Coin is an American Indie pop band that was formed by Chase Lawrence, Joe Memmel, Ryan Winnen and Zach Dyke in Nashville, Tennessee in 2012.
The band received mainstream attention after the release of their single; “Run,” in 2015 and they released a self-titled album later that year. Their song, “Run” was hailed by Billboard naming them the “New wave crash course survivors.” They also received consistent play on Sirius‘ Alt Nation radio station.
The Knockturnal got a chance to sit with the guys and get to know them better with a series of questions ranging from how they started to where they are now. Here’s how it went!
When someone hears of an artist that has come from Nashville, your sound isn’t necessarily what comes to mind. How did you develop your style of music and sound?
Joe: We’re all not originally from Nashville. We are kind of just transplants!
Chase: We are all from interesting places. The school where we went to college was Belmont University, and that kind of brought us there (to Nashville). We all brought our different influences from all the different music we have played previously, and it kind of created what is the COIN sound. It really wasn’t the influence of Nashville; It was more the influences of our upbringing. I’ve never thought about that actually. That’s a great question! It’s usually a question such as, “How do we not write country music?
It was almost fluke how you all met: because two of you happened to be sitting next to each other in a class, and the other two were introduced through friends.
Chase: Yea so what’s even more of a fluke is that Joe’s high school band came to my hometown, in West Virginia, and they played a show at this theater. Now I have never been to a show in my hometown ever. Nobody really comes there. It’s a very small city. I randomly heard their song on the radio that morning going to school, and I went to their show that night. I met Joseph outside the venue, and he was like: “You should come to the show,” and I was like: “I am coming to the show!” I left. I never thought I’d see the person again, and we ended up sitting beside each other on day 1 of class. We didn’t even put it together until a few weeks into school, then we were like, there’s some reason why we are seeing each other again, so we pursued writing together. It wasn’t perfect at first but after a few tries, it really came to a point where we produced a sound that was very unique, and very us.
Do you all ever think about the trajectory that your lives could have taken if you hadn’t just happened to meet?
Chase: Often. Yea. Very recently, actually, we do. We were driving around California, and we were like: “What would we be doing if we weren’t doing this?” I think I would still be involved in music to some capacity, because I moved to Nashville to be a writer, to be a song-writer, that’s really all I’ve wanted to do. The whole premise of the band was built around playing just one show. One show at a club, that’s all I wanted, and obviously, we are here now so still doing this, but I think I would’ve liked to be a songwriter. What about you Zach?
Zach: Um…
Chase: I don’t know how different. I mean, I doubt my life would have been extremely different. I wouldn’t be here in this office. I definitely wouldn’t have been an artist if I hadn’t played in that one show, I don’t think.
Zach: I maybe would have gone the fine arts route, with photography, and then gone to like a Masters program for that. I really don’t know!
Do you still do photography ever?
Zach: Not too much, but I still do it for fun.
Chase: He travels with his camera.
Ryan: He’s very good at it. Whenever we make stops, he finds cool buildings and stuff like that, and he photographs them.
Chase: He shoots 2-dimensional photography. It’s really cool.
Do you normally edit on top of the shooting?
Zach: Yeah a little bit.
Chase: Just to bring out all the colors.
How about you, Ryan and Joe? Where do you think you would have been?
Ryan: I’ve been struggling with this question recently, because music has shaped my taste in a lot of things, like art, fashion, and a lot of things since I was 13-years-old, or whatever, when I first started getting into music, so I don’t totally know.
Chase: But the trajectory your life would have taken without the band specifically, not necessarily without music.
Ryan: Oh, okay. Yeah, I’d probably do something in art, or fashion world, and that would probably be paired with education too. I’d probably try to go to school for that.
Chase: Yeah, this band kind of interrupted both of your education (speaking to Ryan and Joe). They are a year younger than Zach and I, so Zach and I were able to graduate, but they weren’t able to finish school, because the band started actually working.
Joe: Ryan never went to University.
Ryan: Right. I didn’t go to a University.
Joe: I dropped out a year in.
Chase: (talking to Ryan) “You more than likely would have gone though.
Ryan: (with smile on his face) I mean… Yeah.
