From left to right: Danny(Drums), Ben(Vocals & Guitar), Spencer(Bass), Brad(Lead Guitar)
It was an unusually clear and sunny day in the Richmond District in San Francisco. I walked toward Noise Records, where Carpool Tunnel had said to meet. As I approached the band and introduced myself my nervousness faded because of the friendliness and outgoing nature of the band.
As we walked toward Golden Gate Park, they explained to me that they were moving from San Jose to San Francisco in June and how excited they were. Finding a spot in one of the polo fields, we started the interview:
How did you guys meet and end up starting the band?
Ben:
So we met on an app called Vampr, it’s essentially a tinder for musicians. I first had met Danny on the app and then we went to Santa Cruz and jammed with an acoustic guitar and a drum pad. Then Danny had connected with Brad on the app and we met all in his garage down in Southside San Jose. I had kinda showed him a song I had been working on all together and by the end of that practice, by the first time we had met, we already had a complete song almost and we figured out the band name within that week. We didn’t end up getting Spencer until like october or November or so. That was on Vampr as well. Vampr helped us all meet, it’s interesting! 21st century! Haha
What’s the backstory behind your guy’s name?
Ben:
So I had been going to city college down in Santa Barbara and my friend had been working as a barista with had a sheet of paper that said band names on it that was on her fridge that people would just walk up drunk and write band names on. I had her text me a picture of all the pages of the list, I wanted to see what people had written and so we went through all different names and eventually we found this one that said Carpool Tunnel in Rome and we were like “What? That’s so long!” but we were like “Carpool Tunnel is kinda cool..” Yeah and then it kinda rang and we just heard it and felt like it fit. We realized the pun on it, we liked the pun that related to if you play guitar enough you might get karpaltunnel. Haha
What bands or artists are your guy’s biggest influencers?
Danny:
We are all very influenced by Tame Impala I think, even though it’s psychedelic sound we try to take what we like from it, song writing wise and make it our own, thematically. Honestly, I grew up listening to hella metal music and all hardcore drumming and then I met these guys and kinda toned it down so the music I listen to is definitely not what we play, but it kinda changes as we find our own collective sound.
Spencer:
I had a very similar situation, I played a lot of classic rock, and Queens of the Stone Age, Royal Blood, a lot heavier of a sound, but as soon as I moved out here and met these guys, I did the same thing as Danny. I opened my mind up a little bit more and I saw more genres, more diversity in music and the different sounds you can make with guitar, bass, or any kinda instrument, it really opened it up creatively for everyone.
Brad:
I listen to a lot of The Strokes, Tame Impala, also like old blues, but also like 50s music like Everly Brothers. Also Summer Salt, Turnover, I used to be like a huge Pop Punk kid and then I changed my music entirely to chill stuff even like Soccer Mommy.
Danny:
Right after I started getting into Led Zeppelin, the more bluesy stuff, was when I met these guys. So when me and Brad connected on Vampr, we were like, “Let’s make a blues band!” That’s what Carpool Tunnel was originally gonna be. We wanted to play in bars or something to make money.
Brad:
That was gonna be like Brad and The Lads, our side project hahaa.
Spencer:
Sometimes when we start off a rehearsal we don’t start with a direction, we’re not trying to practice a song or work on a set, we’re like, “Let’s play something.” We start off and maybe Brad plays a blues riff or maybe I play a bassline or Danny plays a drum part and we all just kidna let it go where it wants. Somebody will throw in a new part when nobody knows what to do and that new part evolves into a song. The last two songs that we wrote happened that way, where like everybody started introducing new things and parts that they had heard in the music and we just all start to build on top of each other until it turned into this huge production.
Do you think your city or community has had an effect on the type of music you play? This could be San Jose or San Francisco, whatever you feel like has affected you.
Ben:
We definitely get affected by the bands we play with and I mean we definitely take the response our fans have to our music to heart a lot and especially that has kinda guided us to where our EP and album are headed because we’ve seen what our fans like out of our seven songs we have out right now. I think we’ve taken what in those songs were most popular and taken that sound and gone somewhere with it. I think that’s something that’s going to show through our album a lot, which is supposed to come out in July! It might be earlier, first or second week of july, we’ll probably have it out.
This is so exciting! Is it full length?
Ben:
Yes! Full Length album, it’s going to be titled: Bloom.
Spencer:
It’s just going to be like springtime, moving to San Francisco, all the flowers are blooming.
