Joaquin: Can you tell us a little bit about how Loc Dawgs Started?

Christian: We started right before COVID and just kinda came up with a few songs. I had just gotten out of another band at the time. I was over it, the whole damn thing. I told myself, “I’m just gonna go record some stuff myself.” I ended up liking the songs, so I started a band. I started playing some shows. We played like five shows, then everything fell apart during COVID. And then we kind of came back together, me and Ben. He’s been the drummer since the beginning. And we got Tyler on bass now. Kind of just came together really well after COVID. Honestly, it’s been going good.

Joaquin: What are your biggest musical inspirations?

Christian: Lots of 90s stuff. Alice In Chains, Nirvana, of course. A big influence was a lot of 80s, kind of really hardcore punk like Bad Brains, Black Flag, Minor Threat, and that kind of stuff. In essence of songwriting I’m a big, big Queen fan. Honestly, Brian May, I think he’s awesome.

Joaquin: Can you explain the writing process for some new songs?

Christian: Yeah, the writing process for us has been all over the place, honestly. Most of the time I am constantly just, like, in my room jamming and stuff. I come up with a riff and then, you know, I’ll send it to y’all like a little group chat and we all send, like, ideas into the group chat. And then, you know, we kind of pick and choose the things we like, and then put it together at band practice and just kind of build on it from there.

Joaquin: How did the song “Day By Day” come to be?

Christian: “Day by day”, let me jog my memory a little bit. Originally, I was listening to the Foo Fighters’ first record, and I’m gonna give away secrets, but it’s very influenced by the song “Weenie Beenie.” I liked the first half, it’s just, like, this intense, but, like, very simple riff. Musically, it’s very simple, but it’s so intense, it’s in your face. And then the screaming on top of that, it was just, like, kinda, this is dope. So I was like, I want to incorporate some kind of screaming vocals. Because, like, in the past, I’ve done that. And then the chorus was kind of actually, originally, there’s gonna be screaming the whole time. But the chorus, every time we played, it felt wrong. So I took the chorus from another song that I had written, that was kind of more of like, The Offspring, Rise Against kind of vibe. We kind of meshed it together. So then it kind of came together cool because you have that kind of element of the, like, intensity, the screaming, and then you have kind of a catchy chorus and it brings it all together.

Joaquin: You filmed the music video for that. Can you talk about just, like, what it was like producing, making a music video ?

Christian: It’s a lot of fun. Honestly, it’s really hard with everyone working day jobs. There were a lot of late nights. We worked pretty hard on it. Like the whole intro scene took us about, I don’t know, seven hours maybe to film. I think we got there at like 6:00 p.m. and we left at, like, 12:45 a.m. and we were still filming Ben. There was too much material and all that was improv and it was hard to keep a straight face and laughing and all that. We got kicked out of the original parking garage we were filming at so we had to find a new one to film that in. So there’s a lot that went into it. Before we move on, I just have to plug the boy Samsun Keithley, the producer of that music video. Thank you for making it happen. Anyone ever needs a music video, hit him up, he’s the boy.

Joaquin: With the release of “Day by Day” and the music video there’s been a lot of commercial success not usually apparent in small, local bands. How’s that been?

Christian: It’s been crazy. We put out the music video, we put out a couple, like, Facebook and Instagram ads. Our goal for the past couple of months is we need to get out of Santa Barbara and, like, we play here a lot and we love Santa Barbara, but we just played in Arizona. There’s so much the whole country and the world has to offer, so we kind of targeted some ads over on the east coast because a lot of the music we listen to is coming out of the east coast. And yeah, the music video, like, I woke up one day and I was like, ‘Holy sh*t! We have a couple 1000 views!’ Then it kind of just kept coming.

Joaquin: How do you balance your music with your personal life?

Christian: It’s not too hard. All three of us have kind of been, we’re all on the same page right now, music is pretty much our priority. We want to, like, put that first before anything. So, like, we’re able to kind of make it work. You know,
if we have to go play shows outside of Santa Barbara and stuff, you know, everyone gets work off and our girlfriends come to shows. They always come with us and hang out. We’re not, like, we haven’t had too much conflict yet with life and music. So that’s a good thing for now. But, we’ll see what happens.

Joaquin: Any funny experiences while on tour?

Christian: Yeah, well, we just did a little tour, it was short, we did, like, three shows. Every adventure, little testing the waters to see if we could pull it off. And then we almost flipped our trailer. We rented a U haul trailer and then Ben was pulling off, he got off the freeway and was getting back on the on ramp. But then there’s like a turnout on the freeway onramp. And he goes to get off, but he would probably go like 40. And there was a drop off that was probably like a foot, foot and a half tall. And so he hit that and the whole truck slammed and we just saw the whole trailer, like, teeter totter. And it was literally like the wheels, like, barely came off the ground and then slammed back and we’re just, like, we all kind of stopped. And we just kind of looked around and started laughing, like, damn, we almost flipped all our gear, that was crazy. Bonus! We got searched on our way back from Arizona. We crossed the Arizona California border, yeah, they didn’t like us too much for some reason. And we’re just going from state to state. It was like going from country to country.

Joaquin: Do you have any advice for any aspiring musician?

Christian: Yeah. Just do it. You know, don’t let people tell you what to do. And just be yourself. I think that the more you put yourself out there, the more people react. So if you’re ever unsure about something, that’s probably a sign, you should do it. You know, anything that feels intimidating or scary, like, do it because there’s a reason that it is. And that for us, that was like going out to Flagstaff. I was like, dude, I’ve played with other bands outside the state, but never like this man. We don’t have a following out there and I guess, you know, it was a total hit or miss. You know, we could have been playing to zero people, yeah, but would have been fun with the experience. It put us out of our comfort zone and I feel like every time you do that, it makes you a better musician and a better person.

Raining Down by Loc Dawgs is out now on all major streaming platforms.