Nashville band Coin is just breaking out onto the music scene, touring with big name artists to ease their transition and get their name out. The Daily Reveille sat down with Coin’s Ryan Winnen to talk about their performance at Groovin’ tomorrow.
The Daily Reveille: Have you ever performed in Louisiana before?
Ryan Winnen: We have one time. We played in Baton Rouge at an interesting little place that was off the interstate. It was really nice and all of the people were super nice to us. The show went really well.
TDR: Have you ever played for college campuses before?
RW: Yes, we have. We’ve done a good bit of it at this point. It’s super fun, and the cool part for us is that we’re all like 22 and 23, so it’s nice to literally get to play for our peers. It’s just a blast because we get to talk to kids after shows and then they realize that we’re the same age and I think that’s cool for everybody. I think it puts us on the same page.
TDR: When did you form the band?
RW: We formed the band around 2012. Joe Memmel and Chase Lawrence were in school together at Belmont University. They sat next to each other in a music theory class, and then they met me through a girl I was dating who was also in the class. Then we met our bass player, Zachary Dyke, because he shot a music video for us. We kind of tricked him into being in the band. We were shooting a scene at his house and then we just started playing. Then Zach picked up the bass and we just kind of pointed at him and go, “Okay you’re going to play bass for this band,” which is funny.
TDR: What is the best thing about being in the band and doing all of these shows?
RW: As cliche as it may sound, I think it’s sharing the experience with the audience members. There’s a ton of bands that we meet who won’t go out after the show. If they’re too big of a band, then I understand that they can’t spend too much time out there, but because we’re the opener, right now we’re trying to soak that up and really enjoy getting to know people and see how they feel about our show. Like what emotion did they feel when they were listening to our music? And we would hope that would be joy. We’d hope that they have a really good time after a long week or something like that with their friends, and they’re able to thoroughly enjoy the experience. For us, the only reason why we’re doing it is to reach people.
TDR: What can people expect from your set at Groovin’?
RW: Our set right now is very energetic and to the point because we’re releasing our first record in June, so everything up until this point has been opening slots. We really like to just come in and bring as much energy as possible, especially when we get to play for this demographic. It seems like there’s going to be a lot of people there, so I think we’ll have a blast feeding off of the crowd.
TDR: What’s your favorite thing to do off stage?
RW: We try to stay pretty active on tour. We like to play sports with the bands we’re on tour with or just by ourselves. It’s funny to experiment with the competitive nature of the people in our band. Other than that we’re big foodies on the road, so we love finding new restaurants and new coffee shops. If we’re in a major city early enough, we love exploring and making sure we get some good food.
TDR: What’s a fun fact about the band?
RW: I guess the way Joe and Chase met. They actually met in West Virginia before they met at Belmont. Chase went to see Joe’s show for his high school band because he heard his song on the radio that day. They met and said hi, but never exchanged information or even really talked much after that. So I think that kind of eludes to the serendipitous nature of how this whole group started.
TDR: Anything else?
RW: Our album comes out June 9th. It’s our first one so we’re really excited about it.