MuzicNotez: First off, it’s an honor to be doing this interview with you, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us.
Introduce yourselves, what are your names and rolls in the band?
Cohasset: Chris Jackson: I’m the singer and bass player, Tyler Wennstrom is the guitarist, and Joseph Fleming is the drummer.
MuzicNotez: How did you meet and form up? How long have you been together?
Cohasset: Chris: Tyler and I went to the same high school. He had just left his reggae band when he asked me to play bass in his band. That is when I met Joseph, who was in the same reggae band. We have been together for about three years now.
MuzicNotez: How did you come up with the name Cohasset?
Cohasset: Chris: It is the name of the street that leads up to my house. We were pretty terrible at coming up with a good band name. Tyler wanted something that related to nature. I looked up “Cohasset” and found out that it means “pine place” in a Native American language, so we were all satisfied with the name. It’s also really unique which is great.
MuzicNotez: Who were your musical influences, idols, or bands growing up that have helped mold you into the band you are today? Or helped mold the music that you create?
Cohasset: Chris: My main influences growing up were The Beatles and Radiohead. I have also been getting into St. Vincent a lot lately. As far as my bass playing goes, I have to say that Les Claypool was my initial influence. A few of my favorites now are Evan Brewer, Steve Bailey, and Victor Wooten. Cohasset certainly agrees a lot musically, and all of us listen to pretty much everything. As far as our influence on our band’s sound, we initially gave most of our credit to Incubus. Now that we are more math rock, This Town Needs Guns and Tera Melos are our biggest influences, even though people still compare us to Incubus sometimes.
Tyler: Growing up I listened to metal mostly; once I started listening to other music, I found that technical and musically complex sounds were what attracted me the most. For this release, I modeled some of my parts from DIIV, Weye, Tall Ships, and some funk tendencies left over from our last project. I had a lot of ideas in my head from all these bands at the time. I would just noodle out some melodic, syncopated lines based on some of their music. That’s where most of my instrumentation came from.
MuzicNotez: What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been to or performed?
Cohasset: Chris: We have gone to several concerts together ranging from metal festivals like Mayhem to indie shows. My personal favorite was when we went to see This Town Needs Guns and Tera Melos. We also saw Red Hot Chili Peppers, which was really awesome too. Our best performance was definitely at The Roxy, just because the energy was perfect.
Tyler: Jerry’s House
MuzicNotez: What’s the ultimate goal you want your music to achieve, or for you to achieve in your career as a musician? Any particular message you wish to send?
Cohasset: Chris: We would like our music to be a new bridge between pop music and more technical musical music. If we can be really famous, that would be cool. But as long as we are doing what we love it doesn’t matter. As of now we don’t have a specific message other than hoping we get more people interested in math rock.
Tyler: Yeah, we would love for people to just hear us out and investigate the genres further. Math rock, shoegaze, indie pop, all great.
MuzicNotez: You self describe your genre as ‘Math Rock’, how did you get in to this genre and how do you describe it?
Cohasset: Chris: We certainly did not start as a math rock band. We initially started as a funk/reggae band. Then we took a metal direction. Then we became Ask The Others, which was an alternative rock band. Once we became Cohasset, Tyler’s guitar parts started getting way more complicated. Eventually, we became math rock with a mix of pop. Math rock is basically indie rock but with odd-meter time signatures and highly technical playing.
Tyler: We say Math Rock for brevity. It’s a malleable genre ranging from hardcore to garage, metal, psych, surf, whatever. We like to have weird signatures, so we just use “Math” to describe that.
MuzicNotez: You recently released your EP ‘Departure’, what was the production of this like? How’d you come up with the name?
Cohasset: Chris: All of the EP was recorded at my house because my dad is a recording engineer. We recorded around twelve songs, so we have only released half of the session so far. Since we recorded everything at my house, we were able to have total control on the album, plus we saved a lot of money. The album has an interesting sound because it was not done in a studio. Most of the lyrics are about breakups and suicide, and dark things like that, so the name “Departure” seemed appropriate.
MuzicNotez: What else are you working on? What can we expect to see and hear from you in the future?
Cohasset: Chris: You can expect a new EP soon because we have all of the songs recorded already. We will release it when we feel the time is right. We think that people will respond to it well. We all have our own side projects as well. Another band I’m in, Heartwood, has a song out and is releasing a demo soon, which I am excited about. We like to keep busy musically, but none of these projects are replacing Cohasset.
Tyler: Definitely look out for our upcoming release. The next EP has a whole different feel from our most recent release, so stay tuned.
MuzicNotez: Anything else you wish to say about yourself or your music? Any message for your fans?
Cohasset: Chris: We really like getting feedback from the people so we encourage that as much as possible! We would also like to thank everyone who has followed us on our musical endeavors, and hope that you show our music to the people you know. We will continue to make good music for you guys as long as there are people listening.
