Interview with Trout Club

What got you into music, and if you had not gotten into music what would you be doing today?

Trout Club - All of us were brought up in musical households. Music has just kind of been a part of each of our worlds since we were very young, so it’s nestled deep within our conscious and subconscious. Once we figured out that us, as best friends, could make music TOGETHER, all bets were off at that point, and it became this self-driving vehicle propelled by our love of jamming together. We’re still trying to “make it” in the music world, so we’ve still all got day jobs. If we never got into music, we’d probably be doing more or less the same thing, albeit tirelessly seeking to fill the empty void that the lack of music has left in this alternate universe.

What do you like to do when you are not playing music and how does that influence your creativity?

 TC - We’re all pretty artsy-minded. We fart around with different things: Quique and Kai like to draw and paint, Cedric writes screenplays, Malcolm soaks up new music like a sponge, adding his ever-growing mental rolodex of influences.

How long has your band been around?

 TC - We’ve all known each other close to twenty years at this point! As a band, we’ve been together about a decade now. We started playing music together for fun when we hit high school, but only really got serious about the band in college. What started as a scrappy classic rock cover band slowly began to shape into an indie rock unit with original songs in-tow. Quique Hernandez-Black is our lead singer, rhythm guitarist, violinist and banjo extraordinaire. Malcolm and Cedric Bobro, twins in birth and in rhythm, play bass and drums respectively. Rounding out the group is Kai Zheng, who plays crazy solos on the lead guitar, tickles the ivories and occasionally sings.

Where are you based out of and how did that influence your music?

 TC - We formed in a small beach town in Southern California called Santa Barbara. To a lot of people, it’s an idyllic paradise, complete with warm sandy beaches and weather to match, backdropped by cinematic purple and sage mountain ranges. To us, it’s just home. It’s a groovy place where a lot of our passions were born out of. In a lot of ways, it fosters creativity. The scene is pretty laid back, which lends itself to that. You can hear a lot of that childhood whimsy in our lyrics.There are a lot of really cool local bands in the music scene in Santa Barbara. The community feels tight-knit and supportive, less saturated than bigger cities. You get to know the same people and bands and see them grow over time. Lizardsmouth is one of our favorite local bands, some of us even went to high school with all those guys. exPorter is our favorite pop-punk band that exists and they come from Santa Barbara, and we’ve gotten to play a lot of great gigs together. They even started their own label, Maxthedog, and we’re working with them to try and create our own little music community where we can support and promote one another.

How did you come up with the name of your band and what does it mean to you?

 TC - We spent many hours practicing up at the San Marcos Trout Club, a neighborhood in the Santa Barbara mountains where Malcolm and Cedric lived at the time. We spent just as many hours shooting around horrible band name ideas. Since we could never agree on one, we decided to simply call the group Trout Club after the place the band was born.

Tell me about your most memorable shows.

 TC - One of our most memorable shows was at Cold Spring Tavern in Santa Barbara. It’s a rustic saloon nestled within the creeks and hills of the Santa Ynez mountains, and actually used to be an old stagecoach stop in the 1800s after the war. Aside from the breathtaking scenery itself, it was memorable for a few reasons.

Number one: It was an outrageous heatwave. The temperature outside was holding strong in the low 90s, and inside the venue itself, it was even hotter. By the time our set ended, it was nearly 100 degrees, and we learned that a fire had broken out somewhere down the mountain, so we had to evacuate and high-tail it out of there.

Number two: it was our longest set to date. Before playing the Tavern, we were used to playing hour long sets, and to play the Tavern, you needed to have at least three hours of material. We really honed in on our jamming that night. All in all, it’s one of our hometown’s most iconic venues, so to be there on that stage itself was such a knockout.

What is your favorite venue to play at, and do you have any places you want to play that you have not already?

