Looking out to the shoreline as the sun rises, the water is calm with no waves in sight. During these times of dead calm tides, one band has come to unsettle the current. That band is none other Santa Cruz’s very own DRAIN, who hit the swells in stellar fashion with their Epitaph debut, Living Proof.
Comprised of vocalist Sammy Ciaramitaro, guitarist Cody Chavez, and drummer Tim Flegal, this trio is living proof that with some perseverance, ambition, and a good attitude you can achieve anything. Living Proof encapsulates that message while transporting listeners to those summertime days and nights filled with their zany, carefree times running amuck with your friends. With sounds of tubular proportions complemented by guiding messages of wisdom and self-love, Living Proof is bound to cause sonically radical tsunamis across the coasts of the globe.
It’s been three long years since the crashing waves of California Cursed hit the shores of the hardcore scene. What have you all been up to artistically and personally since then?
It’s been a cool sec!!! Well, when the album dropped, we were all living in Southern California, but it was very short-lived, and we spent the rest of 2020-21 slowly all moving back to Santa Cruz/Hollister. We definitely spent most of 2021 writing and towards the latter half of the year, we actually started playing shows and getting back on the road! 2022 and into 2023 we have just been riding the wave and gradually have been phasing out of working full-time and gearing towards touring/being a full-time band. It’s been badass honestly [laughs] life’s been wild!!
A tour is inevitably something that you all get to embark on this year with Living Proof since you were stripped of that opportunity with California Cursed. You recently just got back from a quick run in Europe. What is it you’ve been most excited about getting back on the road?
Truthfully, my favorite part about getting on the road is just getting to hang with my bandmates and the road crew that we have started building! I love playing the shows and getting to meet people that are out and supporting us at these shows, but the moments in the car or at night before bed in the hotel and getting so weird and delirious are my absolute favorite [laughs].
Santa Cruz is a city filled with an immense culture and different walks of life. How has Santa Cruz helped shape your style as a creative throughout the years?
I feel like Santa Cruz has shaped us as a creative group of people by putting a little extra pressure on us, to be honest. It’s tough to make it here man, it’s a beautiful town right on the water and is full of natural beauty. Because of the high demand for housing/cost of living, it’s not an easy place to live for most people with actual professions, let alone people trying to stay afloat as musicians (especially in a hardcore band). But I really do think that the added pressure made us want it THAT much more and it made us know that we’ve got to work THAT much harder and smarter when we are doing things. Above all of that, I feel like it really just made it so every move we did had to count, and that trickled down to the writing. We had to bring our A-game in every aspect that we could.
For all those wanting to visit the illustrious city of Santa Cruz and don’t know where to start, what are a few of your favorite spots and things to do?
My favorite spots in town would be Verve Coffee on Bronson St (dope iced matcha), Taqueria de la Hacienda on Laurel Street (pastor chimichanga is unreal), and Samba Rock (straight up the best acai bowl in the world – Ayrton Senna – you’ll thank me later). But in terms of things to see and do, I am always cruising down the coastline of our town. I like to start at Natural Bridges state beach and take West Cliff Street all the way down through the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and then hop on East Cliff and take it all the way down through Capitola. The little Vespa in the “FTS (KYS)” music video is my main mode of transportation through town when the suns out [laughs]. On that route you’ll see the most beautiful coastline, with packed-out surf spots that you can just pull over and watch people get after it, it’s unreal man. Sublime has a song called “Paddle Out” about this street and he name-drops all the local breaks on the way!
How was the creative journey different with Living Proof compared to California Cursed?
The creative journey with this one was honestly pretty similar to Cursed California, we just tried to refine our process of trimming off any “fat” so to speak [laughs]. Like I had mentioned, we were all moving back from Southern California while we were starting to write this record. Tim would drive up from Santa Barbara on Thursdays and we would have to make the most of our time, so we would hit it for like 3/4 hours every day from Thurs-Monday, and we did that like every weekend. It was awesome man! We would just come up with stuff on the spot and jam on it and just see where it naturally wanted to go and not really force anything out of it! Yes, it does take more time than just showing up and being like “yo I wrote a song” and teaching it to the rest of the band, but I think that is what makes these songs and this band stand apart so much from others. No shortcuts!
There’s a lot of effort it takes to create dope cover art for a project. Silvio Capoferri really captured the vibe of not only the sound of the record but you all collectively as a band. Did you let him have free reign for the design or was there a particular direction you wanted?