Ben:
It’s kinda coming of age, and us growing as a band.
When did you guys first discover the local music scene in your area and what does it mean to you?
Brad:
When I was in 8th grade and me and my buddies started a band, it was really bad, it was actually with the drummer of The Cautious, if you know them?
Yeah I’ve heard of them!
Brad:
And so the drummer of The Cautious back then and I were like best buds and then we had another guy who had been in my other band. So we started a band and it didn’t really go anywhere and so I had a friend move in from England and we started a band and that was Four Block Walk. There wasn’t really any other bands in the area at the time, there was actually one, it as called Good Intentions. Their family actually owns a church and so they were able to throw shows in their church.
Wow that’s wild, would people mosh?
Brad:
Yeah people would mosh and everything. It’s called the Living Room in San Jose. They have a separate stage from the area used for services that has full light and sound made for shows. So we could pretty much do anything we wanted and so from there our band kinda just started playing with Good Intentions a lot and then School of Rock is in San jose, so a couple bands came from there. Bands just started popping up everywhere, I’ve just been playing in a band since 8th grade.
Danny:
Brad also records a lot of the local bands so he gets around, he has a lot of connections.
Oh cool! Where?
Brad:
Out of my garage!
Danny:
We recorded our whole EP in Brad’s Grandma’s house, a beach house in Santa Cruz. Brad’s a master at the mixing and mastering and he did our whole EP.
Bred:
I spent ten hours on “San Francisco.” Just mixing it. It was during finals week and we had two weeks until we had to leave for tour so it had to be done! It was some of the most stressful two weeks.
Danny:
This is kinda unrelated, but also when we recorded the EP in that beach house, we did all five songs in a weekend, which is exhausting! It was very brutal!
Brad:
Friday was literally just like, we showed up at seven and then set up everything and kinda just went to bed. We slept in though! Haha it was bad. We were supposed to get up at nine.
Danny:
You guys slept in, but I woke up and made pancakes for everybody!
That’s so picturesque! It’s like a happy family ahaha!
Brad:
Yeah that’s kinda our band dynamic.
Danny:
I was just like c’mon everybody let’s get recording, I got pancakes for ya.
It’s crazy you guys get along so well and you met on an app!
Spencer:
Yeah that environment you wouldn’t expect to meet genuine people through it.
Did you guys have mutual friends?
Brad:
Danny knew of my band, but I don’t think he ever saw us.
Danny:
I thought I did. I thought you were the bass player for a different band! Haha! I met Brad and was like “Ah I’ve seen this guy play before he’s super good at bass! Oh.. wait different person…” Hahaha. The other cool thing about Vampr is that we all got it because we all had the drive to be in a band and to make music. We all had the same reason, so like we connected really early on in the Vampr stages because we all had the same desire and I think the same drive, I think is one of things that keeps us so close.
Brad;
When I went on Vampr, I had my band Four Block Walk, but we didn’t really play that much, we’d play a show every few months, then a practice maybe twice a month and me, haha, I need to do more than that. I was in five bands! I was in a band called Breathing Room, which was like a math rock band, a band called Bedhouse, I was in a band called Four Block Walk, and at a point I was in a band called Glass Garden, all at once. So when we started Carpool Tunnel, I was like okay just that. We were practicing like two to three times a week and that was exactly what I needed!
Ben:
Going off of that, kinda what Danny was saying, it’s really hard to find passionate musicians that kinda all want the same thing. Going into it, especially from an outside perspective if you’re not in a band or anything, I mean before I was in a band, we like started grinding hard, it seems like all fun and games, which it is! I mean we have a great time while doing it, it’s a lot of hard work at the same time though, you have to find people who want to play shows even if they’re shitty shows. We say yes to everything we get asked to play, for the most part, as long as we can make it work.
Have you guys experimented with other sounds and where are you headed with the new album coming out?
Brad:
So the new album, I would say.. we approached writing it with the idea of crossing over two genres in the same album. So the first side is gonna be lighter, but also more of like indie-rock type thing, like the seven chords and all that fun stuff. And then it gets harder as it goes. The second side, were experimenting with a lot more pedals and stuff like that. Getting onto the almost psychedelic rock type side. It blends across the entire album, each song gets a little more different and by the time the album is over, the first song and that last song are gonna be very contrasted, but everything will slide through to reach it. So were kinda taking all the elements of our songs because the EP is kinda just a bunch of songs together, “San Francisco” is pretty boppy and dancey and we also have “Getaway” which is harder and we do weirder stuff, definitely taking inspiration from Tame Impala.
