It’s so cool to think that anyone can start a band with passion, a few instruments, and a couple of friends. Vanilla Coke is an Indie Pop/Rock band featuring Arjesh Gupta (Vocals, producer, keyboard, and guitar), Nicky Teal (guitar), Judah Lanzkowsky (Guitar), Idan Saban (Lead bassist), Arne Bernal (Drummer), and Jaden Salmon (Vocals). We talked about a variety of topics, from the dedication that it takes to be in a band, what some of their favorite songs are, and advice to any aspiring musicians. Be sure to check out their album SUMMER GRAYS out everywhere, and thank you to Vanilla Coke again for talking to us!
Can you tell us about your musical inspirations?
Idan Saban: I think that all of us have our own inspirations, just for the most part. I’m the bassist and we all kind of have our own parts that are inspired by what we like, so the band in some ways is a collection of all of our creativity.
How did you come up with your band name?
Judah: We had a lot of band practices, most of which were at my house, and whenever they would all come over they would drink all of the Vanilla Coke. That’s how it started!
Any new projects?
Arne, Judah, Arjesh, Idan: We’re focusing on quarantining!
Idan Saban: Currently, we’re also just working on our gigs.
Arjesh: I’m doing a lot of my own solo music, and I’m trying to build up my own stuff on my Youtube channel as well.
Idan Saban: The move affected our band a lot. For everyone who doesn’t know, Arjesh, our lead singer, moved a year ago it put a wrench in our brand and the process.
Arne: We never got to finish recording everything before he left. There were a lot of good memories.
Arjesh: Yeah.
What made you decide to form a band?
Arjesh: Nicky and I initially were just playing music together in middle school a little bit, and as we got into 9th grade, we noticed a lot of our friends were playing instruments and we thought to make a band.
Favorite artists?
Jaden: Peach pit.
Idan: Oblivia
Arne: My preferences change a lot but my favorite band is Three Days Grace.
Nicky: Green Day and Motion City Soundtrack
Judah: Surf punk band called the Frights!
Arjesh: Indie rock band called Car Seat Headrest. I draw a lot of lyrical inspiration from them, I think.
What kind of music do you make?
Arjesh: I’d say we have a bit of a hard time placing it in one box, but largely I would say it falls under pop and Indie rock or just rock overall, because we do a lot of different stuff within our music.
Favorite song you’ve released?
Jaden: July
Idan: Smile. For a lot of reasons. One, I like the song and it means a lot to me, and because it's our most performed song. We just did it for the talent show and for the Snowball dance.
Arne: We put a lot of work into making Smile, and it's one of my favorite songs, but I personally like the Moon better. There's a cool part at the end where it switches time signatures at the end- which was challenging at first but I thought it was really cool.
Nicky: My favorite would probably be Charlie Brown. It's very different from the other music we’ve made, and it gave me an option to branch out and try new things. It was a fun change in pace.
Judah: Arne stole mine. I was gonna say the Moon too. I just really like that song. The other one I was gonna say is Smile because I feel like that song has a lot of meaning, and I feel like everyone in the band has a strong connection to that song.
Arjesh: I would also say the Moon honestly, because I think it was the most fun for me to produce, since I had gotten into a rut trying to produce Smile, so it was a nice change of pace and I really like the modified bridge section that I did for the album release. It was an opportunity for me to flesh out the lyrics, so I really like that song.
Biggest lessons you’ve learned from starting a band?
Nicky: Definitely a lot of production techniques. Me and Arjesh, Arjesh does more production I think but I’ve also done some of it. So definitely a learning experience and learning to produce our own music.
Idan Saban: For me, there’s a bit of a social aspect I wasn’t expecting since obviously we’re all close friends. There would be conflicts sometimes that we would have to work through.
Jaden: For me, it was probably like the dedication of making music, even though we’ve had some serious hiccups like the move.
Arne: I learned a lot of patience with recording, because Arjesh and I did a lot of recording and there would be a lot of takes because of tech issues and other reasons.
Arjesh: I think the best lesson I’ve taken from being in a band is that it’s really hard to be in a band because you have to do a lot to keep it together. For example, organizing band meetings, how everything’s gonna come out, writing lyrics for everything, designing promotional stuff, and then obviously production on my end, I think was also like Nicky said a big thing I took away from the band is that I'm a better producer now because I’ve forced myself to work through these songs that we’d all recorded and get them out in a productive and nice sounding way, so I think I’ve gotten a lot of musical skills from it and personal skills from it which I think are pretty nifty!
Judah: I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned is just to share, because when you share music you've written with other people, it's a very vulnerable feeling, but also it’s a really good experience to learn to trust people like your friends.
Any advice to upcoming music artists?
Jaden: If you’re passionate about it, it will work out. If you have the dedication or the drive or desire to make music, that’s enough, and whatever you do will work out if you have that.
Idan: It’s important to make sure the band doesn’t impact your relationships in a negative way, because obviously sometimes there will be creative differences.
Judah: It’s important to have fun with it. If you're not enjoying it and it feels like a job, it’s very easy to fall out of sorts with it.
Arjesh: I think everything with being willing to share is true, because I've found myself within these arguments trying to police what I think the band should have been, but that's never something you should do as an individual within the whole. Another piece of advice I’d give would be don’t expect it to go anywhere right at the start, or even to get anything out of it, besides a good experience and creating something fun like everyone said just to be passionate about it because it's really not the most instantly gratifying thing or easiest thing to do but I feel like if you want to its worth it but it's a lot of work.