Seattle — Since the release of their debut full-length album last month, Orange County-based The Colourist has been making a splash with their, as BestNewBands.com’s writer Beth McAllister put it in her review, “relatable front with an eccentric twist.”
While selling out shows on their first-ever headlining tour and seeing their self-titled album take over iTunes’ Alternative chart might not seem relatable to everyone, the band members certainly are, with their love for Steve Brule, baby animal videos, and Mai Tais.
Heading into the last week of their tour, I spoke with The Colourist’s drummer and co-vocalist Maya Tuttle as they drove through the mountains from Colorado to Utah.
Caitlin Peterkin: How’s the tour been so far? It’s your first headlining act, how’s everything going?
Maya Tuttle: It’s been incredible! Right now we’re in week six of seven weeks, and I think we were really pleasantly surprised at the turnout on this tour. We’ve sold out I think 7 or 8 of the states, maybe more, I lost count. But we were incredibly surprised by how welcomed we were in each of these cities, and the turnout — it’s been awesome.
CP: So what’s it like as you’ve been traveling? How do you pass time in the van?
MT: We do a lot of things. We watch movies; we’re all addicted to this show called “Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule,” it’s on Adult Swim starring John C. Reilly — we binge watch a ton of those episodes. And sometimes we watch baby animal YouTube videos.
CP: So normal stuff…Can you talk to me about your album? How do you feel about the reception?
MT: We feel great! The reception’s been overwhelmingly positive. The first day it was offered on iTunes it was #1 on the Alternative charts which blew us away. It’s been absolutely amazing to hear everyone’s feedback and see people singing the lyrics at shows now, and to have all our full album out there feels really great.
CP: Speaking of the lyrics, who writes them? Is it a team effort, what’s the dynamic like?
MT: All four of us are writers in the band, and so every song is different. Some songs all four of us have contributed equally, for others someone comes in with an idea and the rest of us help complete it. So all four of us are represented in a lot of these songs.
CP: I’m curious about how the band formed — I read about a warehouse in Orange County? Take me through the band history there.
MT: Adam [Castilla] and I we were in a band together previously and we met joining that band, but in that band neither of us sang — I only played drums, he played guitar. When that band broke up we’re like, “Do we still want to make music together?” And we brought along Justin [Wagner], who had been our friend for a while, and Kollin [Johannsen], who was in another local band, and formed The Colourist. Sort of out of necessity, Adam started singing, I started singing — we couldn’t find another singer, so that’s sort of how the band came together. We’re all located in Orange County, and Adam had worked with a man named Spirit — I think that’s his real name [it is] — he was kind of a metal head straight out of the 80’s. He had a death metal band called Scarlet Red that needed a band to share its practice space with that was nearly abandoned…it wasn’t really abandoned, we weren’t like squatting or anything, but this ended up becoming our practice space on the third floor of this empty building. It was called The Lido Building, and has since been converted into apartments but we named our debut EP we put out last summer after this building.
CP: Being from California, and having a “u” in “colour,” that’s kind of a British thing I’ve noticed. What was the decision to spell it that way?
MT: Canadian too! We found out when we went to Canada. Originally it was because that version of the name was not taken, but also, as you just write out the letters, there’s something about it aesthetically that’s more pleasing to the eye when the “u” is in there. And another thing we tell people is, there’s a lot of bands that are taking vowels out of their names, so we wanted to put some extra vowels into our name.
CP: Awesome, yeah you have like MS MR, STRFKR, MGMT…
MT: Sometimes we get a lot of interesting misspellings, like add even more letters in, like some people will call us “The Colololourist” or something! We love our name.
CP: Speaking of things you love, tropical drinks is listed on Facebook as a band interest, and there’s even a recent photo of the guys drinking Mai Tais. When did this love for fruity drinks come about?
MT: I don’t know specifically…Orange County is where we rehearse too, pretty much right on the beach, so we’re around palm trees, tropical elements all the time. Kollin has always been a fan of Mai Tais; I think he spread love of it to all of us. Justin is the only one of us that has a pool in his backyard, so we’d go over to his house for a pool party sometimes. We just like that sort of tropical atmosphere, I think it’s comforting, reminds us of home. When we’re on tour, we brought these palm trees with us that light up that we keep onstage to sort of bring our essence of home to the rest of the country.
CP: Listening to the album, it has sunny, poppy, bright elements. Do you think where you’re from has influenced your sound?
MT: It’s an interesting question…when we first started putting out music we saw bloggers would write we have a California sound and it almost didn’t make sense to us — we didn’t know what that meant. I feel like maybe it has influenced our sound but we don’t even exactly realize that, it’s something other people notice.
CP: What’s next for you guys? Have any more songs in the bank, more touring…?
MT: Yeah, I mean we’re constantly writing, there are plans for that. As far as plans for the summer, we are playing the Firefly Music Festival in Delaware, and we have a bunch of other stuff we haven’t announced yet. We’re going to do some more dates across the country, we just announced a headline show in New York at Bowery Ballroom, that will also be in late June. We’ll hit the road some more, just keeping busy this summer!
For more information on The Colourist, including tour dates, visit their website or Facebook page.
Caitlin Peterkin
With degrees in journalism and music, Caitlin’s written for Paste Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and MajoringinMusic.com. She loves cheese, laughing at GIFs of corgis, road trip sing-alongs, and connecting with people over good beer and good music.
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