Fresh off their first summer tour across the Northwest, psychedelic rock band Charcoal Squids have come a long way since their first show at their neighbor”s apartment last December.
The band, consisting of Josh Bacca on guitar and vocals, drummer Mason Donaldson, and bassist Allyson Amstutz, has become a local favorite in the past few months. The University of Idaho students have aspirations of becoming solidified performers under a DIY label before the year ends.
Bacca and Donaldson, the group”s founding members, said their tour was a fun learning experience and they enjoyed exploring the Pacific Northwest where they played in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
The highlight of the tour, they said, was performing in a coffee shop in Tacoma, where they were able to use their fog machine.
Josh Bacca | Courtesy
“They have a really cool stage presence,” Parsons said. “They use fog machines and mannequins and usually have some kind of cool prop or stunt built into their act “¦ they”re a fun band to see.”Casey Parsons, a local Charcoal Squids fan and self-proclaimed “Cosmic Pilgrim,” said the special effects used by the band help accentuate the group”s unique sound.
In addition to amplifying their stage presence, Bacca said the props proved to be a fun element to travel with while on tour.
“We would stop at a gas station and get really weird looks,” he said. “We would open the trunk of our van and mannequin parts would come spilling out.”
The tour covered seven locations in three different states, and while Bacca said he considers the tour a success, it didn”t come without challenges.
“We hit a lot of challenges on the road but they actually helped us become closer,” he said. “We stopped caring about the stress as much and started to develop a better friendship.”
As school starts back up again, Bacca said the group aims to work on releasing new material on Bandcamp and Soundcloud and finding more opportunities to perform within the community.
“The hopes are that we start getting to play at more festivals and maybe meet some of our influences,” he said. “Eventually we want to play Levitation Psych Fest in Austin, Texas “¦ Weddings are a goal too, I”ve always wanted to play a wedding “¦ like, think about how weird that would be having us play our music at a wedding.”
When it comes to long-term goals, Bacca said the band is brainstorming ideas for releasing a full-length album and writing more songs to perform in the near future.
Although the band released their first EP, “The Yellow Bicycle,” earlier in the year, Bacca said he hopes their next big project has more of a unifying theme.
“Our EP was roughly mixed and consisted of a bunch of rowdy folk-esque music,” he said. “What we plan on releasing within the next month is the foundation that we hope to build our sound off of for future albums.”
Parons, who has been familiar with the band since they first began, said their sound has matured over time and he looks forward to seeing what the band will produce in the future.
“It started as this kind of folk rock but then really started to develop into something more psychedelic that they”ve made their own,” Parsons said. “Their newer stuff is this sort of ethereal psychedelic rock that utilizes a lot of distortion to achieve something really different.”
Luis Torres can be reached at [email protected]