Dude, Silvio is a straight up BEAST! Just to give a little backstory, this dude moved to CA from NJ, and we met at a show at Chain Reaction in 2021. He was legit just a fan and wanted to draw us something for free and we were blown away with it. Once we signed with Epitaph and started getting on the road more, we had Silvio make fliers for us and shirt designs and it just became apparent that he was OUR guy! We sent him the music and the lyrics and just kinda told him to mix AF’s Cause for Alarm with Green Day’s Dookie and make it on the beach [laughs]. He straight up SMOKED it, and you can count on seeing more of him on DRAIN stuff as we go!!
The final track of the LP, “Living Proof,” nods heavily to this but what does the title Living Proof personally mean to you?
When we were writing the record, we had about half of it done and I didn’t have a name for it yet, but I had a solid chunk of lyrics written. I am a bit of a harsh critique and I watch a lot of live videos of us from past shows to kinda see what we can improve on, and I mentioned in between songs that “this band is living proof that you can get what you want out of life” and it was a full-on lightbulb above the head movement. That statement is true and rings true to my heart, but also aligned with all of the lyrics that I had been writing, and it was kind of a done deal from that point. But yeah man, I think that it just means that sometimes you hear awesome stories of achievements and victory, but they can feel so removed and almost unattainable…but here we are, just regular people and no different or better than anyone, and we are here and showing you that we are living proof an embodiment of success through hard work and perseverance. We didn’t know anyone and had no connections when we started this band. We had no tour knowledge. We learned everything we know from getting our hands dirty and making mistakes. We got knocked down and got back up. If we can do it, so can you!
“Find the strength and kill yourself, reinvent the new you, find the strength and kill all the parts that you don’t love” is such a powerful stanza from “FTS (KYS).” One could argue you all have done this with this new album in terms of growth and discovering/shedding parts of yourselves. What are some things you discovered about yourselves while creating this album?
I think the biggest thing that we learned while making this record was that we have this special ingredient – and that is our personality – and that lives in the music and in the way we show up in the world. We’ve always done things our own way, but I think we’ve realized that there is something that separates us from a lot of other people. With this discovery, we’ve realized that when we make decisions based on how they “feel” rather than what we “think” is going to be the right move, we end up making the right call…so we have started to lean into that! Things that make us laugh, things that get us excited, and things that feel natural and true to us as people, is where the magic is and I implore everyone reading this to give into that feeling as well!
What was supposed to be a jam sesh for “Intermission” eventually became accompanied by a grimy verse from Shakewell – a fun surprise! How did that collaboration come about?
That collaboration with Shakewell was made possible by my man Cayle Sain! Cayle came with my dogs Jared and Xavier from Vamachara to do some gang vocals, and they got to hear the whole record. Pretty shortly after we showed Cayle that track, which was supposed to be an instrumental, he was just like “yo we gotta get someone to rap over that”. He’s good friends with Shakewell and knows that respectively, we are also big fans of Shakewell, so he pitched it to him, and he was immediately super down. Shakewell is a hardcore dude and so I think he was just really excited to see a band doing something like this and I’m so glad that he was because that is a highlight of the record in my opinion.
Then you take listeners for an unexpected barrel roll when “Good Good Things” comes through the speaker. A momentary departure from the snarling sound of the LP, this track illustrates how easily you all can adapt as a band instilling nostalgic sounds of early 2000s love-rock anthems. What sparked the idea to create and include this track for the LP?
First and foremost, we are all huge Descendants fans! We had been asked to record a cover for a comp early on into the writing process and I had pitched this song, and we ended up not doing the comp, so the idea just stagnated for a bit. But when we were talking about the album and cool ways to keep people interested and excited throughout the whole LP, we brought the idea back into circulation. Not only to break up the heaviness of the record, but I think it is an awesome way to pay homage and respect to a band that really got us to dive deeper into punk rock as teenagers. I’ve never been a huge fan of covers where bands add breakdowns and whatnot to make it a “metal” or “hardcore” version, so we tried to bring our A-Game and do the track justice but in our own way.
Your ethos of having fun obviously resonates with your fanbase and is heard throughout your entire discography. Why do you personally think it’s important to have fun and enjoy yourself while being an artist and not take yourself too seriously?
