Today we’d like to introduce you to The Espresso Boys.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
Espresso started in 2015 while Colin Martin, Alex Gutierrez-Kovner, and Dashel Dupuy were in high school. They all grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles called La Crescenta. In its own bubble, La Crescenta had few musicians and literally no other bands around, so the boys had to scavenge around LA for shows and likeminded people, eventually finding the DIY scene in venues like The Smell and the Lyric Hyperion Café. Espresso began to play shows every weekend with bands like Super Lunch, Clit Kat, Dumb Fucks, The Red Pears, and Jurassic Shark. Finding their home in LA’s DIY Punk Scene, Espresso was always an outcast in their own right, playing more funky, groove driven music, but the energy was always high and seemed to fit right in amongst the other punk outfits. From 2015-2020, Espresso has played about 200 shows along California’s Coast to New York, and many places in between. In early 2019, the then three pieces decided to have drummer, Colin Martin, move to vocals, and added Ardem Gourdikian to take his place. Alex (bass) and Dashel (guitar) supported this move, and live shows had quickly become an inclusive dance party with nonstop movement throughout the entire set. In 2020, Espresso plans to keep playing shows throughout the US and release music along the way.
Please tell us about your art.
Espresso makes music. We make songs for all listeners, whether it be the well-versed musician who likes to be excited by interesting chord progressions or for the bedroom dancer who wants to escape into a song. The creative process usually starts with an activity to free our minds like a hike or skateboarding and then progresses to getting together in Colin’s room and plucking out ideas that may be new or have been in someone’s back pocket for a while. Experimenting with ways to manipulate sound or altering how words can fall in line in a sentence get us horny to create and make something new. We hope that people can listen to our music and get the urge to share memories with others, love, dance, or even be okay with being alone. It’s comforting music, music that lets you know that someone else is out there just trying to have their voice be heard too. Just know that we make our art with little to no outside input, it is what we want to hear, it is what we want to make. All our songs might not be the same genre or sound the same, but they’re all that we wanted to hear at certain points in our lives.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
Do what the fuck you want to do and do it with your friends. This is literally what we’ve done so far, and it has felt pretty good. We don’t make music that sounds exactly like someone else for a reason. What we all grew up on molded us into our own musicians, and the music we make is just how it came out. A lesson we wish we learned earlier was probably get good photos taken. People are fuckin love photos of bands, and if a band has shitty photos, they aren’t going to want to take the further investigation into who they are. Yeah. Good photos!
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
People can come to watch us play live. This is what we encourage the most. You can listen to us online everywhere, but the most fun is coming out to a show, being amongst a room full of people, and having everyone dance. The moment our set starts, the stops in between songs are minimal to nonexistent, allowing the energy and motion to rarely halt. On Instagram is where we announce shows, @espressoband, and we have close to all social media platforms as well that contain the same information. Support comes in buying our merch, listening to our songs, and watching us play. Without people doing that, we’d be in Alex’s garage making new tunes for his neighbors to yell about.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://espressoband.bigcartel.com/
- Email: espressoband3@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/espressoband/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/espressoband3/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/espressoband
- Other: https://linktr.ee/espressoband
Image Credit:
Holly Robeff
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