New Jersey Trio Arizona Demystify Their Moniker and Talk Playing Coachella

Electropop trio Arizona (Stylized A R I Z O N A) create lighthearted, effervescent pop that lifts heavily from the glossiest ‘80s fare, and matches it with equally shiny contemporary EDM production. It’s a seamless pairing, and one that has unsurprisingly resonated wildly. With just one album to their name, 2017’s “Gallery,” the band has already skyrocketed, making their way through the festival circuit. They reached an apex recently, landing a spot on the Coachella mainstage.

Despite their name, the band hail from New Jersey. While the musicality and production couldn’t be more serious in its consummate polish and detail, the band’s entire aesthetic is carefree and playful. It’s an attitude that can be heard in the pops and sprinkles of sound candy in the music, in the way vocals momentarily dip into accents, and in their music videos, such as that for their latest single “Find Someone.”

Naturally, this celebratory freeness of approach translates to the stage at a large festival, where massive crowds are united in spirit, and especially in tune with the vibes of the music. While at the festival, Entertainment Voice met with the band to learn a little more about their moniker, band chemistry, Coachella experience, upcoming music and more.

This is your first Coachella performance, and you’ve already made it to the main stage. Playing a legendary festival with the collective excitement of the massive crowd, and the whole grandeur, can be a pretty surreal experience. How did it feel?

Nate: We just came off an arena tour. It was our second time being out with them following the North American tour. So I think the first time being at Coachella, and especially playing the Coachella stage, was probably the best way we could have followed that up with, because the energy was amazing. It was a crazy experience getting here the first weekend, because we missed some flights and had to take extra flights, and essentially were traveling for 37 hours and got to stage just on time, so the adrenaline was rushing basically all Coachella, and it’s been awesome.    

You’ve played a lot of festivals — South by Southwest, Lollapalooza, Governors Ball to name a few, and now Coachella. Surely, there were plenty exciting moments and stories. What’s the first especially wild or memorable one that comes to mind?

Dave: So, our first festival was Hangout — first of all, we love the festival, we love where it is, the people are dope — but we got on stage (laughs) and none of my stuff was working, so that was like a panic attack, because “Oh my gosh, this is our festival, none of our stuff is working, what are we going to do?” So Zach and Nate just carried the show with just guitar and voice, which is really cool, and as soon as I got power back, I just came back in, and the crowd was so supportive. They cheered when I got the power back. For our first festival, of course it wasn’t going to be 100% smooth, but it was cool to see that the people there supporting us were so into it that it didn’t matter whether we had power or not. (laughs) They were still there for us.

I’m sure you have been asked this many times: You’re from New Jersey, yet named the band Arizona. Is this supposed to represent some personal association with the state of Arizona or some different concept altogether?  

Zach: You’re actually the first person that ever asked us that question, funny enough. No, I’m joking… Basically, we never expected this to be a band, and we never thought we’d be doing what we’re doing right now, so when we had made a few songs just for fun, it was because we were working on making music for other people for a long time. We were doing a lot of things like producing and songwriting, and lots of other stuff, and we decided we wanted to give up on all of that. On the way out we said, “we’ll just make some songs just for fun,” and we had a conversation about that at some point, and we just really enjoyed what it felt like to make music together.

So, Nate happened to be wearing an Arizona Ice Tea hat at the time, and Dave was joking around, and was sort of mimicking some of the band that were popular at the time like CHVRCHES, and, you know, like all caps and things like that, and Dave was like, “Well, we’ll just do caps and spaces. It doesn’t matter what it’s called because no one’s ever going to hear it.” And he pointed to Nate’s hat, and said “Oh, look.” and he typed it out, and it was all caps and spaces, and it said “Arizona,” and it looked cool. So we laughed at it, and it was kind of an inside joke, as is almost everything even still today that we do. But it looked cool, and I think essentially the story behind all of it was we were just having fun, and we didn’t take it too seriously. It looked cool, it felt cool, it was funny to us, it felt right, and we just sort of stuck with it, and that’s kind of how we’ve done everything since then.

You guys wrote songs and produced music for other artists before you joined forces as Arizona. On one hand this seems like an ideal way to form a band, because you can bring your individual proclivities to your music together. On the other hand, so many groups have only one principal songwriter. How does it generally work out for you?

Dave: I’d say songwriting is like therapy, and the three of us have known each other for such a long time, and we’re really comfortable. I don’t think any other people know me better than these two know me. So we just talk about our lives, and it kind of just leads to a vibe. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something that’s going on in our lives. We could just be talking about something that’s happening in the world or to a friend of ours, and it can lead to anything. So really, we just talk, and whatever sticks kind of just happens.

Your music strikes an effective blend of pop, rock, and electronic instincts. What are some more specific styles or artists that have especially shaped you signature sound?

Dave: Definitely Phantogram is a big one. It’s sort of electronic, but not super hard electronic. It’s still kind of blending the lines between what’s organic and what’s electric.