Danny:
On the EP we did, we were all very like new at playing with each other and excited so throwing everything we had into it. So now after playing more and more with each other, we are now focused on complementing each other and letting the songs write themselves more than wanting to put a cool riff in a song, were letting the songs do their thing.
Ben:
Every song kinda like ties in thematically, I think all of us are all interested in conceptual albums, especially because Tame Impala does that a lot and other artists we are inspired by. That was something I really wanted to put into this album in kind of a loose fashion. I think that’s something that will more come later in future albums, we can tie that in and make albums have a story behind them. That’s kinda what were trying to tie into this album, but it’s a little more loose than we’d want it to be, but we think each song really blends into each other really well.
Brad:
It’s a lot more on a similar thematic level than any of our other songs. Everything has a purpose, everything has a mood, and everything has an intended emotional takeaway.
Danny:
Hopefully, you’ll be able to tell by listening to one of the songs off our new album you’ll be able to tell that it’s from that album. All of the songs go to together and hopefully in our next projects in the future, we’ll have a different type of sound and our songs, you’ll be able to tell which album they’re from.
Spencer:
A lot of songs tie into our personal experiences. I think our EP that we wrote was really tied into where our minds were at when we were recording it. Each of us were coming from a different place, a different environment, a different background, we didn’t really know any of the same people. Ben and I had both come from completely different areas, moved into San Jose, a very industrial and busy city. We came from these different places and told our stories though our music. A lot of our shared experiences shine through when we play our songs and they piece themselves together.
What are your guys favorite local venues to play at/go see shows at?
Brad:
924 Gilman! That place is great, I’ve loved that place my entire life, not my entire life haha, but my entire life of being in a band haha.
Ben:
Gilman is great, Honey Hive is awesome, really supports local artists. We used to have an amazing place called Backyard Coffee, but it is reopening!
Brad:
The Living Room in San Jose! That one is great, too!
Is that one open a lot because I never see shows there?
Brad:
No, so it’s my buddy who runs it. He can only do so much with it because it’s completely volunteer run so whenever he’s putting on a show there’s usually a 150 to 200 people so like he has to get people to volunteer for security, people to volunteer to work sound and lighting and just have quite a few people on board because you have to clean the whole thing, too. So they also kinda don’t wanna bring in some band they’re not familiar with that are gonna bring in people who don’t usually go there, it’s not that people who don’t know what it is can’t go, but it’s also a church and his family owns it, so he can only do so much with it. We have lots of local shows there and I’m trying to bring more bands in, but he can only do so much, he can’t have a show every week there. And if he had a show every week there, the hype of it would die! So there’s kinda a strategy to it, but it’s also about keeping it an all age safe place that anyone can go to in San Jose.
Spencer:
It’s hard to get a younger audience when most the venues are 21 and up. There’s a lot of talent out there and I remember when I was 14 and I wanted to go out to shows, but all the venues were 21+!
Danny:
We would love to play at the Bottom of The Hill someday!
Who are your guys favorite local band or bands you’ve played with?
Everyone:
The Grinns! They’re from Orange County.
Brad:
I can speak for all of us, the Grinns are definitely our favorite. They’re signed so they’re technically not local anymore, but I’d definitely highly recommend checking them out and interviewing them! The Cautious is also really cool and Unpopular Opinion, they’re cool dudes.
Ben:
If you haven’t checked out a band, Lunar Hand, that’s who we went on tour with in January. We’re gonna be doing a tour with them this summer for about a couple weeks. Were gonna be playing some more shows down in San Diego, hopefully with The Grinns, too. I’m just so excited to be around all these great musicians, we meet new bands all the time and it’s just awesome!
Okay that’s all my questions! Any final statements or anything you wanna make?
Danny:
Carpool Tunnel 2018!! Haha!
Ben:
Bloom, our debut album is gonna be out this Summer! 2018, were gonna be touring, were gonna be in San Diego, were gonna be in Oregon, Arizona, Reno, stay tuned with us for tour dates, were gonna be announcing those real soon! Stay tuned! We love everybody! Yeah! Spread love and peace! Ahaha!
I want to give a big shoutout and thank you to Carpool Tunnel for letting me interview them, but also for being really genuine and nice people! I had a blast doing this interview and have now seen them live a few times and they put on an amazing show.
PLEASE go support them and listen to their music:
All words and photos by Mac
