While the rest of campus closes for the night, Kim Farmer arrives at work. Farmer works the night shift as a Telecommunicator for Campus Safety and Security, but when he's not at Elon, Farmer explores his passion for music.

Farmer is the lead singer of the 70s rock band, Zachary Smythe. The band is made up of Farmer's friends from high school and although they live in different parts of the country now, the band gets together to perform a few times a year.

The band formed in 2012 when the friends reunited to play music together and realized they wanted to do that sort of thing more often.

"It just kind of happened, which is fun, so it's not pressure," Farmer said.

Farmer's passion for music started when he was fifteen years old and he started playing guitar.

"I grew up with my uncle playing in the home when I was little," Farmer said. "Always being around it sort of helped and it just seemed sort of natural to fall into that."

Now Farmer has added even more instruments to his repertoire. He currently plays mandolin, double bass, electric bass and guitar, trombone, piano and he has just started playing octave mandolin.

"I just try to keep busy," he said.

His love of music connected him to Elon University. Farmer grew up in the area and took bass lessons at the university in 1974, with Dr. Artley, the founder of the Elon orchestra.

"He was a big inspiration to me wanting to pursue music cause he was just a great inspiring teacher," Farmer said.

Later, Farmer attended Elon to study music education and has been teaching music lessons off and on since 1978. Currently he has 10 regular students whose ages range from seven to over fifty-years-old. Helping his students grow and overcome their difficulties is his favorite part of teaching.

"It's nice to watch them grow and lead them through the frustration of their hands hurting," he said. "It's like any kind of thing you do when you're training your muscles."

Farmer says helping people is something he enjoys both in his job teaching music and in his job at campus security.

"I'm not doing a cookie cutter job. There's that tie with people. That's important," he said.