Nate: For me, a lot of it comes from St. VIncent, Ben Howard, Jeff Buckley, guys like that that do really cool stuff with guitar that other people aren’t doing, and make it sound more interesting than guitar sometimes.

Zach: I sort of grew up listening to a lot of dad music, so I love a lot of the stuff that Chicago did, and a lot of the old ‘80s stuff, like Duran Duran and the Police, and whatnot. But at the same time, in like a modern way, I’ll also listen to a lot of old house music, on one side of the spectrum, and I also like Nine Inch Nails, and there are a lot of other things going on a little more today, like I love CHVRCHES, so there’s this wide spectrum of stuff, but I think the thing that it’s had in common is that it was just recognizable to be relatable and easy to like, but also just different enough for the time, and I think that was what I liked about it the most, and I think when I started music, I carried that. I like things that are easy enough to like, and everyone can sing along to it, or recognize the beat and the music, but at the same time, being tricky with what energy you put into it, and how you do it, is interesting. So I think collectively, all of that together makes this a little interesting, a little tricky music, but at the end of the day, the songs and the music should still relate, and should be able to be carried by anybody.

Another unique thing is that you don’t have a drummer. How has that affected your process?

Dave: (Laughs) We don’t have a drummer that’s signed as part of the band, if you will. We’re kind of like Phoenix. Our drummer J Man, he’s wonderful, and he tours with us wherever we go, but it also allows us to — we have a lot of talented friends, so we’ve had other drummers come in and sit with us. And I think during the first album, we didn’t think so much about the live sound, but since we’ve played so many shows since then, it’s becoming a part of our production process a lot more now. It’s cool because now we’re starting to think about what a drummer would do live, like what would J Man do live to bring the energy up? Maybe on the record, it’s not 100, it’s like 80% intensity, but live, it’s 100% intensity, and it allows us to put that feeling out in a precise way, and then also just party with it when we’re playing live shows.

Did you all meet while attending college? Would you say your education made its way into the sound of Arizona?

Dave: I actually ended up going to school for television, but it does fold into the Arizona thing. We definitely are really conscious of what we put out visually, and I think that enables us to have more extension of what we want our expression to be, whereas a lot of bands have to rely on someone else to worry about the visual stuff. For us, not that we’re control freaks, but we definitely have an actual hand in the process, and that allows us to make sure that its tailored to what we want, and saying what we want and doing what we want to do. And then, I was classically trained in piano.

Nate: I took lessons, but I definitely came up more in the school of jam, when you just hang out with your friends and groove.

Zach: I dropped out of high school (laughs). I didn’t go to college. I didn’t really have many formal lessons in music. I learned from my father who was an excellent horn player. My mother played an insane amount of instruments. I was always around music. I, at one point, wanted to be a teacher, a history teacher in school. The one thing I did do which was smart in my time in school before I left was with Carl Helder. Dave and I shared him because went to high school with him. He was a choir / music theory teacher, director or whatever. And I did a music theory class with him, so I had a small time, just enough to listen to learn, you know, music theory and whatnot. And the rest I learned kind of like what Nate said — just being around people who are musical, and learning the ins and outs of what works and doesn’t work. And moving forward into doing what we’re doing, it helps, because it’s not necessarily about what technically works, it’s about what connects. And so many things that connect with people are sometimes the opposite of technical. If you’re going to stray away from what’s correct, you need to know what’s correct, so you can do it in a way that’s interesting enough, to do it to where it lands properly.

Your latest single “Find Someone” sounds like a readymade hit — catchy, accessible, easily relatable, and very much in the vein of popular music of the moment. How did the song come together, and what exactly did you want fans to take away from it?

Zach: Yeah, the song “Find Someone” is part of a string of a few singles that are leading up to this album that we’re going to be putting out at some point. I think the idea behind a lot of the songs we release is that they can be musically different, they can be sonically different, but they’re all about very intricate moments in people’s lives, whether it’s like “Find Someone,” which is essentially about being the bad guy in a relationship, or “Freaking Out,” which is about having a bad guy within yourself that you fight. The process for this next album has been the same in a lot of those songs, which is to write songs that are kind of about self acceptance, and being okay with where you are and who you are. And as long as you’re conscious about what’s going on with yourself, you can accept it — which is a deeper meaning. It’s not something that you can hear right from the point. Everyone can take away what they will form it, at whatever level they’re experiencing in their life. The music should relate to you wherever you are.

What can fans expect from your sophomore album, and in what ways has the music you are currently working on evolved since “Gallery?”

Nate: We’ve been in this phase of finding ourselves, and just coming to terms with our lives (laughs). So thematically, a lot of the songs are very real experiences for us, and feelings that we’ve had to confront, if you will. And currently, literally, as of this week, the prior week, and the week after, we‘re trying to wrap it up, so we’re getting it out soon. We don’t have a date yet, but we’re definitely trying to get it out soon.