An Evening With The Band CAMINO

Let’s jump right in. What was your inspiration for your new single “Something To Hold On To”?

Jeffery: That was a co-write; we wrote that song with our friend, Matt Wertz. I don’t really know the specific inspiration for the song. Me, Graham, Spence, and Matt all wrote that together. We cranked it out in like 5 hours.

Graham: One of the things we talked about is when you have a breakup, there’s always one person that’s looking for a piece of that to hold on to. That wasn’t necessarily the specific inspiration, but that was definitely the main theme. You’re brokenhearted, she’s moving on, and you’re looking for a piece of that.

Spencer: You know, holding on to the good parts of the relationship: “Something good, something real, something I can really, really feel,” to quote the song.

What’s your favorite song to play live?

Graham: Right now, we all really love “Less Than I Do.”

Graham: It just feels right; it just meshes really well. It’s just a groovy song. The nature of the song is very laid back. We haven’t played it live that much (it’s kind of fresh).

Garrison: It’s kind of funny. For some reason in my mind, I was like, “This is gonna be impossible to pull off live,” and then the first time we played it, it was easy, and we were like “oh, cool.” It’s just everybody’s favorite.

Where did the name “The Band CAMINO” come from?

Graham: We had a song, “Young,” the first song we ever really wrote together. We were trying to release it on Soundcloud when we were first starting, and we were trying to come up with a name because you can’t release a song without a band name. We had this group text, and we had all these names and we were like, “If any of them stick, say something,” and no one was saying anything. Everyone would be like, “That’s kind of cool,” but there was always one person that would be like, “No.” Then I saw an El Camino car and was like, “What about ‘Camino’?” And everyone [could kind of] see that, but we weren’t fully into it. At that point we were kind of frustrated, and I was like, “Hey, it’ll look cool on a shirt, I promise.” Also, any band name is kind of weird until they either make it or say it enough. So that’s kind of how that happened. All the socials for Camino were taken because it’s a Spanish word, so it was “The Band Camino.” People started calling us that and it just kind of stuck. Also, “camino” means path in Spanish, so [the band “path”] was kind of chosen. That’s not why we chose it, but it’s kind of cool. It was honestly a little impulsive, but it made sense, and it was what was supposed to happen, and now we love it.

When do you feel you really established your sound?

Jeffery: I’d say we’re still currently doing that.

Graham: It’s always a process. I feel like personally when I realized people were connecting with it, which maybe wasn’t when we realized our sound, but for me, it felt right. We made it because we like it but we can also see the tangible number of people it’s connected with. So for me, that’s when I was like, “Okay, whatever sound this is, it’s us, and it’s working.”

Graham: There’s definitely a certain vibe about all our songs.

Jeffery: But we do listen to a lot of different music and we kind of take that into our own music, and we just wanna make music that we wanna hear. We’re still kind of honing in on what that is: we know what it is, but I think the more music we put out, the more we achieve that. If you took one song and were like, “Oh, this is what they sound like,” it wouldn’t be a fair representation of our music. If you take an album, whenever we finally do an album, that will encompass who we are.

Spencer: Who we are kind of is that eclectic mix, once we started working with a producer, having an outside voice, it made us who we are. You don’t realize the inner mechanisms of the band until someone else comes in. As soon as he entered, it was like, “This is what is and this is what isn’t us.” It’s hard to really know who you are until you’re challenged in some way.

Garrison: That’s the thing: our producer Jordan Schmidt, he’s really talented. But what’s been interesting is before we all started playing together, I had known some of [the band’s] songs and they came and showed me some of the new stuff that we were gonna be recording. I think once there was personal change and co-writes with all kinds of different people, the cool part was seeing the old Band Camino vs the [new] Band Camino; we still have the roots there but the evolution or natural growth of The Band CAMINO is continuing, which I think is the same with any band.

Jeffery: The one thing that we do wanna stay true to is the fact that we’re a band. [Like], getting up there and recreating how we sound [but in a] live [setting].

Spencer: That’s our commonality, more than anything: that we think being in a band is badass. The era of bands is not right now, there’s not a ton of bands, but we’re in it for the long haul because we think it’s sick. We believe in bands.

How did you guys meet?

Spencer: Graham and I went to middle school and high school together, so I’ve known him since he was like 13. We also did choir and stuff together in high school. Then Graham recruited Jeff to play bass from his original country act, which was just self-titled Jeffrey Jordan. You know, those country hits, just living the simple life, haha. We’ll have to bring it back sometime.

