Update: Coffeehouse is now Kapitol.
This month we’re shining the spotlight on Coffeehouse, a 4 piece Chilean rock / pop band attempting to break through and conquer the international market. Coffeehouse is currently promoting their second single — Night Cruising.
We caught up with frontman, Francisco Martinez to learn more about Coffeehouse’s music, upcoming projects, and what the band likes most about their Promenade theme.
What’s the Coffeehouse story? How did you guys get together and decide to start the band?
The project started by 2007, when Sebastian (keyboards) and I (Frank – lead singer) met. We realized we had one common interest; making mellow soft acoustic songs. We recorded an EP in 2011 just for fun and planed to play it live on a party for friends and family, with no further intentions or aspirations.
And that’s where it all fired up. It was crazy, the venue was full with almost 1,000 people and no one had any idea how that happened. We played a very short set, only the 5 songs that were on the EP, but those 20 minutes on stage with a 1,000 euphoric souls, made us change our minds forever: We wanted to take the project to a whole new level, start a band as such and take it as far as we can.
Since only Sebastian and I recorded the EP, we needed the support of other musicians to play it live. That’s where Oscar appeared. As a long friend of the EP’s producer (who played the drums for that gig), Oscar joined the band for the debut show and stayed in right away.
We were missing the drummer, though. Simon (the EP’s producer, and lead singer of the band The Reaktion) was good at drums but of course, this wasn’t his project, so we needed someone who was really interested in becoming part of this family.
I used to play in a school band with Cris, we were kind of friends back then, but not that close. Somehow his name came up so I gave him a call. He told us his recent band split and he was looking somewhere to play.
That was October, 2011. The EP was released on July that same year. Now, with the band fully formed, we were ready to get inside the studio and record our first LP: Square One.
How would you describe the music that you play?
We’ve been called tons of genres. To simplify everything, we just called it Rock Pop. But behind every tune there are emotions and energies that we try to print.
We believe that no words can describe exactly what our or anyone’s music is. Music is different for every ear, mind, and heart. All we do is make music that we love, and fortunately, we share that same feeling with lots of fans.
We would say that there’re two sides of Coffeehouse. The one you hear on the album and the one you hear live. We try to make our best on both, but it’s the combination the one that defines us as a total.
What’s your most popular/fan favorite song? Where can we hear it?
Right now our most popular song is On This Side. Its actually the first single of our album Square One and luckily, is one of our favorites as well.
Here are some sites where you can find our music: iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, Soundcloud, Rdio, Deezer.
Of course, you can listen to it on our website.
You can also watch the official On This Side video here:
What’s your favorite thing about your AudioTheme website or the AT framework?
It just really fits. We feel it represents us. It’s simple but elegant at the same time. It’s really easy for our fans to navigate through and the possibility to play our music right there without the necessity of using external sources. And a very important reason; the mobile version works great and keeps it simple but beautiful.
Is there anything new or exciting that you can share with us? Anything to look forward to?
We are currently pre-producing our next video for the song Give Or Take, and should be releasing it in a couple of months. Stay tuned to our YouTube channel.
We’ve been confirmed to play at the SXSW 2015 on march, as well as a couple other festivals (which names we can’t reveal yet!)
We’re planning on head into the studio on April 2015 to start recording our second album.
We try to keep our website as up to date as we can, so if you drop by regularly, you’ll find out everything we’re doing. We are great at responding tweets (@coffeehouseband) and we try to keep our Facebook Fanpage up to date!
Love the Coffeehouse Site?Learn more about the Promenade theme.