 TC - Our favorite hometown stomp is probably Old Town Coffee in Goleta, CA. We were one of the first bands to play there, and it’s now a happening venue for all things art and local music, as well as a place to get a fantastic cup of joe. Santa Barbara needs more venues like that, a place for smaller and larger acts to join up in a place that isn’t just a music club. It’s a place for connection. We’d like to play everywhere and anywhere that we haven’t played yet! It doesn’t really matter where- we’ll play on a flatbed truck in the middle of Tupelo as long as there are folks who want to listen to our music.

If you could play any show with any lineup, who would be on the ticket?

 TC - We’d love to play a show exclusively with our buddy bands: that’s exPorter, Lizardsmouth, and Plumskin.

What is some advice that you would give to someone who is just getting into playing in a band and some advice that you would give to your younger self?

 TC - The focus should always be working on music that you and your group would like to listen to, first and foremost. There’s no point in making music you THINK other people will like, cause then you’re chasing

your own tail. Also, don’t take for granted the musical chemistry that you have with your band. Finding other fellas who can fit the mold of the music you want to make, and make it sound good, is an almost impossible endeavor. We all feel incredibly lucky to play with each other, and that we’ve found a band in each other.

If you could go back in time and give yourselves advice, what would it be?

 TC - Make more music!

Of your songs which one means the most to you and why?

 TC - One of our favorite songs at the moment is “Stage Door”. It’s probably the most personal lyric Quique has written thus far, and really encapsulates us, our background, and our journey as a band. On top of that, it has our most varied instrumentation on record, and switches between different time signatures and key changes, so musically it’s a song we need to focus on. It’s a workout for each of us.

Which songs are your favorite to play and which get requested the most?

 TC - To give a cop-out answer, we truly love playing each and every one of our songs. Anything that gets the crowd moving gets us moving in turn.

What is the creative process for the band, and what inspires you to write your music?

 TC - What inspires us to make music together is that we all really dig playing together. For each of our individual strengths as musicians, Trout Club is the perfect outfit. As stated earlier, it began as an excuse to spend time together. The fact that we can gel as players is certainly a bonus, but our friendship really comes first and the music is something that organically follows.

The creative process can come in a few different ways for our group. Sometimes, Quique might bring in a bare-bones song that he’s written on guitar or banjo, and we learn the chords, structures, etc. That’s the more traditional way of working on a new song. But sometimes, an extended jam on nonsensical chords can lead to inspiration, too. That’s how we got a crazy song like “Fog” down, for example.

What kinds of messages do you like to get across in your music?

TC - Every song is different. We like to convey whatever we’re feeling at that exact moment when the song is written. A lot of our songs are born out of Quique’s introspection, and we take it from there. We like to get across “good vibes” in our music.

Do you ever have disagreements in your band, and how do you get past them?

 TC - All the time! But they are almost exclusively creative. It could be as trivial as someone wanting two notes of guitar in the bridge, or for the vocal harmony to come in on verse one instead of verse two. But because we’ve all known each other since we were wee lads, we’ve worked out a million of these conflicts, and it never amounts to anything bigger than a group call to discuss where we need to iron out the kinks.

What are your plans for the future, and do you have anything that you want to spotlight that is coming up?

TC - We’d just like to keep having fun making music together. Whether that’s performing live shows, recording a new album, or just jamming in a garage, playing together always sparks something between us.

At the moment, we’re working on putting together live shows for 2024, and laying down the roots for a new album. From a songwriting aspect, we have the next one ready to go. All we need to do is get into a room together and make it happen. We’re all scattered across California, so regular practice isn’t an option for us. We have to be very strategic about when the four of us can group up and devote time to playing, which is challenging to do in the guise of our busy individual lives. Still, form the last album we really learned how to collaborate remotely, which is what we’re doing now. We’re currently creating demos for some new songs so that when we DO find the time to meet up, we’re familiar with the songs and we can hit the ground running.

LISTEN ON:

Spotify –

Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/trout-club/1492749969

BUY NOW:

Bandcamp -

https://troutclub.bandcamp.com

CONNECT with Trout Club

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/troutclub/ 

TikTok - https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdfTVXou/

Links - https://linktr.ee/troutclub