway through music school and realized maybe there was a different path for him. Bean said, “I have no regrets because it was what I needed to do, and I really got a taste of what it would be like to be a professional musician. I realized I didn't want to do it.” He then got really interested in creative writing and wanted to pursue that.
Darrin Doyle, PhD, has been a creative and fiction writing professor at Central Michigan University for 17 years and is also a part of Daryl and the Beans, a band on campus. He plays many different instruments in the band, including the acoustic guitar, banjo, and hi-hat. He began his teaching career as a visiting professor at the University of Louisville before starting another visiting position in Kansas, before teaching at Central Michigan University. Doyle met the other members of the band, Bean and Fanning, through teaching at Central Michigan University, where a friendship formed that turned into the formation of Daryl and the Beans.
Robert Fanning is an English professor who has been teaching creative writing courses at Central Michigan University for 18 years. Before working at Central Michigan University, Fanning worked for an eight-year term at a literary nonprofit organization in Detroit that placed teachers in K-12 programs. He was a writer-in-residence in Detroit classrooms, where he got his bearings as a teacher. He received his education in creative writing and went on to pursue an undergraduate degree in English, and pursued his Master of Fine Arts in poetry. He also worked for a travel website for three years. He has been teaching for almost thirty years.
Bean met Doyle at the University of Louisville, where they played in a band together called The Narrow Pier. The year after they met, Bean got hired at Central Michigan University, where Robert Fanning got hired that same year. They became immediate friends, bonding over music and shared interests. “We just, like, completely jived. Personality-wise, aesthetically, you know, we connected quickly.” Fanning says of his and Bean’s immediate friendship after being hired together. The following year, Bean and Fanning were placed on the hiring committee, looking for creative writing teachers, and hired Doyle, with whom the three of them became friends.
The three of them had previous experience playing in different bands, so they decided to form a band together after hearing about a faculty talent show that eventually got canceled due to them being the only act to sign up for it. But, through practicing together, they realized that they really loved playing music as one. The first show that Daryl and the Beans performed in was their own, in April 2012.
A hobby of Doyle’s is songwriting, which is where the beginnings of a lot of the band’s original songs come from. They all work together once a song is started and add harmonies and arrange it in a way that sounds right to them. In most cases, they begin songwriting on their own, but if they feel as though it is good enough, then they’ll share the idea with each other to improve it.
Daryl and the Beans sell merchandise to raise money for a writing award. This is for a piece of fiction, and any students who have taken an English class at CMU are permitted to apply for it. They created this award due to another fiction award being discontinued, and they wanted to fill that gap. The award is $237 because they “wanted to come up with a random number,” according to Darren Doyle. The recipients are chosen by a judge based on their original piece of writing.
Daryl and the Beans are eager to potentially have 2 shows in the 2026/2027 school year. Their guest drummer, Juice Legend, graduates in the Fall of 2026, so they want the ability to have one more show with him. They hope to be able to do 2 performances every year in the future.
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