Q&A: Driveaway Explores New Musical Boundaries With Latest Single “Wishing Well”
ALTHOUGH THEY EMERGED FROM THE SUNSHINE STATE — Driveaway isn’t afraid to shy away from the less sunny parts of life. Delving into a new era with their latest single, “Wishing Well,” Driveaway’s honesty pours not only from their lyricism but the passion and drive igniting in their sound.
The four-person indie-pop band, composed of Trenton Ropp (vocals), Tanner Ropp (bass), Kyle Tapley (guitar), and Daniel Po (drums), has created a dynamic and sonically cohesive catalog of music that dares to defy normal genre lines while still maintaining a distinctive sound. Heavy on guitar, full of angst, and sure to get you moving your feet, “Wishing Well” is a great sneak peek into what Driveaway’s new era has in store for longtime fans and new listeners alike.
Read below to learn some behind-the-scenes info on Driveaway’s newest music, how and where they find inspiration, and what Wii accessory was used in one of their latest recording sessions.
LUNA: So let's start from the beginning. How did you all end up meeting and deciding that you wanted to work together in a band?
TAPLEY: Trenton's the eldest member in the band, he should go.
TRENTON: Tanner and I had been playing together for a while, and I met Kyle in high school. Didn't know him really well; he was like “the cool guy.” Then in college I think I sold him a guitar pedal and finally properly met him. And we really liked each other, so he joined the band. Po, our drummer, we saw him covering one of our songs on Instagram and looked into it and realized he was in Florida too. We were like, “Do you want to be in our band?” So now Po's in the band.
TANNER: We had also played a show with the band he was in at the time, and we were doing shows with no drummer. At that point in time, we just had them in the backing tracks. Yeah, and he just came up and he's like, “Hey, you guys are really good, but it'd probably be better if you had live drums, so give me a call!”
LUNA: Awesome. Are you all currently students at the University of Florida now or have any of you graduated?
TANNER: We all graduated from UF. Except Po.
LUNA: What year did you graduate?
TAPLEY: I did in 2017 and 2018.
TRENTON: I graduated 2021... 2020?
TANNER: I graduated in 2021.
TAPLEY: Trenton graduated in 2020 but then walked in 2021. They didn't have a graduation ceremony.
LUNA: Gotcha. When you first formed the band, how did you balance your schoolwork and performing?
TRENTON: Most of us didn't. Tanner did a good job. I didn't. I was like a seesaw — I felt like I was either all the way this way or all the way that way.
TANNER: I feel like we're pretty good about recognizing when one person is going to be super busy with something for that period of time. Like, the last couple of semesters of my degree were pretty rough, so it was nice that everyone would kind of give me some slack in terms of the business aspect of the band and all the tasks and things that needed to be done. Kyle sometimes will have intense periods of time with school stuff too, like teaching. And then Trenton with, you know, interviews or whatever.
TRENTON: We would have one night a week that was like “Driveaway Night.” That was the only scheduled thing, and we would all go to Wawa, or Kyle would bring the paninis to us. We would just do the things that we thought were most important that night and then at the end watch Doctor Who, and we did that. I think that was our only forced scheduling.
TAPLEY: Besides if there was a show.
TRENTON: Yeah, if we wrote any other time in the week, someone happened to be at the house.
TANNER: And the three of us used to all live together. So it didn't feel as necessary, I don't think, to have scheduled time because we were always just around each other. It's a little more structured now, just to make sure things happen.
LUNA: Let's talk about your most recent single, “Wishing Well.” What should fans expect from your new music?
TRENTON: It's a lot more rock. Yes, one of our engineers called it “bombastic.” That was really nice. It's more raw-sounding. We're kind of moving — just for this song I think — we're moving away from the more polished… what's it called? What's that word that people use? Too sweet, Tanner?
TANNER: Saccharide?
TRENTON: Saccharide. We're moving away from that saccharide pop, polished thing with this song. Although, I think all of our new songs now have the vulnerability that we learned with this one lyrically.
TANNER: It's also… I feel like a lot of the energy of our songs is kind of sad. Like, the content of the lyrics, even if it's upbeat. This is the first one that I think leans more towards the little annoyed at people and stuff kind of direction. I don't want to say angry, but leaning in that direction.