Joe: If I wasn’t in this band, if this band wasn’t a thing, I would definitely still be doing music but in what capacity? This is so basic, but I’ve always wanted to be in a band.
Chase: So you would have been in a band no matter what?
Joe: Absolutely! I mean, I was in a bunch of bands in high school. I always hung out with all those people.
Chase: You’re just a band guy.
Joe: I like the camaraderie.
Chase: I never thought I would be in a band. I mean it’s tight. It’s really fun. It’s really cool to not have to take all of the blame for something.
Joe: It was either that or real estate.
Chase: (Laughing) Real estate?!
Joe: Yeah, I like flipping houses. I honestly enjoy that stuff.
Chase: Yeah, he brought a house in East Nashville and flipped it.
When you first got together, did it click right away, or did it take time?
Chase: So…yea, it did not click right away.
Ryan: There’s to ways to answer this.
Chase: Yeah, there’s two ways to answer it. So Joe and I, that first night when we hung out – it was like 7 pm on a Tuesday or something, and it was so cold – and Joe came to my dorm room. We played together; we played these kind of Folky sounding songs together, because we didn’t know what we wanted to do.
Joe: This was also like 5 years ago.
Chase: Yeah, we didn’t know what we were doing. We were just trying to write a song. I had never written with anyone. (Talking to Joe) I don’t know if you’d ever written with anyone outside of your high school band.
Joe: No. The guy in my high school band lived with me, so I’d be with him all the time.
Chase: (Continues) So, we started just playing for each other, and it wasn’t really working. I was about to say “good-bye” to him, and he was about to walk out the door. We had been hanging out for about 2 hours. And I was like, “ well it’s been good writing with you,” and I was like, “well dang. I wish it would have worked better.” And then I just randomly picked up a guitar and started playing this one song I had been working on, and he was like: “What’s that?” I was like: “That’s just a song. I just want to play one show with music that sounds like this”, and that song ended up being one of the tracks on our first EP.
Which song was it?
Chase: It’s called, ‘Oh No’. We don’t even play it anymore, and that was the first Coin song we have ever written. I’d had the idea for about a year, and Joe was like: “Lets do this.” And I was like: “Dude, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I just want to play one show. Lets call the band Casual Friday!” And Joe was like: “Yeah dude. Lets totally do that!” He was really nice about it, and totally not down with Casual Friday.
Joe: I wasn’t down with any of the band names.
Chase: On other side of Ryan was a girl that volunteered him for the position, so we all crammed into my dorm room, and played the first EP.
So speaking of names, how did ‘Coin’ come about?
Chase: The whole band was started on the premise of only playing one show. It were so carefree, but we did put a lot of effort into it, because we wanted it to be great, but at the same time, we were just like, whatever, it doesn’t really matter. My friend’s band was named after a horse, so I just started looking through a horse race book of race horse names, and I found Lucky Coin, and I was like, luck, okay, luck, that’s it. I’ll call it Luck and that’ll be over. It was totally taken, so I just chose to delete Lucky. We were practicing in a garage at this point, and I was like, “What do you guys think about Coin?” Ryan was like, “Lets do it,” we never turned back, and no we’re here. Yeah. Sometimes I wish it had greater meaning, but I think that it not having a meaning; the name being founded on our carefreeness, or whatever, is an important foundation to the band.
Your songs have recently started blowing up, particularly ‘Run’ and ‘Talk too Much’. Where you prepared for that kind of success?
Chase: We were not prepared. If it had happened a year ago, we would not have been prepared at all.
Ryan: Right.
Chase: I think we have really conditioned ourselves and we’ve toured a lot. We’ve really cut our teeth in dirty, grimy venues.
Joe: We’ve also just matured as people.
Chase: Yeah, we’ve learned how to work with each other, and how to communicate with each other, sometimes better than other times – sorry, Joe. But I don’t think we were poised for success, because no one is, for any kind of success, really. We are humbled and we’ve “paid our dues,” and we’re excited about it.
Joe: To people outside of yourselves, it may seem successful, but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s kind of outside of your control.
Ryan: It’s very gradual.
