Meet Zoe and Rio Infante of Strawberry Army in Long Beach

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zoe and Rio Infante.

Strawberry army is a girl fronted, surf punk, indie band from Long Beach, California. Zoe (lead vocals) and Rio (bass and vocals) are identical twin teenagers from a family of musicians. “We were always around music and bands and we started playing instruments and going to a lot of local shows at a young age, it just really all started there. I guess we were just destined to start a band ourselves.

Zoe was the one who was really determined to start a band of her own at the beginning of her sophomore year in high school. She and her friend, Adry, were there at the beginning and Rio joined a few months later.

Fast forward two years and Strawberry Army has released two albums, Citrus Grove 2018, and RED 2019, played countless gigs everywhere from San Diego to Santa Barbara and has no plans of stopping. Up next is to hopefully go on tour after they graduate from high school this June. “We dream of playing all over the US, and then going to Tokyo and London after that.”

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Some things have been easy for us and some things have been really hard. Strawberry Army began in the summer of 2017. Over the course of 2 days, we chose a band name, wrote three songs and opened a band Instagram account. In under 48 hours, we were officially in the music business. Strawberry Army’s first gig was two weeks later. The gig offers really started coming in quickly, probably before the band was totally ready for them, but it gave us a lot of practice performing.

In the beginning, Strawberry Army defiantly got a lot of ridicule from our peers at our school. Honestly, it was pretty easy to make fun of us at first. Maybe because we were a couple of 15-year-old high school girls writing and recording songs on our phones in the bathroom. We would put our songs up on Soundcloud, as soon as we could get through them in one without cracking up.

Another struggle was finding bandmates willing to commit. In the first year, we went through 3 different drummers and three different guitarists, before we found Darren Kaiser (guitar) and Eric DeMassi (drums). We stuck it out, though, and kept putting ourselves and our music out there. Before long, Strawberry Army professionally recorded and released two albums on all platforms, was playing about eight local shows a month (sometimes more), and actually had people listening to our music. The bands highlight so far was last month, playing “The Grinns” record release show, to a sold out audience on the main stage at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. That was a dream come true.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Strawberry Army – what should we know?
The thing that’s unique about Strawberry Army is that we’re a DIY surf punk band led by identical twin teenage sisters.

We’re known for working hard, playing as many shows as we can, and hopefully entertaining our audiences.

Other things about us:
We love vintage fashion, extreme makeup, loud music and mosh pits.
We spend our free time thrift shopping or at the beach with friends.
We’ve been known to watch Netflix for 10 hours or more at a time.
We don’t have our driver’s licenses, yet, and we’re not sure if we ever want to get them.
We were raised vegetarian.
We model for Vision in Los Angeles.
We grew up in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach.
We really want to go to Tokyo and stay there for a while, and then go to London and New York after that.
We fight with each other, A LOT, it gets pretty vicious.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
In the arts, having a thick skin is really important. It’s a very vulnerable feeling to make something from your heart and soul and put it out there to be judged by your peers. There were days that we wanted to crawl under our desks and hide when we heard people singing our songs in class. It’s better now, and we’re used to it, but in the beginning, it was rough, we’re not gonna lie.

Also, it’s important to have a strong work ethic. We never wanted to turn down a gig, and there were some weeks when we would play five shows in a row, often not even taking the stage until after midnight, and still had to get up for class in the morning and get our homework done. Designing merch, writing and recording songs, hours and hours in the studio, rehearsing, shlepping gear all over So Cal, late nights, driving 100 miles to a show for no pay, missing parties. It’s a lot to manage, but we love it.

Additionally, being fearless and not overthinking things has also helped us a lot. We just go for it. Let it flow. Our mom always told us that the only thing that holds people back is themselves. Might as well be us doing radical things, right? Why not?

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @strawberry_army
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strawberryarmy.lb/

Image Credit:
Michael Haight, Derrick K. Lee, Zack Snyder, Nicole Anne Robbins, Mike Grabe, Melisande Martin, Kevin Avila

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