By Davis Blount
In the short months that Analog Provo has been around, we have seen Mojave Nomads take the stage multiple times. From shows at Velour and Gezzo Hall to waterparks and birthday parties, this band is never afraid to take the stage and show listeners what they are made of. I had the opportunity to sit down with band members Cole Eisenhour, Bryton Bell, and Mason Hill to talk music and much more.
Tell me a little bit about this show with Red Yeti and New Electric Sound… it sounds like a really cool gig.
Cole: Yeah, we are super stoked to be sharing the stage with those guys. It’s going to be an awesome show for sure. It is happening at the Wall on September 1st at 7:00 PM and is being sponsored by Wicked Audio. There will be some super cool giveaways from Wicked and BYU. Definitely a can’t miss!
How exactly did you all come together as a band? How long have you all been together officially?
Cole: So, me and Colter got together after jamming in high school all the time. We never added any vocals or anything; it was just Black Keys-y riffs and whatnot. Colter met up with Tyler, our singer, and they ended up going to a Cage the Elephant concert together. While they were there and watching some of the opening acts, they were like, “We could definitely be as good as any of these guys,” so they got motivated and decided to really hit it hard. So I got a call when I was at work where Colter said, “Hey, we’re going to play some music and either you’re in or you’re out.” Obviously, I was in. We eventually picked up a guitarist and made an appeal to Twitter for a bassist, so that’s where we got Bryton. To be clear, we had all been friends for forever but we had never gotten together to talk about being in a band until then. Oh, and then Mason. He’s the younger brother. We wanted a more electronic, synth-y sound, so we brought Mason onto this.
Mojave Nomads sounds like it comes from a very specific place. How did you all settle on that name?
Cole: We were going for a very unique sound and wanted a name to match it. It took us a few weeks to settle in on a name that all worked with us. It wasn’t so much the name of our band that influences our music, but the other way around. We wanted people to hear our music first and be like, “Yeah, Mojave Nomads is a great name for that group.”
You all have had a very prolific few months in terms of the frequency and variety of shows that you’ve performed. Has that been a goal of yours or has one gig led to another?
Cole: It has been a double-edged sword for us. Obviously, you always want to be writing new stuff and working towards the next release but because we have been playing so much, that has kept us out of the studio. For a while, it felt like one show led to two shows and two shows led to four shows… it all started to snowball. At this point, we don’t have to reach out as much as we used to. We have our manager Emily from Mclean Entertainment who is always working to get us shows at bigger venues and helping us make the right connections. This summer we did a show in Salt Lake with T-Wayne, and while it wasn’t exactly our usual demographic, it was still an awesome show. Who knows, maybe some people came looking for hip-hop and ended up liking our stuff? “Don’t say no” is kind of our motto with shows. We are scheduled to play two birthday parties for fans. For us, that’s what we love. If people want to listen to us, we want to play for them. Our philosophy is that if we play a lot of live shows, we will get better and tighter at a band. We’ve played for people that didn’t like us, we’ve played a show with four people, and we’ve played for people who really like us. All of it comes together to form a core set of experiences that we draw from each time we play.
Mason, you have kind of been slighted as the heartthrob of the group… Has it been an easy transition into that role? Have any of the other band mates been jockeying for that title?
Mason: [Mason grins] I mean, I do what I can, ya know?
Cole: Someone else needs to answer this for him; I can already see his head inflating. Mason definitely gets attention from the ladies… girls want to take pictures with him, some of them think he’s cute and he has gotten a few numbers from it all. That being said, he has no idea what he’s doing and hasn’t been able to make anything happen as a result. He thinks he’s playing hard-to-get but he’s playing not-to-get.
You all mentioned that you have been looking for some inspiration to write new stuff and get back into studio. Do you all feel that you have managed to do that, or will there still be some time until the next release?
Cole: We were going to record a new single but got cold feet… the song wasn’t quite studio ready. To be fair, we released our last EP in May, so our Black Sheep release is still pretty fresh. It feels like it has been forever since our last release because we have been able to play so many shows this summer, but we really love having new material to play with. Within the next few months, we will take all of this material and try to condense it down to an EP with some punch to follow up our latest release. We have gotten pickier with what we make, so now songs will die, then come back to life, and then die again… It’s a hard process but we love what comes from it, so we will keep chipping away at it.
Any exciting news for lovers of Mojave Nomads?
Mason: There are some really exciting things in the works. We have been working on some music videos, we have some shows coming up this October, but to be honest, we are most excited about the new music. The long and short of it is that people just need to keep their eyes peeled because we are working on some really cool stuff.
So, Officer Jenny donated a question to you all: What has been your favorite moment, as a musician or a fan, in the Provo music scene?
Bryton: Hmmmm…. That’s a good one. There have been so many cool experiences for us as artists, but if we had to pick one, it would definitely be working with Joshua James and Jordan Clark. Little known story about that: We were recording “Heavy” and I didn’t really know what I was going to do for the bass line. I was sitting upstairs with Jordan trying to pluck something out while the song was playing. I hear Joshua from downstairs yelling and can’t understand what he is saying, but he comes into the room and says, “Play something like this!” He basically wrote the beginning of what became the bass line for “Heavy.” Another cool story: One day, Joshua got home from rock climbing and took us all into a room. He turned off the lights, lit a candle and started talking to us for like an hour about all of these life-changing things. It was a rush. Joshua James is everything that you think he is and more.
Lastly, is there anything that you want to donate to the next artist?
Cole: What inspired you to be a part of the Utah Music Scene? Are you a part of it because you want to be, or is this just a part of where you live?
Make sure to follow Mojave Nomads on Instagram and check out their song “Heavy” below!