CHICAGO | Boston-based band, Couch, has a sound that is truly unique to itself. The band combines their jazz and R&B influences with past experience in acapella and musical theater to create a strong and imaginative spin on pop music. Guitarist, Zach Blankenstein says how “My favorite moment in a Couch songs when I can hear, and think back to a session where I go ‘Oh man, this is so cool that this part is a combination of four different people’s ideas all who were thinking about different things, and yet these ideas are compatible and show the collaboration and teamwork in Couch.’”
Consisting of Tema Siegel (vocals), Zach Blankenstein (guitar), Jared Gozinsky (drums), Will Griffin (bass), Danny Silverston (keys), Jeffrey Pinsker-Smith (trumpet) and Eric Tarlin (saxophone), the band has been touring their latest EP, “Sunshower.” This past week, I had the opportunity to speak with guitarist Zach Blankenstein about their experience as a former long-distance band, their newest release and finishing up their upcoming tour
For the first three years of the band, the members of Couch were spread across the country, and would create music together despite the distance. Blankenstein described how, “For about three years we would just write music over FaceTime, meet up when we could over break, quarantine during the height of Covid, we put out that music all pre-2020, 2021 and then come fall 2021, we finally got to start touring and it was like ‘Oh man we have all this music but we’ve never played it together and it made it all the more exciting to get on the stage and be with my bandmates.’”
Regardless of the challenges, the band made it work. “It was all in a workflow where we would often write and record and release music before we ever were in a room to play it together, which was really cool. We sort of had to learn how to take these studio recordings and then adapt them for a concert,” Blankenstein says, “I think we did our best to maintain the human and interpersonal elements of creating music while we were doing it remotely, but there’s nothing that beats just being together with our instruments and making it live.”
Now the band is based in Boston, where all of the members are from. Blankenstein explains, “I think it’s given us room to not feel a lot of immediate pressure, and the sort of intensity of such an industry city, we’re able to really take our time being in Boston. There aren’t a ton of small venues in Boston, so we weren’t really able to play a hometown show for a while. This sort of made being in Boston and playing Boston shows all the more exciting when they come around.” This past year, the band played Boston Calling, one of New England’s most well known festivals. “It was so exciting. A lot of us grew up going to the festival, and have seen some of our favorite bands there, so to get that opportunity was really special,” the guitarist remarked.
In November 2023, the band released their new EP Sunshower. When asked about his favorite song to write and record for the project, he brought up my personal favorite, “LA.” “I think the story is really clear, and musically it feels kind of theater-y.” Blankenstein looked back on their show in Los Angeles, when they played the song in the city it was named after for the first time. He recalls, “We’ve never had the opportunity to play a song named after a place in the place for which it was named, and doing that in LA was super cool. It’s not really a diss track to LA but it’s certainly not telling LA how wonderful it is, so it was sort of funny and fun to see how it would go over with the audience.”
In addition to the release of their latest EP, the band has been on their tour of the same name since October. He went on to talk about how the long drives have been good when it comes to bringing the band closer together, “Touring can be really tiring, taxing on your mind and your body, and having a group of people who are just really nice to be around and everyone’s looking out for each other, it makes what can be a pretty stressful adventure into a very fun and exciting one.”
This week the band is finishing up their tour in the Midwest; playing shows in Detroit, Chicago and Indianapolis. “We love going to the Midwest. I think a lot of people focus on coastal cities as these hubs for music, but there are such interesting musical cultures in each city.
It’s cool that for a night to be a part of it, see who’s coming out to the shows and meet people after the shows. It’s really exciting to do and the Midwest is a great place to go for that,” says Blankenstein. When talking about their upcoming show in Chicago, Blankenstein reminisced on Couch’s first show in the city and described it as “one of the very starting points for us really taking the band seriously and pursuing Couch. And I love Chicago for that.”
What’s coming up next for the band?
Well, Couch is playing Chicago this week on Friday, January 26, at Park West. They are also going to be announcing some new content as well as some “large, most exciting tour announcements we have ever made.” Their EP, “Sunshower” is currently out on all streaming services, and you can find them on Instagram at @couch.theband and on all other socials @couchtheband. For anyone interested in diving deeper into Couch’s music, check out splitter.fm/couch where you can find individual layers of their songs, as well as the ability to loop isolate, or slow sections down of each track.