The four piece pop band COIN are currently on their largest headline tour to date in the U.S. and just released its newest single “Growing Pains” last month. I talked with lead singer Chase Lawrence about what’s going on in the world of COIN and what’s in store for the rest of 2018.
How are you?
Pretty good, we just got to LA, I just woke up and yeah [laughs], it’s a pretty good day so far.
Oh nice! So it’s like 10 a.m. there?
Yeah, I guess I woke up at 8, I shouldn’t make myself look so lazy. [laughs]
It’d be cool if you could sleep in though, I know you’re really busy right now.
Yeah that’s true, I could’ve slept in, still maybe on east coast time a little bit.
So you’re on your biggest headlining tour to date right now, what has that been like for you guys?
We’re playing all cities we’ve played before in the past, but it’s cool to watch them grow and come back and see a lot of familiar faces. [sic.] It’s like double or triple the amount of people that we played to last time and actually sometimes, it’s like, super real. I don’t know, it seems fake sometimes it’s like the people are in a simulation or something, I don’t know, I can’t really describe it. Sometimes, it’s just strange. A lot of things in music, they don’t happen before your eyes and it’s crazy to watch this one happen actually, to watch these crowds unfold before your eyes. It’s been surreal, in a word.
I feel like you guys have just blown up and it’s awesome to see!
Aw, thank you, that’s really nice of you. I mean, it has definitely not been overnight. It’s like watching dominoes fall in slow motion, just one step at a time.
You also just dropped your new single “Growing Pains,” what has the response for that been like?
Oh, man. It’s been honestly incredible. You don’t know what to expect when you put out new music and it seems like people have really attached themselves to the song. It’s a really honest song for us and where we are. It felt like the most appropriate thing for us to put out and people have responded really well to it. It’s just crazy, the trajectory it’s on. It’s just cool to see that the song means something to so many people already.
Photo courtesy of Sony Music.
Have you been holding onto that song for a while to release or did you just recently write it?
Actually, yeah. We actually wrote that song before “Talk Too Much,” like two-and-a-half years ago. It just like, existed and we would come back to it for maybe, I don’t know, an hour a month for the past two-and-a-half years. You know, I’d just get frustrated with it and then finally distilled it down to this three minute and 30 second thing, it was just section by section, just to get it done because we were getting in all the demos we could to make this new album. I was just like, “Whatever.” This producer, Butch Walker, heard the demo and heard something special in it and in like, six hours of refining what I already had and adding a few extras, we had a finished product. [laughs] He did in six hours what I couldn’t do in two-and-a-half years. [Walker] he’s just an awesome producer, we’ve always looked up to him and it’s cool to finally work with him and sometimes, it’s just a missing link and knowing how to finish it.
It’s nice to have a second set of ears on something like that.
Definitely. It’s not always necessary, but sometimes it’s completely essential to finishing the song or else it would just be this [sic] unfinished note for the rest of eternity. [laughs]
So do people already know all the words live, has that been insane?
It’s honestly so crazy. Sometimes I walk off stage and sometimes I feel really good about the show. Sometimes the room amplifies the voices really loud or louder than usual, but you can’t really tell. We wear these headphones on stage that are noise-cancelling, they cut like 30 decibels down, so sometimes we can’t really tell what’s exactly happening with the crowd or how into it they were and we walked off in Chicago and Chicago was like basically two weeks since it came out. We walked off stage in Chicago and we were like, “I feel like they weren’t that loud, I don’t know,” and then our videographer filmed this video, we posted it on Instagram, too and we could just listen to this roar from the audience just singing the opening lines, singing the chorus and being like, “Okay, so it turns out they were.” [laughs]
It’s actually pretty wild to watch the crowd grow so rapidly and so quickly. We already have this captive audience that is so supportive of anything we’re going to do, but then on top of that, to attach themselves so quickly to that [song] is unbelievable.
Tour ends next week in Denver, what are your post-tour plans? Are you going to be writing, in the studio, releasing more tour dates?
All of the above. We already have a lot of songs finished, but we are doing some more recording in April. We just announced yesterday [we’re] going to Korea in May and then going back to Europe in the summer and then more touring in the fall, too. You can just expect new music all along the way. We’re not really like on an album path right now-well we are- but we’re kind of just releasing music when we feel like we want it to be released and it’s kind of exciting. We’re just doing what we want to do for the first time in a while.
That seems really unique.
We’re trying to hold a conversation with our audience, not just be this mysterious thing that puts out a new piece of content when the moment’s right. You know, timing is everything, but at the same time, when we want to contribute to the conversation, we’ll contribute, you know?
What has your favorite moment been on tour thus far and why?
I don’t know, there’s been so many good ones along the way. I liked the show in Austin the other night because it was outside, it was just a nice change of pace because we play the same-it’s been different every night-but the same kind of theater every night. In Austin, there’s so many reasons why the show could’ve been technically not good, like the production could not fit on the stage because it was too small, it was outside and it rained and there was mud, there was just all these factors contributing to the death of the show which was the reason why it was great? I don’t know, it was just nonchalant care that went into it and the crowd seemed to share that sentiment. It felt like we just played a 250 capacity room, but we played to like 1,000 people so there was just something special about that night, just not caring. I’ll hold that close for awhile.
Anything else you want to add?
No, that’s it, just new music soon and I can’t wait to play Denver, the last show. It will be good.
Photo courtesy Sony Music.