TRENTON: It is angry, it's angsty!
TANNER: Yeah, more like that.
LUNA: I like it, I like it. What goals do you guys have for yourselves in the next couple of years as a band?
TRENTON: Who wants to go first?
TANNER: I want to know what Kyle's goals are.
TAPLEY: What are my goals? Well, at least within the next few years, I would like to at least have enough of a following or enough live shows lined up that I can do Driveaway stuff and not have to supplement it with something else, because working another job and then trying to do music stuff is pretty hard and pretty draining. Yeah. Whenever somebody asks, “What's your plan?” I always like that Riff Raff video where he's like, “I wanna blow up and then act like I don't know nobody!” But I don't want to act like that — I just do want to blow up. (All laughing)
TANNER: You want to blow up and then appreciate everyone who helped you get there.
TAPLEY: Yeah, yeah.
TANNER: Trenton? Do you want to go?
TRENTON: That sounds good, what Kyle said. I liked that. I agree.
TANNER: From more of a content perspective, I just want to put out more stuff, which I think we have a really good plan for this season. I think we probably have the most stuff planned out — the furthest out — that we ever have. In terms of complete content and songs and visuals and things like that. But I also agree with what Kyle was saying. Now when people ask me what I do, I feel like I used to be like, “Oh, my job is blank and I also do music or something.” Now I'm going to just say, “I do music and the thing my job is.”
LUNA: Who are some of your biggest musical influences?
TANNER: Trenton, you're my biggest musical influence.
TRENTON: You're so sweet. That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me, oh my god. I'm on the Phoebe Bridgers train and I have been for a few years.
LUNA: I respect that so much.
TRENTON: And I'm happily riding it. Who else?
TAPLEY: I think we pull from a lot of different people from a lot of different times in our lives.
TANNER: And it changes a lot.
TAPLEY: Yeah.
TRENTON: When we wrote this, it was like, Meet Me at the Altar, Hot Mulligan, Turnstile… for days that is all we played.
TANNER: But then the next one is like Dayglow…
TRENTON: Very Dayglow, very Bleachers. Yeah, very... 2016 I guess? 2016 indie pop?
LUNA: Do any of you have a dream song that you'd want to cover at a show in the future or something that you've always wanted to work on as a band?
TANNER: A lot.
TAPLEY: Actually, we were just making a list of covers that we need to learn for potentially playing.
TANNER: Yeah, I always wanted to try to make some cool version of "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin. For a long time. I just haven't gotten around to making a version that sounds like us. I also feel like Trenton could pull off "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys or a Turnstile song. Because the more we're kind of leaning in the heavier direction with the stuff we're writing, the more I'm like, “This is more fun to play, we should do more of this!”
TRENTON: I think I sing "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" every single morning, and I feel like one day we're gonna get that pop, like guitar-y version of it. It's gonna be beautiful. It's gonna take so many years though.
LUNA: I'm excited to hear it, whenever it happens! So, a few weeks ago you played Playground Music Fest in Gainesville. After that experience, how did you feel? What was the process like working with Flipturn? How do you feel about the exposure you got? Just in general, what was your experience with that event?
TRENTON: I mean, we've known Flipturn for a while now. I want to say we played in some kind of festival with them before, and then we directly opened for them.
TAPLEY: They did the Heartwood Music Fest a while back.
TRENTON: Last time we opened for them, I think "Something You Needed" had just come out as a single, maybe? Yeah, they've always been very kind to us and really any Gainesville bands. I think they're good at not leaving their hometown behind. Yeah, they were nice the whole show. They're just like one of those bands where you wouldn't think they are as big as they are, the way that you can just go up and talk to them. And they really make you feel like you're on a level playing field. That's my goal. I want to treat other bands that way when we are that big. The exposure? That was cool.
TAPLEY: Yeah. It was fun to meet a bunch of new people.
TRENTON: Yeah, I think there were like two of the bands there that we hadn't met before. So it was cool, that whole festival was our little Instagram sphere of musicians. So it was really nice to see how tall everyone was in person — or how short. I feel like everyone's always taller than Ithink they are.
