The benches Interview

How did you come together as a band? 

 We’ve all kind of been around each other in the San Diego local scene. Like, Ethan had  his local band, the original iteration of this band, we’ve all been kind of around each other in the musical scene, in the music scene in San Diego, but we kind of finally, post covid, came together.

So my next question is a little less, a little less music related and a little bit more fun. Um, what surprises people about you?

That’s a hard question. One second. I think a lot of people are surprised to see, um,  a cat on Evan’s guitar.That’s kind of a less serious answer.

Evan: Yeah, I have my cat on my guitar that I play at the shows, and fans are always yelling at me from the stage like, what’s your cat’s name?

I would like to ask other people that question. Yeah. I’m not sure what people would be surprised by.  I mean, it seems like, I mean, I might be being presumptuous here, but like, at least on this tour, we’re opening up for like, a much bigger band, where all of them are older than us, so I think maybe sometimes people might be surprised that we’re, that we’re a younger band that’s playing shows, cause like, that’s when I got excited about that when I was younger, when I would see bands that were comprised of younger people too.

My next question’s also also a little bit more fun, but I’m some, I’m just kind of curious. Spotify or Apple Music.

Oh, we’ve had this, we’ve had this debate before. I’m sure we’re divided. Yeah, yeah. Oh, really? I Evan i’m an apple music guy when it comes to like, When it comes to like the mixes of music there’ll be apple music has like the dolby atmos mixes of  I don’t know things sound better on apple music through speakers and headphones, in my opinion, yes.  But when it comes to finding new music in like, bands you’ve never heard of before,  you know, Spotify with like their playlists and their like, discoverable.

how has your tour been so far? Is this your first tour? Have you had some good experiences in each of the cities? Any, any standout cities? 

Well, this is our fifth tour thus far. That’s wild. Our longest tour, definitely.  And it’s been really good, we’re always looking forward to, you know, New York, just  because it’s New York, it’s such a big city, it’s so strange. Yeah, um, we played Denver last night, and that was an amazing show.

Yeah, that was one of the biggest shows of the tour. 

 What are some cities we were surprised by this year? 

Nashville was really cool too. Yeah. Which was cool, because we’ve had some, like, not so amazing Nashville experiences, but our last show there was really cool. Really cool. Um, I don’t know, where else? I think Atlanta’s never disappointing.

Atlanta’s always fun and Portland, of course.We have some friends in Portland that we always look forward to seeing, so I feel like that’s always a special stop as well.  Texas is always great to us as well, even though we’re not there yet.  That’s so awesome. Yeah, that’s so cool that you guys have Like have so much experience touring  Yeah, we’re all so lucky to be doing that right now  Yeah, very fortunate  portland’s great portland has a really intense music scene.

So I guess Talking about music scenes, San Diego itself has a, has a pretty vibrant music and art scene. Um, how do you feel to be one of the many, like, creators coming from there? 

 It’s cool. It’s funny cause like,  I feel like, I don’t know, the scene is always constantly changing. And I feel like we,  like, I guess as the band’s grown and we’ve been touring more, it’s like we don’t necessarily think of ourselves too much of a, as a San Diego band, just cause we play so much outside of California at this point.

Um, but yeah, I mean, when we were all like in our teenage years, there was so many, like a ridiculous amount of bands. That we would like go see every week and play with and like, yeah, notable people coming out that I’m sure it kind of influenced us in some ways just by being like excited by it. 

 Is, Is there like a specific artist or album that you draw a lot of inspiration from, or originally started to draw inspiration from, like as a group? 

Right now with the current lineup, we, it’s constantly changing. Our listening habits tend to fluctuate from month to month with the betters coming now or whatever year. Like the influences at the time always worked their way into our, our, uh, jams and stuff. Um, some notable ones we always talk about to collectively are like Fontaine’s DC. 

We’re very inspired by our peers as well. Yeah, like yeah,  I think a lot of a lot of like what shows the music is Just kind of stuff that we’ve grown up with to like like just a lot of like early 2000s rock Yeah, rock that kind of shows Um, but I think as our tastes have changed, as we’ve grown, we’re kind of evolving with that too.

My last question for you guys is what are your expectations for your show in portland and for the rest of your tour? 

That show is gonna be uh, we’re supporting idk how we’re supporting another band that night So we’re only gonna have a 30 minute set  Sadly, I wish we could play more songs for you guys. But, um,  I don’t know. It’s gonna be energetic, fun. I mean, we’ve been testing out a newer song, too, besides the new single.

So we’re expecting to be playing that again. And, uh, it’s been fun. A lot of people have been liking that, I think. Yeah. And, uh,  yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure.  Yeah, it’s really, I mean, overall, this tour has been really cool because it’s always, like, exciting being in front of people who don’t really know who we are even though there’s, luckily, like, the select fans that are, like, super hype in the crowd and singing along but, like, the majority of the crowd doesn’t really know who we are so it’s always kind of like a, not like a challenge, we just want to put on a good show for the people who don’t know so we can, like, impress them and hopefully they’ll like the music and check it out. 

So yeah, well, we’re always shooting for that. 

As the tour comes to a close, what are you looking forward to in like the future? 

We’ve, we’ve got a couple things we can’t talk too much about in the works, so….

Don’t sound so secretive.

 No, no, no, no, I’m just, I’m just, no, I’m just saying like, we’ll get back and we’re looking forward to writing more. Yeah, we’re working on, we’re working on music. We’re trying to finish it. Playing more shows. Some stuff out soon. More shows. Um, yeah, that’s like an overall goal. A lot more writing, a lot more music coming out hopefully.

Yeah.  Um, and we’d like to headline more too, so we’re looking forward to trying to get some more headline shows going!