Reynolds was initially reluctant to become a professional musician, partially because future bandmate Wayne Sermon had once told him: "Don't do music because you want to do music - do music if you have to do music". After he began attending Brigham Young University, Reynolds found that he could not "do anything else" and committed fully to a professional music career. In Utah, Reynolds met and recruited drummer Andrew Tolman to form Imagine Dragons. With Reynolds as lead vocalist, Imagine Dragons won BYU's "Battle of the Bands" and other local competitions. Bassist Ben McKee joined the band in Las Vegas and after Tolman's departure 2011 invited Daniel Platzman, also a friend of Wayne's from Berklee College of Music, to play drums, thus completing the group's current lineup. The band relocated to Las Vegas, where they began performing almost nightly as a lounge act. It was there in 2010 that they caught their first big break when Train's frontman fell sick just prior to the Bite of Las Vegas Festival. Imagine Dragons were called to fill in for them and performed in front of a crowd of more than 26,000 people. In November 2011, they signed with Interscope Records and began working with Grammy award-winning producer Alex da Kid.