A year since playing LouFest, the four-piece band COIN is preparing to go on tour with Bad Suns. An indie pop band that formed in 2012 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., the band consists of Chase Lawrence on synth and vocals, Joe Memmel on guitar and vocals, Ryan Winnen on drums and Zachary Dyke on bass. COIN released their first self-titled album in 2015 and the song “Run,” was a breakaway hit. The band recently came out with the single, “Talk Too Much,” and is rapidly becoming well-known and more mainstream. Every time they’ve returned to St. Louis since their first show, their audience has grown exponentially.

I recently was able to talk with vocalist Chase Lawrence about the band’s origins in college, its style, influences and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOUHiY6Ys2A

Student Life: How did being in school shape how COIN formed?

Chase Lawrence: It was an interesting time at Belmont. There were so many bands because it’s a liberal arts college, kind of like [University of California at] Berkley, but there were not a lot of bands like us—like alternative indie pop music—and so I think it was really important for us to be one of the first alternative pop bands coming out of Nashville, so it was the timing that was important for us. Obviously, Belmont is a very condensed community of writers [and] artists, but the timing was really key based on the fact that there was very little saturation of bands like us.

SL: So you describe your sound as kind of like indie pop, but I noticed there’s a lot of rock in it, so how did COIN make that sound—what made you want to do that kind of music?

CL: The whole thing, the whole point of it, centered around doing one show. Joe [Memmel] and I got together for the first time and wrote, and it wasn’t really perfect, but as he was walking out the door, I was like ‘Check out this idea I have,’ and the idea turned out to be the first song that we wrote as the band COIN. I had never played a show with [Memmel]. I was like ‘I just wanna play one energetic, live show where I could really act like crazy,’ and I don’t know, it truly came from that one show mentality and that carefree nature of the music, and that carefree nature led [from] one show to another show to another show, and now, we’re here on the phone with Washington University.

SL: So, what specifically about that one show kept you coming back?

CL: I don’t know if it was that show because the first show was not awesome. Basically, it was a magazine launch party in a warehouse and a basketball gymnasium of a venue, and I came off the stage and I was like ‘Chase, that was not your first show, you’re getting another one.’ So we got offered another show later at a different venue, and we played that show and I’m like ‘OK, that was amazing. That was a crazy high; we have to keep doing this.’ So I think that’s what it was, really. And then we had to write more songs—we had to do more; we had to just put out more music. So, it was less about that first show, and more about the second show’s high.

SL: What artists were your biggest inspirations then?

CL: At the beginning, we really liked Passion Pit [and] Two Door Cinema Club. At the time, those were kind of not the biggest bands—I guess they still were pretty big, but they weren’t as widely renowned as they are now—and there were so many other alternative bands. We were really influenced by what was happening then, and what was cool then [was that] I’d seen Walk The Moon pretty recently, and they had kind of just come into their own, released their first self-titled [album]. So it’s like we were really influenced then, but now more, so we reached into the archives and became more inspired by 70s pop music and like 80s new wave.

SL: Is there any new music we can expect—any albums coming out soon?

CL: You can expect new music, we think. The album is TBD. We just don’t have a release date for it yet, but it’s getting closer.

SL: You guys played LouFest, among a few other music festivals, last year, so what’s it like to play a festival, and how is it similar or different from a concert?

CL: They’re similar in the fact that you play 45 minutes or an hour. But LouFest was great, though. We played simultaneously with Brandon Flowers, which, if you had told me that in high school I would have been like ‘Ok, sure…whatever.’ The festival is kind of stressful, in a sense, but there’s also like this laid-back culture; truly, everyone there is a music lover. They just want to listen [to music]—that’s the only reason they’re there. In a concert, they might have been dragged there because of their friend or you know they have nothing to do or they accidentally shuffled in and paid 20 bucks to go to this show, but for a festival, you know why you’re there. You’re there for one purpose; you’re there to listen to music for 12 hours straight. And I think that there’s something to say about those dedicated fan bases and just those crowds that are captivated by any and all styles of music, and I think that’s why we love music festivals. And we love playing regular shows at venues too, but there’s something really special about playing to a crowd of people that are gathered there for one purpose.

SL: What did you like most about being in St. Louis during LouFest?

CL: Seeing Ludacris.

SL: Were you a big fan of his for a while?

CL: Yeah, isn’t everyone?

SL: I guess that’s a good point. So what got you into music in the first place?

CL: My dad’s side of the family—they’re all musicians. They’re all writers, performers, singers, musicians…So my dad, actually, he was a songwriter, so I always saw it as a legitimate career. He is also the pastor of a church, so I grew up playing music in church basically my whole life. Those two things pretty much made it like there was no choice other than to do music.

SL: So, you were born into it, really?

CL: Yeah I was born into it; it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. My dad made it happen—this child, this is who he is now.

SL: So, then, were you in any bands in middle school or high school?

CL: No, I was too nervous. Outside of playing in church or playing for the show choir, I was too nervous to play.

SL: How is songwriting in the band broken up? Do you write most of the songs, or is it a group effort?

CL: It truly is [a group effort]. For the first album, we worked really collaboratively. For this new album, we’re deconstructing the process, and we’re writing with outside writers. We’ve been writing this album since November of last year.

SL: “Run” was your first big hit; were you expecting that amount of appreciation when you first released it?

CL: No—well, yes and no. I think you should get a certain amount when you put that much effort into something. Part of me thought we were going to be the biggest band in the world, but then the other half of me is really humbled that anyone came to see our shows. I didn’t expect it to be big, but I’m really happy that it is. I didn’t expect this road that we’re taking, and I’m really humbled and excited about where we are.

SL: Did you expect the band in general to be successful, or was it just riding out that thrill you were talking about?

CL: I did. It was after the second or third show. We released our first EP on this website called NoiseTrade for free, and it was the most downloaded EP for weeks. And I think that we really—when that happened—were like ‘OK. There’s something to this. People obviously like this.’ Then, I think we just knew that this is going to be something that was going to be in our lives for a while. After we realized that people liked what we were doing, we never saw that as an option.

SL: You guys have been getting pretty big in the past few years; how has that rise affected the band’s dynamic and you personally?

CL: Me personally, I don’t feel like [that rise] affected me at all, and as far as the band—it’s hard to say. It’s so gradual. It’s nice of you to say that we’ve become somewhat successful because we’re still close to this whole process. It’s hard to see it for what it is and how much it has truly affected so many people and touched so many people. It changed us gradually, kind of like growing—you don’t notice you’ve grown until your aunt is like ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so tall,’ and you’re like ‘Dang. I am tall.’ It has definitely not affected us; it’s so gradual over time, maybe it has. I don’t know—we’re just wiser. We know when to say yes [and] when to say no. The dynamic works exactly the same as on day one. Actually, we might love each other more.

SL: What about your favorite city to play in?

CL: I really loved to play St. Louis, being totally honest.

SL: What about St. Louis made you like it so much?

CL: I don’t know. There’s this fan base that’s special for people [who] live in St. Louis. Every time we come, the crowd keeps growing, but there’s still that initial group of people that came to see us. There were like four people at the show the first time we played St. Louis. And I think that’s why it’s cool. We play there for four people, and they come back every time, and every time, it grows exponentially. And I think that’s really cool and really dear to our hearts. We did not play a lot of places where we went off our tour, but that’s one of the places we just played randomly, and there were like four people at the show.