I kind of want to bring this back to your early days of when you were first starting out and meeting each other. Is there a specific story or time where you were all like, "Hey, let's start a band."
TARREK– It honestly came together, like it just happened. I like to say it was more of a domino effect. Isaac has been making music since he was 12 years old. Dom and Joseph have been friends since freshman year of high school and we didn't meet Isaac until our junior year of high school. He was the first person in our group of friends that was actively writing, recording, and releasing music. He was dropping music videos on YouTube, songs on SoundCloud, burning CDs and passing them out at school. Having someone like that in your group of friends was very inspiring.
ISAAC– I changed their life.
JOSEPH– It really opened the door for our creativity.
TARREK– Like it didn't start right away with us like, "Alright, we're all gonna go and start making music after seeing Isaac do that." After school we'd be smoking and freestyling, like me and Isaac. Then I would go over to his house and the studio was his room. We would just record stuff over YouTube beats and release them on SoundCloud.
DOM– Honestly seeing Tarrek's improvement from when he started to a few months, honestly, that was inspiring too.
TARREK– Then after, me and Isaac were going through that process, Joseph every once in a while, would pop his head in.
JOSEPH– They would consistently ask me, but I would just be so hesitant because I was so self conscious about singing and music.
TARREK– But we knew he could play guitar a little bit and we knew he had a beautiful voice. I just remember hanging out with him after school and no matter where we were, and no matter where we were going, he would just be singing freely. He always had a beautiful voice so we would always try to push him to come and sing a hook for us or something.
JOSEPH– I think for me when I went all into music, we were like drunk at our friend's party. And Dom was just like, "You could be one of the greatest musicians and by adding to this group we could just dominate the entire world." I went home that night, and I really thought about it. And the next day I went all in.
TARREK– That brings me back to the domino effect. It was after high school when Dom started producing and in the first couple years of college, Dom was like, "I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do with my life." He's the mastermind behind Peach Tree Rascals, Isaac's the mastermind behind the inspiration for all of us to want to even start making music. Dom going into producing was all self taught. So seeing him work for years, literally day and night, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, just trying to get better at production was the game changer for us. He was the first person to ever tell me and Isaac, "Oh, this melody could be better, this flow could be better." Because when it was just us, we would just go with whatever.
When was sort of a breakthrough moment for you guys where you felt yourself taking it to the next level?
ISAAC– On the music side, I fell asleep and they kept working on music. And they were working on "Violet." I woke up and I was kind of irritated because the music was hella loud. Then it was the bridge of "Violet" and it was crazy. It sounded like something produced by, like, Kanye West or something. I was half asleep and I was like, "Whoa, we can do this." And then I went back to sleep with a smile on my face. On the career side of things. It was the first time we made an editorial playlist on Spotify, because I used to be in charge of doing all the email shit and learning how to promote music in an efficient way. I think it was our third song, "Water" that made Mellow Bars on Spotify. I ran around the house. It was crazy.
I'm excited to see what else you guys do. Is there anything else that you guys want to let people know?
TARREK– Despite whatever you're going through, despite whatever is going on in the world, try to protect your energy and focus on what's right in front of you. And the people around you that love you and care about you.
JASPER– Zzzzzzzz.