TANNER: I feel like besides Kyle, we're kind of a short band.
TRENTON: We are much shorter than people think. We're like little hobbits and Kyle is Gandalf.
LUNA: Is there any specific advice that you have for your younger selves, or just a past version of yourselves, knowing where you are now? Did you ever think you'd get to this point in music?
TANNER: Don't try to box yourself in with the style of the music you're writing. I think since we've started, I mean, I think anybody that listens to our catalog of singles, they change a lot, at least from my point of view. I know when we started there was a very deliberate effort to write songs that sounded a certain way because that was kind of our first foray into pop music. We were like, “It's gonna sound like this, and it's gonna have like this kind of chorus and blah, blah, blah.” Then when we started, just kind of, writing whatever we were listening to, even if it was totally different than the last thing, I think it started to become a lot more authentic and easier to make. There weren't as many rules that we were setting for ourselves.
TRENTON: I wish I could go back in time and tell myself, and us, to stop trying to sound cool. Especially in our lyrics. Instead just search for that place where you feel scared about what you're writing. I think it's a combination, the things I'm most proud that we've made are the things where, at the time, I felt like it was a little cringe and I felt like it was a little scary. I think the intersection of those two things is that vulnerability that you will be proud of years later. Where I'll hear my own lyrics from two years ago, and I'm like, “Why did I say that?” You're kind of glossing over how you actually feel and you're not making it sound as intense as it was because you don't don't want to sound lame or cringe. And it's like, I'm not a cool person in real life, so why am I trying to sound like this suave fellow?
TANNER: I was gonna say, to continue with that, at the end of the EP we just did, Feel Better Soon, the song "Feel Better Soon" at the end, we just talked about what we wanted that to sound like. And I'm pretty sure the one that's on there, it was just the first take.
TRENTON: That was it, yeah. I was like, “Wait, I need to make this sound cooler. I could do it.” And I tried and I just couldn't. It just didn't have that feeling. I think most of our music is first take, most of our vocals and guitars. Oh, yeah, we'll be figuring out the vocals and I'll sing it and we'll be like, “Do we need the speakers playing while we're recording?” And I'm like, “Probably not. I mean, this is going to be the final.” (All laugh) And we're not even done with the song. And every time. Our next single, the verses were recorded with a rock band microphone for Wii. That's just what happened to work.
LUNA: What works works. That's how it goes.
TRENTON: Exactly, exactly.
LUNA: If you each could use one word to describe Driveaway, what would it be?
TANNER: Confused. To elaborate, confused about the internet. (All laugh) How to use it. How to make it work.
LUNA: That's fair, that's fair.
TANNER: My vote is confused.
TRENTON: I think fast. I feel like we're just moving really fast.
TAPLEY: I was gonna say either energetic or eccentric. I don't know which one, because Trenton's kind of cool.
TANNER: What do you think Po would answer?
TRENTON: Po would say hungry because—
TAPLEY: He's always eating.
TRENTON: He always wants to go out to eat, yeah.
LUNA: Before we end off this interview, is there anything else that any of you would like to add? To say to fans, any potential new listeners, any longtime favorites?
TANNER: This is like the end of Hot Ones.
LUNA: Yeah exactly, it's like a little closing statement. Maybe you guys can go on Hot Ones next.
TAPLEY: I got something, I got something. Okay. I think one of the coolest things, and most affirming things, is when you either put something out, or something's been out for a while, and then somebody just randomly — you don't even know them — sends you a message on the internet, about how much that song meant to them. Because, I don't know, I'm always like, “Aw man, this song is really great, I should tell that person,” but then you get a little scared. You're like, “Ah, they're never going to read it.” But we try really hard to read and respond to those because it means a lot to us. So thank you to the people that reach out and tell us what our music means to them. I think it helps drive us to be more honest and open with our writing.
TRENTON: We are all, as a band, we are all very scared of life. And to hear that other people are scared of life, it just feels like we're all being scared together when people listen to our music and find meaning in it. And I think that's really nice.
TANNER: Yes, say hi to us on the internet.
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