I think there’s a real fine line with all of this stuff. I think that my biggest takeaway from all of this is learning what things are important and worth taking seriously and what things just simply aren’t. Not to downplay us as musicians or whatever, but we play hardcore music for people to absolutely rip shit up and get wild to…I don’t consider myself much of an “artist” [laughs] and the second that I start hearing people talk about their music in a hc band as their “art” and using really elaborate words and descriptions like they are high-class artists or whatever, it makes me wanna run away and hide [laughs] BUT on the same boat, we do take writing music very seriously. Every song has gone through like ten different versions before it’s the final version you hear. The songwriting is not a joke, the lyrics are the furthest thing from being a joke, and the way we show up in the world as a band on tour is not a joke in the slightest.
But when we are going to play a show, I think it’s easy to forget that we are there to have fun and enjoy ourselves. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, sometimes things get messed up, to some extent, I think that you’ve just gotta let go a bit and enjoy the moments for what they are and just keep it real with yourself and everyone that’s there at the show. Some of our favorite moments at live shows have been when shits getting unplugged because there are a million kids on stage or when a kid absolutely butchers a guest spot and then dives off the stage like a maniac [laughs] that stuff is awesome man! I think another huge thing is just being down to earth with all of this. Nothing worse than someone who things they are hot shit and can treat people that work at the venue or people in the crowd like shit, knowing damn well that we are all playing a 200-cap room [laughs].
I guess the best way I can put it is to just have fun. Work hard when it comes to writing and being respectful of others’ time with the way you show up, but just remember why you got into this stuff in the first place and to roll with the punches and make the best of it all. This stuff can go away at any minute, enjoy it while we have it.
Speaking of having fun, I bet you had a blast creating all these tracks – it sure sounds like it throughout all my listens. But which track specifically did you all have the most fun creating together?
All of the songs were fun in their own right, but I think the funnest one for us was the title track. We had the first half of the song written for about 6 months and just could not figure out where to go from there. I was at work at Printhead and was humming the song in my head and came up with something I liked, ran to the bathroom and took a voice memo of it, and then had Cody transcribe the transition riff and then we just kept jamming on it and took it wherever we wanted and it ended up being such a rad and strong way to close out the record. Could not be more stoked on the way it came out!
On the flip side, there is bound to be turbulence in the creative process. What was the biggest challenge you faced while creating this record?
Truthfully, I think the biggest challenge was time. We had booked studio time for like 6 months out when we had like half the record written. That track “Weight of the World” was the last song that we had written, and we felt like it was coming down to the wire. We did actually look into seeing if there was any chance that we could push back the recording dates, but it was not in the cards, so we just buckled down and hit it hard. Not one thing I would do differently or change about any of these songs.
One of the many things I love about you guys is the positive and meaningful messages weaved into your lyrics and your overall image. Why be positive?
Thanks man, I try really hard to channel a strong and positive message without looking like a little dork [laughs] it’s tough to do, some probably think I do come off as a nerd and that’s okay [laughs]. It’s really easy to sound hard and talk about how much you hate things, but real people see right through that shit. I like to consider myself a realistic optimist like I definitely do see the glass half full, but I don’t necessarily think that something like wishful thinking or manifesting is going to ALWAYS get you the things you want in life. I’m the type of dude that would advocate for you to set goals, and then smash through and destroy everybody and everything that stands in your way until you get to where you want to be. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make friends along the way, in fact, mutual respect and understanding for one another is going to be the greatest gift that we have, it just means that you aren’t going to take no for an answer.
What is it you’d like for listeners to take away from Living Proof?
If there is anything that I would like for the listeners to take away from this record, it’s that they are so incredibly smart, talented, resilient, and beautiful and I hope this record reminds you of that. Sometimes just being told that and recognizing that in yourself can be the biggest door that can be opened. I implore you to take some time to slow down, take a look inside, and remind yourself who you are and what you stand for. Every time you spin this record or see us live, I hope that it is a reminder of what you have achieved/will achieve in the near future if you put your mind to it.
Before we wrap up this interview is there anyone you’d like to shout out and show some love to?
I’ll keep it short man, shout out to the people I love and the people that show us love back. This buzz around Drain can go away at any moment. I’m thankful for today and for everyone who has been along for the ride with us. DRAIN IS YOUR FRIEND.
Photo courtesy of Nick Zimmer
