Photo by by Michelle LoBianco (@brooklynelitist)
I had the pleasure of seeing eCOCOBOYS perform at Alphaville this August. They were energetic and raw, with a lo-fi, Riot Grrrl-esque vibe, and told powerful stories throughout their set—all while wearing coordinating cowboy hats. The band and I caught up over email, and they answered a few questions about what drives them, and what’s coming next!
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Matt L Roar: Tell us how the band formed, who plays what, and how long it’s been around.
Maia: Tara plays bass and is our lead singer, I play guitar and sing some harmonies mostly, Griffin also plays guitar and is starting to sing now (!), and Tasha plays the drums. We all started playing together in September 2018.
Tara: I met Maia and Griffin my freshman year of college and I talked to them about always wanting to start a band, so two years later we finally started the band. We would just sit in Maia’s apartment writing our song to our talented drummer, the metronome app. Then finally we were like, we have to get a drummer, so our friend Gabi posted on a musicians Facebook page and Tasha responded. We played together once and it just all came together.
Tasha: I’m the odd one out—I moved to NYC in August 2018 for NYU grad school. I started up a Facebook page for amateur NYU musicians because I was President of my old college’s Music Society and wanted something similar. The page 100% is dead, but it meant I got to meet the band around a month into living here. I’ve played drums for 12 years so it’s a huge part of my life.
Griffin: I had no idea Tasha founded that Facebook group! It’s really all thanks to NYU (fuck NYU) since Tara was my best friend’s randomly assigned roommate freshman year and now the band is some of my closest friends.
MLR: Can you explain the name and the neon cowboy attire? ( :
Maia: e(ast)CO(ast)CO(w)BOYS hahah. I thought I was very smart one day and thought up a title for what I thought would be the coolest name for a poetry collection about someone who lives on the east coast, but instead decided it would be way better as the name for our project! Ironically, only half of us are actually from the east coast (I’m from Florida, and Griffin is from Queens).
Tasha: Someone suggested wearing cowboy hats and I floated the idea of all of us having individual colors. I think it was inspired by an all-girl band that my ex had a rivalry with, as they all had individual colors and he thought it was lame. I did not.
Tara: Once I put the cowboy hat on, I never wanted to take it off.
Maia: Our friend Shelby Slayden designed our logo and we coordinated each of our colors to be a color from her design!
Griffin: I think cowboy culture has fully taken over and we were just part of that wave. I mean, we were already doing the cowboy stuff, but when Mitski said to be the cowboy we were ready.
MLR: Can you describe some of your influences, politically and musically?
Maia: A lot of what inspired me to start playing is watching some of the heavy-hitting local acts in the DIY scene (think THICK, Gymshorts, and Pom Pom Squad), and being like “dude, I wanna do that, too!” I feel lucky because I was able to ask THICK and our friend Tyler in Shadow Year a lot of questions about how to book shows and make stuff happen and they were so helpful! They were kind of like mentors at the beginning and whether they realized it or not, a big part of why I feel so comfortable booking shows and shredding on stage is thanks to advice they gave me. My politics align very well with “be gay, do crime,” written by some meme account I can’t remember.
Tara: I agree with Maia the DIY scene here has been really impactful on our band. I would say the artists that have influenced me most in life through the years are The Strokes, Beach House, and Mitski so that probably comes out in my music. In general though, I play music because I love to have fun with my friends and yell my feelings and that has always been the biggest inspiration. Here is a list of some things I could think of that probably influence me musically: Portland, OR garage rock, choir music, sad boy indie jams, math, friendship.
Tasha: My drumming is very heavily influenced by Dom Howard from Muse and Jack Beavan from Foals. I also have such a love of pop music that really impacts my style of playing and any songs I write—I’ve never been super inspired by traditional rock/punk playing.
Griffin: I grew up listening to my dad’s music and especially fell in love with Nirvana and other grunge music. He’s actually also in a band called Because We’re Bored that’s been playing on and off for like twenty-something years (longer than I’ve been around haha). I wanted to be in a band after first seeing Thick play at this Cherry Glazerr after party show at Sunnyvale.
MLR: I appreciate how some of your songs straightforwardly tell stories about sexual harassment, dishonest/manipulative partners etc. Why do you think it’s important to tell these stories?
Tara: A lot of our music comes from traumatic experiences we’ve had or just generally negative things happening in our lives but we like to call the songs our trauma prizes. Bad experiences are happening to us all the time but making music about it and performing is something positive that comes out of that. A lot of times we would come to practice and just talk about what was happening in our lives and then go, that sucks, let’s write a song about it and make it fun.
Tasha: Personally, it’s just super cathartic to be able to call out that creep who touched me up at a bar live on stage. It makes me feel like I have a lot more agency and control over those bad things that have happened. If other people can relate and if it gets a discussion going, that’s also amazing.
Maia: Like everyone is saying, it’s a lot of taking anger, frustration, and often sadness that accompanies those things, owning it, and releasing it back out as something more positive; a creation that has the power to let others know it’s okay to feel those feelings then release them somewhere in yells and moshing at a show instead of onto the people closest to you or other things like that. It’s definitely helped me come to terms with a lot of shitty stuff that’s happened, and how to process and deal with those things.
Griffin: These things are just so common, unfortunately, and it’s important to open up about them so that other people feel comfortable being open about how fucked up it is and hopefully things will start to change.
MLR: What can your fans expect from you in the future? Any shows or recordings coming out soon?
Maia: As of right now we have a couple shows coming together in mid-September. We do have five demos recorded that we’ll be releasing soon, so keep an eye out for those! We’ll also have new merch soon with more illustrations by Shelby so look out for that, too!
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Find eCOCOBOYS on Instagram @ecocoboys, and check out their music on SoundCloud.