Chase: It’s interesting you say that. I usually feel like we are in the middle, that we are just a cog in a machine, that is moving super-slow; we are just part of a mechanism that barely moves. But, as of recently, I’ve been able to look at where we are now, and where we were 6 months ago, holistically, for the first time ever. I think playing these shows really have been awesome. We were about 7 shows into tour so I’ve been able to really see a grand view of what we are, and what we have accomplished in 6 months, and it’s really cool. But at the same time, in the thick of it, it just feels like we’ve plateaued, or you just cant see that your growing, ever. Just like when you grow in stature; you don’t notice you’ve grown until someone says: “Wow, you’ve sprouted up”. So I appreciate you saying that, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like we’ve done anything.
Joe: I still feel very normal. I’m just a person.
Ryan: I feel like we have done a lot of things in the past that had led us to this moment. We’re just solely getting a little bit more of a following, more fans and more people listening. I think all of those things we were doing previously, we were like, this wont specifically add up to this or whatever. It was like, we didn’t think that what we were doing would get us here, and then, now that we are here, we don’t really know what’s coming so we are just continuing to move forward.
Have you guys gone on tour before or is this the first time?
Ryan: No we’ve been on tour a lot.
So you’re used to being with each other, non-stop, all the time?
Joe: Last year we were on tour for about a total of 7 months. Yeah it was nuts.
Chase: We were on tour a lot last year. That’s why we we’re saying we cut our teeth. That’s why it seems like this is the next logical step, but then it sounds like we are not humble, you know. It’s unbelievable that anyone comes to see us ever.
Is there anywhere in particular that you guys have enjoyed touring?
Joe: I always love the Northwest. Its beautiful, I love the drives.
Chase: Yeah, the drives are amazing, and rewarding, even the really long drives are so beautiful, that it’s rewarding. Also Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, those cities are really good to us.
What sort of process do you guys go through when creating your songs?
Joe: Lots of voice memos.
In terms of lyrics or the beats?
Joe: Melodies, words.
Chase: Well this album has been a little different, because we have co-written with a lot of people. We didn’t do that on the first album at all. We’ve co-written almost every song on this album either together, with the four of us, or with outside writers too. It usually starts with exchanging voice memos of melodies often attached with a lyric. Often a dumb lyric, that often gets changed. Then Joe and I will start exchanging lyrics, and then I’ll just go through my notes app, and type different lyrics and different lines. I’ll get like 4 lines for each verse, different ones, and just try to interchange different parts. That’s usually the process.
Joe: We went to a cabin for this record, for about 4-5 days, and didn’t sleep at all. All of us. It was fun.
Chase: We went to a cabin in the mountains, the Smoky Mountains. We locked ourselves away, and wrote half the record.
Joe: It was super-fun. I had never done that before.
Do you think you’ll do that again?
Joe, Chase, Zach, Ryan: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, in different locations.
Joe, Chase, Zach, Ryan: Definitely.
Joe: Very rewarding, yeah.
Chase: We made a lot of good songs, but a lot of weird songs too.
How do you decide which songs you go forward with?
Chase: There really is no answer to that.
Zach: Time. Time really helps. You decide, with time, which songs you are actually going to pursue. You kind of don’t know until a couple weeks out, and if you’re still like: okay, that song is still good to me, after about two weeks, then we’ll most likely use it.
In terms of the time, how long does it take to write your songs? Or does it completely depend on the situation?
Chase: It really depends because, Talk too Much was written in 3 hours.
Joe: The first writing session.
Chase: Whereas the song we wrote on the second day, we’re still working on it now. We wrote Talk too Much on day 1, for the second album, and Day 2, we started this next song, called Don’t Cry, and it morphed into three other songs. It just now got finished, this week. It’s insane. So there’s no real answer. Talk Too Much was written not even a year ago, in three hours. Some songs are still loose ends for the second album. I think the best songs often come out the fastest, but then sometimes, there are songs that surprise you, that take forever for that break through, and they come out to be your favorite.
Do you feel like your styles changed at all over time?
Chase: Oh yeah. Gradually, but drastically. When we started the band, like I said, it was really carefree, but we were so inspired by bands we listened to in high school; like Passion Pit, MGMT.