Jeffrey: When I met Graham it was like the fall of my country days, because he and all his friends were super indie and wore tight jeans. They were all just really good at music, and I started hanging out with them and met Spencer. We actually went on a spring break trip together, and we had hung out a few times, but it wasn’t until that trip that we were actually friends. You know, nothing like a good beach trip to really bond you with your friends. It was [around] March of 2015. We started the band; we had been practicing together and writing together over the summer.

Graham: Then, we had gone through a couple of drummers. Andrew, he founded the band with us, but then decided he wanted to go a different direction, but we still support him, obviously. Then we met Caleb after Andrew. After Caleb, we were auditioning people, and we were really trying to be intentional about the fit because we didn’t wanna be the band that can’t hold a drummer. It wasn’t just who can play, it was who was cool. We’d auditioned a lot of our friends, and at one point we were getting kind of desperate, and I had Garrison’s number from a mutual friend and I texted him and I was like, “Yo, if you just know the songs and you’re cool, it’s gonna be great.”

Garrison: I just looked at him and I was like, “Dude, I got you.”

Graham: So I called the guys and I was like, “Yo, I found the guy.” They asked if I’d heard him play and I was like, “No, but he’s cool.”

Jeffrey: I just remember Graham being like, “Yo, I just had coffee with Garrison. I think he’s gonna be the guy.”

Graham: We had a fourth of July party, and everyone was kinda drunk. We have a studio space in the basement, and Garrison was playing drums with a couple of our other friends, and they were just jamming, and I was like, “Guys, just go downstairs.” And that’s when we knew.

What (or who) has been your biggest influence as a band?

Jeffery: I feel like this is cliché to say, but I feel like the 1975 have been our common denominator. That’s what made being in a band cool at a certain point in our lives.

Spencer: Their first record was one that — we say this through and through — it made being in a band very desirable, it made it look so cool. You know, getting up on stage [with] the guitars, and just rocking out and being emo.

Jeffery: In the mid-2000s, [there were] a lot of bands like that: the Killers, Coldplay, Kings of Leon, stuff like that— those are all huge influences for us.

Spencer: It’s kind of funny for us, the 1975, it’s an easy comparison.

Jeffery: We love them but we got compared to them so much. When we first started doing this, people would be like, “Oh, you sound like the 1975,” and we were like, “Oh that’s sick!” But now, 3 years later, we’re trying to develop our own sound. We definitely have created our own thing and own sound, but they definitely still are a big influence.

Graham: Yeah, but that record, you know how you have a few things that you remember exactly what you were doing when they happened? I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard that record. I wanted to play bass for a Katy Perry or a Justin Bieber, but when I heard that record, that was the moment I was like, “Damn, I could be a part of a band.” I feel like that’s a generational thing too, like the Beatles and stuff, but I think for us coming of age, that was the influence. I mean, we all come from different backgrounds: I come from a classic rock background, Spence comes from a choir/choral background, Jeff loved country music and songwriting, and [laughs] I don’t know, Garrison just likes a lot of stuff. We all just bring a bit of everything.

Spencer: Beyond music, we’re all consumers of art. Yeah, I’d say it’s hard for us to name any specific influences outside of music, just because we were such music consumers above anything. But we’re all constantly reading or going through Instagram looking through art pages, and staying current. Trying to keep up with what’s happening, and stay socially relevant.

Can we expect a full album anytime soon?

Jeffery: Yes, soon being relative, but yes. We are going to put out a record. We’ve been writing so many songs, demo-ing so many songs; that’s the goal we’re working towards. We want to do it as soon as possible, but we also don’t wanna rush it. You can only make your first album once. The bigger we get, the more things we’ll have going on, the more producers, more studio time, budgeting, etc. If we had made the album a year ago we wouldn’t have had the same opportunities. We would’ve been like, “Oh, we could’ve done this with this producer that we love, and this studio that we love.”

Spencer: We have a sense of urgency about it — the sense of urgency to release music period — but we’re also such artists and perfectionists that we don’t wanna put out something that we don’t feel reflects this part of our lives or this time in our musical careers. We just want it to be sick, we want it to be good. We want it to be a sick band record. We’re not ready to 100% put that all out and record it all. We don’t have five free months to put that together right now.

Garrison: It’s not time, but it will be.

Spencer: We know what it is necessary to make it happen, and we’re gonna do it in the next year and a half or two years. There will be music before then, of course, we’ll keep putting out singles.