Today we’d like to introduce you to Cameron and Jon Kuwada.
It all started when we were born ten minutes apart (we are twins), but we’re not like those twins who are super close to each other. In fact, music is just about the only thing we have in common; our personalities and interests have very little overlap. Jon is much more extroverted and loud. He’s into surfing, the beach and Jazz and RnB. Cameron is more reserved, introspective. He’s more into alternative rock and indie music. Our musical journey started on piano (Jon) and drums (Cameron) when we were six.
However, we didn’t actually play together until we formed a rock band with our friends in middle school. Little did we know, that this would end up being the foundation for the “Kuwada” project. Every weekend we’d spend hours practicing and taking our band way too seriously for our age. Practice was always filled with tons of laughter, yelling and literally tears. We’d always push each other harder than we’d push our friends in practice.
This level of accountability that we’d put on each other is key in our musical process today. We often clashed on musical opinions and taste, but somehow we could always read each other’s mind when we were playing. We had a kind of musical telepathy and could play off of each other fluidly on stage. It was crazy though, outside of band practice we rarely crossed paths or even talked at school. Some people didn’t even know we were related.
When it came time to go to college, we chose schools on opposite coasts so that we could finally let ourselves truly be individuals. Even more, we initially chose to pursue completely different career paths. The actual “Kuwada” project itself started with Cherry Cola. In college, Jon woke up one day late for class, and said: “Ah well, I’ll just write some music instead.”
Both of us kept writing music and sharpening our production skills during college, but never worked together until Cherry Cola. Jon skipped class and put down the rough instrumental and lyrics down for cherry cola. He remembers feeling different about the song, it was the first song where he decided to be soft instead of writing raps to more hip hop beats.
He thought it was corny, but it was honestly about where he was in life, it was a vulnerable love song and about a girl he was crazy in love with. It was about that kind of nostalgic, young, idealistic love, but also the kind of love that pushes you to be your best self. In the back of Jon’s head, he knew he wanted to work with Cameron on this one. He remembers listening to his SoundCloud whenever he’d put something out, one of the few ways we still interacted really.
Cameron’s music was so unique, it had this level of vulnerability as well but personality to it, and it wasn’t afraid to be emotional. Jon hit him up to help create “Cherry Cola” because Jon wanted Cameron to put his sound into the song and deep down knew he was the only person Jon trusted to work on this. His music had that vulnerability that Jon knew would benefit the song, which is a staple of our musical outlook.
We strive to allow the music to communicate who we are. We knew that our visions would align on this because, despite our differences, we spent the first 18 years of our life together and much of that time playing music together. Kuwada really started with our first band, because playing together really shaped how we write and produce music together now and our workflow as partners in the project.
When we first worked on Cherry Cola, it was the first time we worked on music together in four years, but we jumped right back into it seamlessly. As artists we have a workflow and vibe with each other we formed way back when. Our differences in personality and musical tastes really play into our sound. I think if we created music separately, it would sound dull, or like something that already exists.
But it’s our contradicting influences that play into our sound, it has elements of everything, RnB, hip hop, jazz, indie, reggae and even some Hawaiian influence from our home. I guess in total, who we are, goes back to the beginning, this project has been a long time in the making. Even though we didn’t know it back then, playing together really shaped us as musicians and how we operate as a duo now.
It’s a yin and yang thing, we have very different vibes and personalities, but we have this commonality in music that we’ve been forging since almost day one that creates something new. It’s the balance of our differences, but our shared love for music that is the essence of this project.
Has it been a smooth road?
A big obstacle for us has been working so closely with family. Because we’re brothers, we know that we can push each other harder than you can push your friends. At the end of the day, we know that we’ll never leave each other because we’re family. It poses a challenge because we can be really critical of each other; it really is a double-edged sword, working with family.
As we said earlier, we don’t always get along, but it’s that tension and clash between our musical tastes and differences that make for good music. However, art itself is a struggle and is borne out of struggle. We do everything from writing, producing, and performing ourselves. This allows us to have greater control over our music but also places an immense amount of pressure on just ourselves. We never make it through a day without arguing about at least one aspect of a song or about musical taste in general.
One thing that they don’t tell you about being in music is that it’s like running a small business. Being an artist is more than just being about writing and performing music, there are so many other things about the operation that we need to be cognizant of. We have found out that the learning curve in the music industry is so so so steep.
There are so many other things that have to be done to make it a job. Ideally, we could just make music, and that would be it. We quickly learned that it’s not so. Every part of your day, every thought you have, will slowly become related to music in some way or another. It’s not enough to just write music, you have to become your music and live through it.
Another one of the largest challenges for us is about being able to separate from ourselves from the music. It is easy to really get lost in trying the make the perfect song. At the end of the day, you have to make music that is important to you. You can’t spend too much time trying to make a song that everybody else will like. Another challenge is definitely remembering to love music. It is difficult to mix one of your greatest passions with your career.
Making music, our career introduces a lot of other worries into the equation. Where it was once just us and music, there are no bills to pay and a host of other things that we need to leverage music into taking care of. It gets easy to get lost into thinking of music as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. While it’s great to make a living doing what you love, it is easy to lose sight of the reason why we started making music in the first place; which is because we love it.
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
We make music. We produce, we write, and we record our music. We think that it’s safe to say that the music we make is pretty unique. We marry tropical influences with more contemporary sounds.
Our music reflects who we are as people, and we’re pretty unique people. We’re super proud that our music makes people happy and that they can relate to it. People have told us that our music has a distinct sound but at the same time, captures a certain familiarity/nostalgia.
Where do you see your industry going over the next 5-10 years? Any big shifts, changes, trends, etc?
The music industry is already in such a big shift, with the ability for anyone to put their music out there. As technology for producing music and recording music becomes more accessible for the average musician, the sound of music evolves. We now see such a variety of music on the Internet; more than ever before.
New genres are being created as we speak, with a uniqueness that couldn’t have existed a decade ago. Artists that would have never made it before now have a huge platform and audience to share their vibe and music. In 5-10 years we only see this trend continuing further. Music is going to evolve faster and faster because of the sheer volume of music being released.
Sure they’ll be tons of people on SoundCloud replicating other peoples styles and sounds, but there will be tons of new artists bringing something never heard before to the table. What excites us the most, is that the type of music we’l’ be listening to and creating in 5-10 years could sound so unlike anything out right now.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kuwadamusic/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kuwadamusic/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kuwadamusic
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNr00tDB_iMWjYQhPNI4iVA
Image Credit:
Jeremy Leff, Spencer Sun
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