Q&A: WOAH Sets the Tone for Their New Year With Sophomore EP ‘sitting in an open room’
PUTTING A FRESH TAKE ON NOSTALGIC INDIE POP — Charlotte-based band WOAH is ready for 2023 to be their biggest year yet. With the recent release of their sophomore EP, sitting in an open room, the group is further establishing their intention to make honest music with a true heartbeat that pulls at the strings of your own.
The project takes you on a journey through the course of six tracks, reliving experiences of a past relationship with a soundscape that harnesses the best moments from ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s music. From sliding guitar strings to softened yet commanding drum beats, sitting in an open room pulls from the influences of legendary groups such as U2 and The Strokes to create a sonic story unique to WOAH.
Composed of Mikey and Ruben Gomez, Zac Tice, and Jackson Martin, the band formed in the midst of the pandemic. The four-piece established their sound together effortlessly and turned to social media to find their audience, earning them over 66K followers on TikTok alone. With their music, WOAH continues to excel at connecting listeners right back to the past — to the pivotal moments that shape us.
Read below as the band dives into their motivation for pursuing music, the impact of social media on genres, and their hopes for the new year.
LUNA: Great to meet you guys. How’s the new year been so far?
MIKEY: Yeah, the new year’s looking up. I think the EP is being received pretty well. We got added to a Spotify editorial playlist, which is really cool. We've been trying to do that for a few years now and we finally landed it so we're all pretty happy about that. And we're planning some tours, some shows around the country. So 2023 is starting off really well.
LUNA: That's great to hear. Can you share a little bit about how sitting in an open room differs from your debut EP?
MIKEY: This one was a lot more collaborative. It was a lot of sessions with all four of us in the room, kind of putting our own input into the songs. It was a really, really cool process of figuring out how we can write with each other because better off unsaid was a lot of just me and Ruben in our bedrooms, writing on a laptop. Sitting in an open room was a lot more, like, living in the songs and trying to figure out what they mean. It was a fun and collaborative process because we all live in a house together. It's kind of like, we’d wake up, go to the kitchen, go to our studio, and record all day. It was a lot of fun.
LUNA: Was creating this project more structured in a sense? Did you guys come together and say, “Hey, we’re going to make this EP”? Or was it something that kind of just came together?
MIKEY: The months before we actually started, I think we had an idea of what we wanted to do. We wanted to get back to our nostalgic, very cinematic and dreamy kind of music that we make. We had some of our art people come up with the aesthetics of how it should look. It was pretty structured. We had a pretty good idea of how many songs would be on it and when it would come out.
LUNA: Is there any specific lyric or musical moment from this project that each of you were most proud to share?
RUBEN: Yeah. In “all my friends keep saying that i'm dead,” there’s an instrumental part right after the first chorus that I think is pretty cool. We've never done a part like that where there’s a refrain from singing, so I think I'm most proud of that.
MIKEY: For me, normally it takes a month or two to have a song finalized and ready to go but I remember there was a day where I just picked up my acoustic guitar and started playing what became “your last cigarette.” I had the whole song recorded in less than 20 minutes. I think that was really cool. It was a really natural process for me.
TICE: I think the chorus for “i don't want to die when i'm with you” is really catchy. I'm a fan of it.
LUNA: We heard you guys created your first project on GarageBand. Is that true? Are you still using GarageBand? How's the production process going?
MIKEY: So (laughs), better left unsaid was done on GarageBand — the whole thing minus “Valleys.” It's crazy to think about because I listened back to those recordings and they sound pretty good. It wasn’t by choice. We just didn't have any money so we were like, “This is how we're gonna record, I guess.” And I guess people liked it. So that's really, really cool. But we moved to Logic now.
LUNA: You guys have this really cohesive sound, which can be pretty rare for a group that has only been together for a couple years. Did you guys play in any bands before WOAH? What do you think contributes to this flow that we get to hear?
RUBEN: I don't think any of us have actually played for a serious band before. Me and Zac played for this little house show — garage-rock type of band with one of our old buddies. WOAH is definitely our first serious band. In terms of figuring out what our sound should be, I don't think we had a set-in-stone idea or a particular narrative that it should be nostalgic. I think it kind of just happened that way. It just sounded good to us. It just works, and we keep it that way.
MIKEY: Also, me and Ruben are mainly the principal songwriters, and we’re twins. We grew up together and share a lot of the same experiences. So whenever it's me and him writing, the songs always blend pretty well. And we both have very similar tastes so I guess that's why it kind of flows together pretty seamlessly.
LUNA: Was there a specific moment, as a group or individually, that solidified this decision to pursue music more seriously?
MIKEY: For me, it was the first house show that I played. I remember just feeling so excited while playing. I got off stage, went to my bedroom, and I was like, “I want to do this for the rest of my life.” Which sounds kind of silly, but it's grown into a real passion that excites me every day.
TICE: I think it's pretty similar for all of us. All of our first house shows were very exciting, and you get a feeling that you just did something really cool. It’s a feeling that you really want to chase.
LUNA: Let's talk a little bit about social media. It’s played a pretty significant role in you guys getting your music out there. What's your guys take on social media, especially TikTok, and how it's impacted the music industry today?
MIKEY: It's very powerful, I think. TikTok basically gave us what we have now. It’s a really, really good place for unknown artists to put their music out and see what happens, and thankfully for us it stuck with people. It's just a great place to be creative. We've done comedy skits, we’ve done covers, and to get the reception that we've been getting has been pretty cool. I love social media for that. It’s helped us in so many ways.
MARTIN: Something interesting — Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie talked about it — was how there used to be really different scenes. Up in Seattle, there was an indie-rock scene. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and in New York, these different areas of the country, you would go to a different town and you would hear a really different form of indie rock. Now that there's streaming platforms and the internet, it’s kind of become one unified genre. In some ways, it really creates music you never would have had access to before. Like us, being an East Coast band, [we] would have no idea what the West Coast would really sound like other than the major labels stuff that gets shipped over. It's a lot bigger in scale now, but also it is kind of sad that there’s not those local scenes as much anymore.
LUNA: So, we won’t ask about your Spotify Wrapped, but what was your guys' favorite project from another artist in 2022?
MIKEY: I like The Backseat Lover’s new record that they just came out with. And Big Thief's recent album.
MARTIN: That was a really good album.
RUBEN: Skinty Fia by the Fontaines D.C. was really good.
TICE: Pierce The Veil’s new song is alright.
MARTIN: I have to look back on everything that came out. Field Medic had a really good album this past year. And I loved The Car by the Arctic Monkeys.
LUNA: Wrapping up on the theme of the new year, do you have any words to put out into the universe as your hope for 2023 as a band?
MIKEY: Hopeful and ambitious.
MARTIN: Visiting new places.
RUBEN: Try new things.
TICE: Big, big things (laughs).
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