Santa Barbara band exPorter have been playing music together since they were kids and officially became a band in 2018. Made up of two brothers (Destin and Alec Cavazos) playing bass and guitar, with Henry Kish joining in 2018 on drums.
They released a debut EP (Bored) and debut album (NoBrakesNoBrakesNoBrakes).
Currently, Trevor Moropoulos has taken over drumming duties. " We think it would be great at some time having a show where we have all of our drummers playing with us, there are 5 total so far. Maybe the brothers could play drums and the 5 others could play everything else." - That would be a fun and very loud show!
We get to know exPorter better
TELL US ABOUT YOUR LATEST ALBUM OR SINGLE
exPorter: We’re still doing a lot of promotion behind NoBrakes, doing shows with a lot of that in the set. We’ve had 5 of the songs out on radio and they tracked pretty well. We still have maybe one or two more that we’d like to feature, maybe do a video for, maybe another radio campaign. It’s either going to be “…Venus” or “Sister Cities”. We can let your readers decide.
WHICH SONG WOULD YOU SAY SUMS UP YOUR SOUND THE BEST?
exPorter: Ooooo Tough one. Our band is pop-punk, alt rock at the core but there’s been so many influences on us and a lot of the bands we love have kind of made their way into the music and broadened our vibe. So if you take a song like Sister Cities, you would
probably pick up on the Cure vibe in the guitar lick but we’re not really trying to be the Cure if that makes sense. If you take our song “Carsick” which was one of the first ones Alec wrote, you pick up on the energy we put into the songs. Hmmmm, this is tough. You also have our ballads so we will throw one of those here, maybe “Rain Delay”. So you asked for one but we’re gonna cheat and go with those three, if you listen to those you will for sure get a sense of our sound.
DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC IN A FEW WORDS.
exPorter: If Blink-182 and Green Day had a baby, you would have exPorter.
WHO HAVE YOUR BIGGEST INFLUENCES BEEN?
exPorter: Another tough one. Of course, you have to have Blink and Green Day in there but there are also so many other bands that make their way into our music. From Alec’s perspective, you have just about anything Tom DeLonge ever did whether it’s Blink or Boxcar or AVA. You also have bands like Modern Baseball and Joyce Manor. For Destin, you can also add emo bands Like Fallout Boy or Panic plus riot girl/woman-driven rock from Blondie to Charly Bliss and others. Way too man to list but you can pick up a lot of stuff in our tunes.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO MUSIC?
exPorter: The true story is Alec and Destin were rocking out on Rock Band on the Wii when they were kids. Their dad came in and said, heck if you can rock out on pretend instruments then maybe it’s time you learned real ones. So Alec got a guitar that Xmas, Destin got a bass and that was it. With lessons at the local guitar shop both brothers were soon in bands and then realized if they could just get a drummer they’d be ready to rock for real.
WHAT IS THE CREATIVE PROCESS LIKE FOR YOU WHEN MAKING MUSIC?
exPorter: While there’s no set way, there is a pretty standard way for most of the songs.
Usually, Alec or Destin will have an idea for a son, from just a riff or melody to perhaps a full song. They’ll get together and run through the ideas and they’ll get fleshed out to a pretty near final version. Every now and then during one of the jam sessions, they’ll actually come up with a whole new song in minutes, but for the most part that collaboration process has been there for maybe 99% of the songs.
WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD BE THE COOLEST COLLABORATION PROJECT BETWEEN YOU AND ANOTHER ARTIST?
exPorter: It depends on who you ask. If it’s Alec then you can expect Tom DeLonge in one form or another. For Destin it depends on the day but something with Danny Elfman would always make the list.
PLEASE TELL US A RANDOM FACT ABOUT YOURSELF?
exPorter: Someone in the band has two webbed toes on one foot, also known as bunny toes, one of us has worked as a professional musician, we’ve met some great bands who were huge influences on us from Social D to yes, Tom DeLonge – Alec almost cried. And no one in the band has ever flown on a blimp...yet.
WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN?
exPorter: The best advice was to make sure to recognise that this is a business first and foremost and to just shut up and play. Given to us by different people but we take those to heart in everything we do. The business thing was hard at first cause we didn’t really think about it like a job for a long time. But once we started taking things more seriously and focusing on the different aspects of what it meant to be a band it made sense. As for the shut up and play part, that was easier. We love to play live and never really had a problem playing on stage. But we do take it a lot more seriously as we’ve grown so it’s not those little kids playing Rock Band anymore, it’s a real band trying to make sure the crowd loves what we’re playing.
IF YOU COULD CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THE INDUSTRY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
exPorter: For sure it would be to make it easier for independent bands to get more radio play, maybe catch on with labels, stuff like that. We’ve been really lucky to have had a lot of our songs on the radio but when we talk to some of the deejays you’d be surprised at how little say they have as to what’s getting played..ALL THE TIME sometimes. It’s kind of sad.
WHAT'S NEXT?
exPorter: We have more shows coming up in the Spring and we’re working on Summer shows right now as well. Most of those are supporting NoBrakes but we’re actually writing new stuff too and starting to road test those. We’re probably going to record one or two of the new songs in the next month or so which means new exPorter tunes could be out soon!
PLEASE ADD ANY SOCIALS SO WE CAN SHARE
exPorter: You can check us out online all over:
Web: www.exporter.band