SXSW Artist Spotlight: The Gringos
360°Sound sat down with singer Jacob Reina and guitarist Raymond Mann of the Athens, Georgia-based indie band The Gringos. The five-piece group, who are all students at the University of Georgia, play loose and melodic rock music that’s been resonating with growing audiences throughout the Southeast and beyond.
The Gringos are scheduled to play multiple shows at SXSW: March 14 at East End Ballroom, March 15 at Mohawk, March 16 at Seven Spirits, and March 17 at the Continental Club. In this exclusive interview, Reina and Mann talk about their influences, new single “Strange,” and bringing the party with their live sets.
Editor’s Note: This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Scroll to the bottom to view the full video interview on our YouTube channel @360degreesound.
360°Sound: Please give our readers a little introduction to The Gringos and the music y’all make.
Jacob Reina: We started about three years ago. We all met around our freshman year of college, and we’re now in our senior year. We’re trying to pursue music as a long-term career after we graduate. It’s definitely been a little tough going on the road while still being in class, but we’re very intent on finishing our degrees before we commit our full schedules to music.
We started as a cover band in Athens, playing small shows, bars, and parties. Then we started to get a name for ourselves and put out our own original music. We started to travel a good bit. Now we’ve gotten to play a lot of awesome events and play with a lot of great bands. We’re looking to keep it going as long as we can.
How do you describe your sound?
Reina: We’re definitely centered around indie rock. We’d like to say alternative college rock. We have a lot of different influences. I came up with a background of country music, and Raymond is into a lot of classic rock. Our drummer is a big metal drummer. We have a lot of different influences.
How’d you come up with the name The Gringos?
Mann: That was our old drummer, who is now in medical school. We had a gig at a pretty grimy bar here called 1785. You go there to watch the game and get some wings, but you don’t want to spend too long in there if you know what I mean.
We were in 1785, and they wanted us to play the same day, and they needed a name from us. We had only been practicing together for three months at that point, and our original drummer said, “The Gringos.” And that’s been our name since.
Your latest single is “Strange.” Tell us about how that song came together.
Reina: It’s actually the fastest song we’ve ever written. Our bassist, Connor Grimes, brought the bass line to us before we went into this studio session this past winter. We just decided to ride around it, and everybody pulled out their own instruments and started jamming on top of the bass line that we just tracked.
It took us maybe two to three hours to hash out the entire song. We very quickly found a groove, and the bulk of the time was just writing and finalizing the lyrics. We got the structure down within an hour, and then we ended up tracking it and recording the full song just two days later. We liked how raw it was to us and how new it was to us.
Raymond, you have a clean guitar tone that recalls surf music and reggae to me at times. Tell us about your guitar style.
Mann: Jimi Hendrix is very high up on my list of influences for soloing and rhythm. Led Zepp is up there for riff riding. I think it’s very important to have a catchy, earworm-type of hook, one of those guitar tunes that you can just hum all day. Within the past six months, I’ve been keeping it as simple as possible without boring the audience and really trying to get the message across. Bob Marley is also a huge influence of mine.
“In Retro” is your most-streamed song on Spotify with nearly 700K streams. Is that song a fan favorite at shows?
Reina: I would say “In Retro” and “Fading” are probably our fan favorites live. Both songs have done really well for us, and they’re a lot of fun to play live. I like to mention “Keepin’ the Road.” It’s not our top song on Spotify, but it’s definitely a really fun song to play live, and I feel like that’s where that song really connects.
We’re all about the live show. We like to do things very energetically and have a really good time live, and sometimes it’s hard to convey that through a recording. We like to bring the energy live and play our songs very heavily.
Jacob, do you write all the lyrics?
Reina: I write most of them, and our other guitarist, Pat McNeill, writes some as well.
“In Retro” is about a girl who’s on your mind all the time. What was the inspiration for that one?
Reina: I actually wrote “Fading.” Pat wrote “In Retro.” “Fading” was a fun one to write. That one is also about a girl and a relationship gone bad. I wouldn’t say I wrote it about anybody specific. It was more of a general thing that has happened multiple times, so maybe not anybody in particular, but it was about some general themes.
My favorite line from that song is, “I don’t want anything to change.” It’s about that gripe of moving on and moving forward, and that can be with anything, not just a girl, but life in general.
You’ve released five singles so far. Do you have plans for a full album?
Reina: We’ve got a great plan coming up this spring. We just put out “Strange,” and we’re going to put out another single called “Begonias.” The singles will be leading up to a bigger project that we’ll be putting out towards the end of April, which will be eight songs.
We’re really excited to get this project out. It’s the biggest thing that we’ve ever done to date. We put in a lot of hard work for this, and we’re really excited to get the songs out to everybody.
Why should SXSW festivalgoers check out The Gringos?
Reina: We bring the party. We like to think of ourselves as a nighttime type of act, but even if it’s noon on a Tuesday, we’ll be bringing the party to you. We can guarantee you have a good time.
Check out the full video interview on our YouTube channel, @360degreesound:
