and stuff based off the fifth-year mark. But hopefully we’ll be able to book a show close to — if not the exact date of — the fifth year mark. So that’ll be fun. What do you do in your time off? CBDB: We get a lot of rest. We [recently] took a little bit of time off from playing, which is always good because you get stuck in a rut. If you’re on the road a lot, it’s hard to keep the motivation and newness of it; you kind of get stuck in a rut, so coming back after a couple weeks off and getting away from it is kind of refreshing. Things sound new and different than before just because you’ve been away from it. What is your writing process usually like? CBDB: Each song is different, but for the majority of them someone will come up with an idea. Recently, David has come up with a bunch of stuff that he built up. So we’ll start there and then we just kind of jam on that for a minute, try to think of counter-melodies and other parts, try to see what fits and what doesn’t. The words are always last, and I’ll usually just start singing gibberish over it, trying to get a melody, and then sometimes the words will come from the gibberish. Sometimes I’ll have words on my phone, like I’ve written down ideas, and sometimes ideas will come from that. But sometimes they just sort of get made up on the spot. What are some bands that have inspired your sound? CBDB: I think Umphrey’s McGee is a big one for sure. All of us have a very varied taste. I know Chris, our guitar player, is a big Mastodon fan and some heavier stuff like that, so that brings more of a metal sound to the stuff that we do. D-Ray, our bass player, he’s a big Chili Peppers and Snarky Puppy [88] <strong>Alice</strong> April 2016 fan. But it’s a lot more of the more prog-rock stuff that we enjoy mostly. How do you think that your music fits into all of that? CBDB: I think it’s definitely similar to a lot of that stuff. I think it’s a little more vocal driven than some of that stuff. I try to write pop songs basically, but prog-pop songs. We’ve been calling our music prog-pop lately, and I think that’s pretty fitting just because we want to write catchy tunes, but then have musicianship that will have musicians bobbing their heads saying, “Wow,” you know? All these people ask us what our sound is, and we don’t want to say boring stuff, so we just sort of branded it “joyfunk.” But it started off a little bit more on the “pop-y” side than on the “prog-y” side, but the progressive stuff is definitely something we enjoy, so it’s always something that we want to do. What are your goals? CBDB: I mean we’re already on Spotify. I think our goals are probably to get signed to an agency, and we just did that with [Progressive Global Agency]. <strong>No</strong>w I think our new goal is just to spread it as much as we can and keep writing and getting as excited as we can. This is something we want to do for the rest of our lives. So we want to get to the point where we’re making enough money to have a family and all that stuff and do that while playing music, so I think that’s kind of the goal. Why CBDB? CBDB: Well, we try to keep that ambiguous. We usually let folks guess, basically, for that stuff. What’s been your favorite guess that you’ve heard so far? CBDB: Aw, man, see that’s why we do that, because this is a good one. There’s a bunch of them. Cool Boogie Dance Bakery, Cold Beer, Dank Buds… it’s a lot of fun hearing people guess what it is. Where is your favorite place to play in Tuscaloosa? CBDB: Currently either Green Bar or the old Jupiter Bar, which was a lot of fun. We played Druid City [Brewery] one time, but it was kind of a bust for us because it was after the Ole Miss game, and we only got to play for a little bit. But Druid City Music Hall will be a fun one in April. I can’t wait to see who will be there soon. But Green Bar definitely has been a favorite for sure. To listen to and keep up with CBDB, visit Spotify, Pandora, cbdbmusic.com, @cbdbtweets, @cbdbpics, Facebook and YouTube.
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