Joe: Yeah. It was like, trying too hard to be like bands that you looked up to.
Chase: But now we’ve kind of found the source, like where they were inspired from.
Joe: We’re comfortable with ourselves now so we’re comfortable with doing stuff that naturally comes out.
Chase: And we also found out who they were inspired by, like bands like The Cure, Talking Heads, The Psychedelic Furs, and we’ve really learned to draw from everything. To just take in all content, and consume it, and put it back out with our spin on it.
So if you could collaborate with any artists, dead or alive, for each of you individually, who would that be?
Chase: I think I would love to work with David Byrne. That would be an ideal situation for me.
Joe: Rick Ocasek.
Chase: Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.
Ryan: The Cars
Zach: Pharrell.
Ryan: I think I’d probably go with Paul McCarthy.
Chase: Oh dude, that’s so good! That’s such a classic.
Joe: I’d be nervous to meet him. I’d be star struck to meet him, Pharrell and Bob Dylan. It would be crazy to meet those guys.
Are there any exciting plans for you guys in the future?
Chase: No really exciting plans, but we’re really excited that we are touring for the rest of this year, which is insane. Our last show is December 15th. Meanwhile we’re finishing up the album on the road. This is just a really chaotic, fun time for us. What’s exciting in the future is new music, coming probably in the new year, probably January: a new single a lot more music, and then an album, and then a headlining tour. We are really excited to make something, a headlining tour, a unique concert experience, that is uniquely us. I think we have done so many supporting shows, and we’ve played with so many awesome bands, but the shows are theirs; they are their experience, it’s their production. We’re so excited to make something that’s very distinctly us. So that’s what’s on the horizon for us. New Album and a Head Lining Tour!”
Just to end the interview on a bit of fun, I want to get an idea of who each person is in the band individually. So who is the neat freak?
Joe: “Ryan.”
Most fun on a night out?
Chase: I don’t know, we all have our moments. I definitely don’t have my moments. I’m the one to go to sleep at like 8pm.
Who’s the craziest one?
Ryan: It depends on what kind of crazy, what angle you are looking for.
Chase: Remember the time Zac went to Times Square and screamed “NEW YORK CITY!” but he was just being silly.
Ryan: We all have our moments, yeah, that’s a tough one.
Any Particular moments that stand out?
Chase: That one was pretty wild actually.
Joe: You had to have been there.
Chase: That was like one of the first times we were in New York.
Joe: We’re pretty tame.
Ryan: Two times ago, we were in New York. I was out very late and stayed at a friends house, and I got off at the wrong subway stop and was dropped into a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, and I was like the only Me there, because they all had their religious attire on and everything. I walked like a mile through that neighborhood by myself, and that was a result of being out late, but I didn’t do anything crazy.
Who’s the funniest in the group?
Joe & Chase: Zach
How about most accident-prone?
Joe: Oh, me.
Is there a caffeine addict in the group?
Chase, Joe, Ryan, Zach: All of us.
Is it needed for tour?
Joe: Absolutely.
Ryan: Yes.
How about the weirdest one?
Chase: Probably me, I’ve got some quirks.
Who has the biggest bromance?
Chase: We all have our moments.
Ryan: We all go through phases. I think I am the most outwardly loving to Joe.
Joe: Ryan and I have lived together for a very long time.
Ryan: And our birthdays are four days apart.
Joe: Sagittarius.
Chase: They are okay to say, “I love you” to each other. I kind of have trouble saying: “I love you”, sometimes.
Joe: Yeah, don’t hug this guy.
Chase: I can’t do hugs, I can’t. Unless I’m going for it first.
Joe: Especially if you are saying “sorry”, don’t hug him.
Chase: Dude, I can’t, I don’t know why.
Ryan: Yeah, it’s tough. He can’t accept apologies.
Chase: That’s one of the quirks.
Ryan: I like going through the phases of bromance with each of them, because then you feel the camaraderie grows when you go back on tour. Zach and I started hanging out recently, like three or four months ago.
Joe: Yeah, they just met actually.
Ryan: What I meant is hang out more, more than we used to, which is fun. And now I feel like going on tour is way easier – it’s like: ‘oh, I connect with Zach on a whole new level’.
