Aaron Howard’s career as a football player might be over, but his dreams of being a professional musician are quickly becoming a reality.

Howard, an outside linebacker for Iowa State for three years, decided to leave the team in March 2001 due to differing viewpoints between the coaches and himself.

“The coaches wanted to switch me [from outside linebacker to nose guard], and that just wasn’t suitable for me,” said Howard, who weighed in at nearly 240 pounds during his playing days. “I would’ve had to gain, like, 60 pounds, and it just wasn’t the position for me.”

Howard said the decision to leave the team was a difficult one to make, but it was something that he had to do for himself and for his own health.

“I knew what I was doing as a linebacker, and I thought I was in a good position to have a lot of playing time,” Howard said. “I didn’t want to gain 60 pounds and then ruin my body and be fat and slow and not athletic, so I told them that I had no choice but to leave.”

Leaving the team could have had a negative impact on Howard’s life, but he chose to instead pursue another one of his talents — writing and performing music.

Accompanied by long-time friend and bandmate Andy Hartman, a student at the University of Iowa, Howard has emerged triumphant from the ashes of his football-playing career, bringing his own brand of acoustic rock to the Ames music scene.

“Andy and I started playing guitar our senior year of high school,” Howard said. “We were both into Dave Matthews, and we’d come home after football practice and just jam. But after we graduated from high school, he went to Iowa and I came here. We didn’t really have time to do our thing together.”

Howard said the idea to reunite with Hartman and begin performing music again came to him shortly after he left the football team.

“After football, I just started writing more songs, and realized I had a lot more time to focus on that. That’s when I called Andy,” Howard said. “Over the summer we practiced, and then we got four or five gigs at People’s. And now, we play every Wednesday night at Lumpy’s.”

Howard’s newly rekindled musical styling, which he describes as “Ben Harper mixed with Dave Matthews,” is beginning to become a well-known act in the Ames bar-band scene.

His biggest break came when he was invited to perform as an opening act at the Maintenance Shop by Twistin’ Trees vocalist Ben Maynard.

“I told [Ben] that I didn’t know how good I was gonna do, because I’d never played by myself on stage in front of a crowd before,” Howard said. “Right after that, this guy, Chad Jacobsen, came up to me and said ‘Hey, I really like your songs, can I record some of your stuff?’ and we ended up recording a demo.”

This meeting turned into the jumping-off point for Howard’s musical career in Ames. His demo tape began to circulate around Ames and was the primary reason he began getting more shows in the area. Howard said he is in the process of mastering another demo tape, one that he hopes will be even more beneficial.

“This new demo is a lot better,” Howard said. “The first demo was just me by myself, but this new one also has Andy doing solos, and Chad is going to work some bongos into it.”

The future seems promising for this 21-year-old Davenport native. Howard said that despite his sudden departure from the football team, he doesn’t harbor negative feelings towards his past. With a few exceptions, the remaining members of the football team have been good to him, he says.

“There’s been a couple of guys who kind of gave me the shy shoulder, but most of the guys have been really supportive,” Howard said.

Leaving the team was a life-changing decision, but Howard seems to be taking everything in stride.

“I really don’t have any regrets,” he said. “[Football] was something that I loved to do, but soon after I left, I realized that I have more than one talent, which is music, and that’s something else that I really love to do.

“I still watch the games, and sure, it would be fun to be there, but I’m still having a lot of fun doing what I’m doing now.”

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