PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF FOR US WHO ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH YOU AND YOUR MUSIC AND TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.
Alec Cavazos (Guitar/Vocals): Hello! I’m Alec from exPorter and we’re out of Santa Barbara, California.
exPorter is a pop-punk trio with myself on guitar and vocals, my brother Destin on bass and the other vocals and our friend Henry Kish on drums. Henry’s traveling right now so he’s not able to do any interviews.
Destin Cavazos (Bass/Vocals): So we will answer for him if needed or just make stuff up. We all grew up in Santa Barbara – Alec and I in the same house, Henry lived across town. Alec and I have been playing music since we were kids and we just started writing our own stuff and wanted to start a band. We had bass and guitar covered so we had a friend join with drums. She left then we had our neighbor and close friend Owen play drums but then he left too cause he went to college. Then we found Henry. Alec played baseball with him growing up and we knew he played drums so here we are.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR NEW ALBUM OR SINGLE?
DC: We’ve got our debut album “NoBrakesNoBrakesNoBrakes” out right now. We released it last year and hopefully people are listening to it….if you haven’t heard it, stop reading and go listen right now….we’ll wait.
There’s a lot of new music and if you’ve heard an exPorter song before will definitely recognize some of the tunes, but we’ve tried our best to explore some different genres throughout the album. So with that out there we’re doing interviews and getting songs on the radio. We’ve actually had several of the songs out there and they’ve charted pretty well.
AC: “Lusitania” is the one we’re featuring right now and it’s actually done the best on the charts so far which is really cool. It was also on the legendary Rodney Bingenheimer’s in The Underground Garage show on SirusXM so that was pretty cool. We all grew up in Southern California and Rodney is a legend. When you think of all the bands that someone like Rodney has introduced it’s pretty cool to think we’re somewhere in that mix.
WHAT INSPIRED THE ALBUM OR SINGLE?
AC: Well the album basically started during COVID. Destin and I were staying at our parents’ house during the lockdown and we were jamming all the time like when we were kids. We were writing a bunch of new stuff too. We had these two songs (Lassie and Elizabeth) that we really liked so we got into the studio to record those as soon as we could. It was just going to be like a double single or something but once they started tracking on the radio we decided to make a whole album with the other songs we had.
Lusitania was the second song I wrote (after Lassie) and was originally called Another Night, and I think it was the second song I wrote and liked during lockdown (Lassie being the first). The song is basically about a relationship falling apart but also being saved by just being together or at least wanting to save it. But the real inspiration for the song was I wanted to write a song with the word “inconceivable” in it. During COVID we were writing a lot but we also watched a ton of movies so I must have just watched “The Princess Bride” and thought I want to write a song with that word in there. The lyrics really just came to me once I started writing them and the story evolved from that.
CAN YOU SUM UP THE ALBUM IN A FEW WORDS?
DC: I think NoBrakes has a lot on there for anyone. It’s definitely got the pop-punk vibe in there but there’s also a lot drawn from other music we’re into. If you take “Sister Cities”, when we were doing that song we told Elliott (Lanam, co-producer) we wanted a Cure vibe on the intro and it’s right there if you were listening to something out of the 80s. There are ballads on there. There’s a lot to listen to.
WHAT RECORD CHANGED YOUR LIFE AND WHY?
AC: I think Blink 182 untitled because it’s so good and made me want to write more.
DC: Damn, there are way too many albums out there. Neon Trees first album Habits is a good one because it brought a lot of bright pop energy to rock music, and I think it demonstrates their passion and talent as songwriters. Charly Bliss’ album Guppy had a similar impact on me for the same reason.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE MUSIC VIDEO FILMED BY YOUR BAND OR ANOTHER ARTIST?
DC: Again, so much great stuff out there. If I’m talking exporter videos I think “Feel Good” is pretty special cause Alec and I did that pretty much ourselves during COVID. We shot it all in a couple days and had to use a skeleton for Kish cause he was spending lockdown somewhere else. We made a “Kish on drums” T-Shirt that I think we should sell as merch.
For other bands, I think my favorite music video has to be the Mumford and Sons one with Jason Bateman and crew. Hopeless Wanderer. Hands down one of the funniest videos of all time. I crack up every time.
AC: Yeah Feel Good was just cool to do cause you had to be doing something during COVID. I think Blink’s What’s my age again video is a favorite of mine because it’s a similar vibe that we want to recreate when we get back to making videos.
WHAT WOULD WE FIND YOU DOING WHEN YOU'RE NOT MAKING MUSIC?
AC: I think all of us in the band are pretty normal people. We did this interview where we were asked what people would be surprised about us and Henry mentioned that we’re pretty regular guys outside of the band. We play a lot of video games, all three of us are into reading different stuff. You might find me at a local skate park, especially in the morning.
DO YOU GET NERVOUS PERFORMING LIVE, IF SO HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT?
DC: Not really. I’ve been performing on stage in like plays and stuff since I was a kid so it never really bothers me. Alec was doing band camp and they always did recitals and it never really seemed to bother him. And Henry’s first time performing in front of a crowd was the first time he drummed for us and he nailed it. We didn’t know that at the time but he crushed it.
We all love to play live so being on stage is where we want to be. And you may have some nervous energy but that is really more to do with wanting to have a good show…by the second or third song in all of that’s gone and we’re just doing our thing.
HOW DID YOU FORM THE BAND?
DC: Well like I mentioned, Alec and I had been playing together since we were kids. At first it was covers obviously but as we started to write our own stuff we really wanted to have a band. When our first drummer left we wanted to keep doing it so we formed another band and called ourselves “Porter”. When Henry played that first show with us we just knew coming off that stage that this lineup was the new band for sure.
One of the first things we wanted to do was record more original music so we focused on making our EP (Bored). We knew there was already a Porter out of Mexico so we figured if we were going to release new music we might as well change the name before we got sued….that’s how we became exPorter.
HOW DO YOU WRITE? - DO YOU HAVE A KEY SONGWRITER, OR DO YOU ALL WORK TOGETHER?
AC: Destin and I usually will write stuff on our own first. It might be most of a song or just parts or lyrics or something. From there we’ll get together and just sort of share what we’re working on and expand from there. Every now and then we’ll write out a new song right there but it’s usually just this show and tell process with whatever song bits we have.
Once we have a good idea of what the song is we’ll record a demo on my computer and then send that to Henry so he can start thinking up drum parts. So even though the songs start out with one of us, they definitely get finished through collaboration in the band or even with the producers we’re working with.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
DC: I know it sounds cliché for bands to say this but I think inspiration, especially for our songs, can really come from anywhere. I know Alec is the same in that you just never really know what’s going to kick off a new song. We’ve talked about before in other interviews that “Feel Good” is actually a song about this ratty old couch I had when I was in college. Lusitania comes from this line in Princess Bride…. there have been things we’ve read or maybe just something we see during the day that makes us think, hey, we should write a song about that.
WHAT IS NEXT?
AC: With NoBrakes just coming out last year it’s all about promoting that album so right now it shows and maybe some more shows to support it. We’re also thinking about which song off the album should be the next release.
We’re also writing some new stuff and have some ideas on how we maybe release them. Maybe a follow up album or we might just start putting songs together and releasing them as they get done.
PLEASE TELL US ANY SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS SO WE CAN SHARE.
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/exporter.band/
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@exporter4492
Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/artist/3jfTdDZQ7SrLeQD9t9z8IZ?si=XkFA8IQLQGS93dZkhy9oJA
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