Fourth-year music history student Naomi Robin and her band Naomi and The Bandits, will be performing the second leg of tonight’s concert as part of the Monday Night concert series at Kerckhoff with the band’s folk-rock stylings. Lead singer Robin spoke with Daily Bruin’s Brendan Hornbostel about the group’s upcoming Coffee House performance, as well as the band’s newly recorded EP.
Daily Bruin: First off, can you talk about the band Naomi and The Bandits, how it came about and how it’s been going?
Naomi Robin: We’ve been together as a band since about June. And I found the drummer (second-year jazz studies student Nick Velez) in my music theory class at UCLA – he was carrying a cymbal, and I was like, ‘Do you drum?,’ and he was like, ‘Yeah,’ and then I was like, ‘I’m playing a show at The House of Blues tomorrow night.’ So he joined the band just like that. And then on Facebook, there’s this group called Musicians in the Valley, so I posted that we we’re auditioning for bassists, and that’s when we found our awesome bassist who went to CSUN, Alex Kish. And then a few months later, we recently cemented our fourth player, who’s our mandolin player, (first-year jazz studies student) Nate Schwartz.
DB: You played at Kerckhoff Coffee House last school year (in a duo with USC student Yasaman Kamaly) for the same concert series. What was it like performing in that setting?
NR: It was really cool. We didn’t expect the room to be so packed … I thought the vibes were cool, especially a room full of students enjoying music played by their peers. It’s a nice setting, so we’re excited to do that again this year.
DB: From your experience playing (Kerckhoff Coffee House) last school year, what do you expect it to be like, now with a full band instead of just a duo?
NR: It’s gonna be awesome. The sound is much more full. We definitely have really cool songs. We’ve mixed folk and rock, and we’ve put the ‘badass’ in folk, I like to think.
DB: As the main songwriter of the band, how would you describe the process that you go through to write your music?
NR: I think of a certain topic that’s on my mind, at the time. And then I just try to hash it out and make it rhyme. Like spring quarter of last year, I had finals and I was really stressed out, so I wrote a song called, ‘Slow Down.’ It’s all about just stepping back and relaxing.
DB: You’re in the studio right now finishing up the band’s first album. Will you be playing any new material for the performance?
NR: Yeah, we’re going to be playing about 14 songs, and it’s all going to be pretty new material, I guess, (written) within the last six months or so. All the stuff that you hear on the EP is going to be heard at the show.
DB: And what are the details with the album? How long have you been working on the EP?
NR: We’ve been working on it since Oct. 20, that’s the first day we came in. It’s a live recording which is awesome. We’re doing it at Sunset Sound (The Sound Factory), so it’s really cool, because some of our favorite musicians have recorded here. We actually just finished it today, so it’s done.
DB: When is the album expected to be released?
NR: You can expect it on Jan. 27. It will be on iTunes.
DB: Other than the album, what other new plans do you have in the new year for this band?
NR: Well we’re gigging a lot. We have a residency at the Cork Lounge every Tuesday night, which is awesome. It’s a College Night … We’re doing at least 10 shows a month now. We’re going to be playing a bunch of festivals, and we’re doing a summer tour, and music videos will be coming out in a couple of months, as well as a lot of acoustic videos that we’re recording. So (I’m) pretty stoked about the new year.
Email Hornbostel at bhornbostel@media.ucla.edu.